Day: 12/24/2017

Public Health SCANDAL: Sugar Industry Hid Science Linking Sugar to Heart Disease – Blamed Saturated Fats and Cholesterol

Posted by

0


Government Advice on Nutrition has Destroyed Countless Lives the Past Few Decades, Since the War on Fat Started in the 1970s

Can We Trust Industry-Sponsored Scientific Studies and Government Agencies Approving such “Science”?

It has been well documented in recent times that “science” published in peer-reviewed journals is largely funded by corporate interests, where widespread corruption is now the norm.

Results are determined long before the studies are funded to promote special interests.

Here are some recent articles we have published here at Health Impact News exposing this corruption:

Peer-reviewed Scientific Literature Filled with Fake Science

The Corruption of Science: Who Funds Vaccine Safety Studies?

In 2015, Dr. Mercola reported that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regularly reviews scientific literature and finds corruption, but does nothing about it!

The FDA reviews several hundred clinical trial locations that conduct research on human participants each year in order to be sure they’re engaging in good clinical practice. But what happens when they find evidence of questionable procedures or practices?

In the most serious of cases, the FDA can classify it as “official action indicated,” or OAI. This is reserved for “severe” forms of clinical trial violations, including “objectionable conditions or practices” that warrant compulsory regulatory action, as opposed to “voluntary action indicated” for lesser violations.”

Now, if a trial had been deemed OAI by the FDA, you might assume that you’d see evidence of that when reading the results of studies based on said data. But that would be a liberal assumption. Researchers conducted a review of FDA inspection reports between 1998 and 2013.

They found 60 clinical trials that had been classified as OAI, and these trials had been used for data in 78 published articles. Out of those 78 studies, only three included mentions of the violations found by the FDA!

And we’re not talking about small, innocent mistakes. The violations included fraud, incompetence, and misconduct. This means that anyone browsing a medical journal might be making decisions based on fraudulent published studies. (Source.)

Likewise, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), another government agency tasked with protecting the public’s interest, has been exposed for having massive conflicts of interest preventing them from representing true, unbiased scientific studies.

Jeanne Lenzer, associate editor of the British Medical Journal, published an investigative report showing how the U.S. CDC is not honest when publishing disclaimers in their studies stating that “they have no financial interests or other relationships with the manufacturers of commercial products.”

The CDC’s image as an independent watchdog over the public health has given it enormous prestige, and its recommendations are occasionally enforced by law.

Despite the agency’s disclaimer, the CDC does receive millions of dollars in industry gifts and funding, both directly and indirectly, and several recent CDC actions and recommendations have raised questions about the science it cites, the clinical guidelines it promotes, and the money it is taking.

See:

Can We Trust the CDC? British Medical Journal Reveals CDC Lies About Ties to Big Pharma

The War On Fats: How Bad Politics Corrupted Good Science

There is probably no greater danger to public health today than the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and FDA’s advice and regulations regarding dietary fats.

Since the 1970s, and the infamous “McGovern Report” on nutrition which condemned saturated fats and blamed them for causing heart disease, the health of Americans has spiraled out of control, with epidemics in obesity, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease, which combined represent most causes of death today in the U.S.

This YouTube clip contains actual film footage by ABC news regarding the McGovern report in 1977, and how scientists cautioned the politicians at that time that the science did NOT support the conclusion that saturated fats and cholesterol caused heart disease.

The science, REAL science that is unbiased and not tied into industry-funded special interest groups, has exonerated saturated fats and cholesterol from causing heart disease for many years now.

If you want to research this topic for yourself, we have linked to many published studies and commentaries by physicians and other scientists over the years here at Health Impact News. Learn more:

Truth about Saturated Fats – Exposing the Cholesterol Myth

Unfortunately, government nutrition advice today still recommends a low-fat diet, encouraging consumption of carbohydrates, which includes refined sugars.

Even some in the corporate-sponsored “mainstream” media have exposed the scientific fraud regarding saturated fats in recent years, but the main reason is not because they have “seen the light” regarding scientific dietary nutrition, but because Big Food has come to realize that consumers want to return to traditional fats, such as butter and coconut oil, which have been part of the food chain for many thousands of years, and have rejected the government and industry-sponsored science trying to convince them that saturated fats are bad.

Researchers Find Corruption in Older Sugar-Industry Sponsored Studies Exonerating Dangers of Sugar and Condemning Fats Instead

For the past year, a group of researchers with the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), has reviewed historical scientific literature funded by the Sugar Research Foundation since the 1960s, which gives us a great perspective on how the war on saturated fats became public policy.

These researchers at UCSF, Cristin E. Kearns, DDS, MBA; Laura A. Schmidt, PhD, MSW, MPH; and Stanton A. Glantz, PhD, have revealed how the Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) influenced Harvard medical researchers financially and otherwise to report open-ended inconclusive research that omitted a lot of conclusive negative health data.

Their first article was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA Internal Medicine) in 2016. The title of the study is Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research: A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents.

The New York Times, which has given some press to exposing the saturated fat myth for about ten years now, led the mainstream media outlets that covered the UCSF study:

How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

Here are some excerpts:

The sugar industry paid scientists in the 1960s to play down the link between sugar and heart disease and promote saturated fat as the culprit instead, newly released historical documents show.

The internal sugar industry documents, recently discovered by a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, and published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, suggest that five decades of research into the role of nutrition and heart disease, including many of today’s dietary recommendations, may have been largely shaped by the sugar industry.

“They were able to derail the discussion about sugar for decades,” said Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at U.C.S.F. and an author of the JAMA Internal Medicine paper.

The documents show that a trade group called the Sugar Research Foundation, known today as the Sugar Association, paid three Harvard scientists the equivalent of about $50,000 in today’s dollars to publish a 1967 review of research on sugar, fat and heart disease. The studies used in the review were handpicked by the sugar group, and the article, which was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, minimized the link between sugar and heart health and cast aspersions on the role of saturated fat.

Even though the influence-peddling revealed in the documents dates back nearly 50 years, more recent reports show that the food industry has continued to influence nutrition science.

NPR was another news source that covered the UCSF study in 2016:

50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists To Point Blame At Fat

The UCSF researchers disclosed how a top executive, John Hickson, vice-president of the SRF at the time took on the task of finding a way to discredit the increasing studies demonstrating sugar’s role in creating bad heart health.

Interestingly, a few years later in the early 1970s, Hickson became part of the tobaccoindustry’s PR machinery with the Cigar Research Council.

“In 1972, an internal tobacco industry memo on Mr. Hickson noted that he had a reputation for manipulating science to achieve his goals,” and ” …[he is] a supreme scientific politician who had been successful in condemning cyclamates [earlier artificial sweeteners], on behalf of the Sugar Research Council, on somewhat shaky evidence.” (Source)

Hickson had come up the idea of funding their own research which would enable them to legitimately and officially discredit all the anti-health sugar conclusions. The operational key for this scheme was in Harvard, where “one of the researchers was the chairman of Harvard’s Public Health Nutrition Department — and an ad hoc member of SRF’s board.” (Source)

Their review was published in a 1967 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The fact that it was published in such a prestigious journal as a scientific literature review was enough to establish legitimacy, at least enough to confuse, if not convince, with their inconclusive commentaries of “further studies needed.”

The review also maintained the now debunked lipid theory of heart disease by encouraging a low fat diet.

The “Inconvenient Truth” that Refined Sugar is Linked to Heart Disease and Cancer Was Never Published

The same UCSF team of researchers had another paper published last month (November 2017) by the open access journal PLOS Biology titled, “Sugar industry sponsorship of germ-free rodent studies linking sucrose to hyperlipidemia and cancer: An historical analysis of internal documents.”

Again, internal memos were added to the analysis of data from another SRF funded study conducted in England called “Project 259: Dietary Carbohydrate and Blood Lipids in Germ-Free Rats,” led by Dr. W.F.R. Pover at the UK’s University of Birmingham between 1967 and 1971.

The UCSF researchers managed to get the Project 259 material despite its never being published. The SRF didn’t continue sufficient funding to allow the researchers completion for publishing.

Hicks had to back out, despite a huge monetary expenditure, because Project 259, intended to prove sucrose was more beneficial than other carbohydrates, was beginning to backfire.

SRF was not getting the pro-sugar “science” they had sought.

Early reports of the animal (mouse) studies were revealing certain gut reactions from sucrose were creating excess triglyceride serum levels, an accepted marker for increased cardiac disease risks. This process also produced an enzyme that contributed to a metabolic carcinogenic cascade observed with bladder cancer.

This inconvenient truth could have helped chip away the foundation of the dietary fats dogma and pointed to real research on obesity and heart disease, but it was conveniently never disclosed publicly.

Here’s an excerpt that captures the motivational essence of the PLOS paper published in 2017 by the UCSF team:

On January 5, 2016, the Sugar Association issued a press release criticizing findings from a study published in Cancer Research using multiple mouse models that suggested that dietary sugar induces increased tumor growth and metastasis when compared to a non-sugar starch diet.

The Sugar Association stated that ‘no credible link between ingested sugars and cancer has been established.’

In contrast, this paper provides empirical data suggesting that the sugar industry terminated funding of an animal study that was finding unfavorable results with respect to the association between dietary sugars and cancer, with possible translational importance to humans.

From the 2017 paper’s abstract:

The [early Project 259] results suggested to SRF that gut microbiota have a causal role in carbohydrate-induced hypertriglyceridemia. A study comparing conventional rats fed a high-sugar diet to those fed a high-starch diet suggested that sucrose consumption might be associated with elevated levels of beta-glucuronidase, an enzyme previously associated with bladder cancer in humans. (Full text study source)

This last revelation is an example of damaging data discovered inadvertently and discarded. These are but two examples of how nutritional scientific research is easily manipulated by industry sources simply to improve its bottom line. There are more.

When it comes to the dogma that “saturated fats cause obesity and heart disease,” the sugar industry has been instrumental in keeping it alive to the detriment of national and international public health wherever this totally false saturated fat/cholesterol dogma has been “officially” adopted.

The abandoned Project 259 could have led to more research on sugar’s influence with cancer. Instead, carcinogenic comfort foods along with toxic chemotherapy drugs continues to be part of the failed “War on Cancer.”

UCSF is the same institution where Dr. Robert Lustig launched his video lecture that went viral, “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” which explains both the business end of sugar and HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) in so many processed foods with their consequences, which are wrongly blamed on saturated fats: Obesity; diabetes 2; coronary heart disease (CHD); coronary artery disease (CAD).

Why Has the Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Myth Been Allowed to Continue?

Scottish doctor Malcom Kendrick has stated that the idea that saturated fat causes heart disease is “The Greatest Scam in the History of Medicine.”

The answer to the question “Why has the saturated fat and cholesterol myth been allowed to continue” is quite simple. Lowering cholesterol has historically been the largest revenue stream for drugs among pharmaceutical companies.

Sales of statin drugs to lower cholesterol are the top selling drugs of all time. It is a $100 BILLION a year industry.

Before its patent expired, the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor was the best-selling drug of all time, grossing over $140 billion, with no serious close competitors in the history of pharmaceutical drugs. The FDA did not issue warnings about the dangerous side effects of cholesterol-lowering drugs until after Lipitor’s patent expired.

One out of every four Americans over the age of 50 is taking a statin drug to lower their cholesterol.

Learn more about the “statin scam” with cholesterol lowering drugs.

Dr. MaryAnne Demasi’s documentary on the criminal activity of the pharmaceutical industry regarding cholesterol-lowering statin drugs sent shock waves through the mainstream media in Australia at the end of 2013.

Published in two parts on the popular news show The Catalyst, the pharmaceutical industry complained loudly after the first show, and requested the network not air the second episode, “Heart of the Matter Part 2 – Cholesterol Drug War.”

ABC Australia aired it anyway, but the pharmaceutical influence was apparently too strong, as they later announced that the network would remove the videos from their website because “they breached its impartiality standards.” All copies found on YouTube were also removed, but it has been copied widely and can still be found on YouTube. Here are two copies:

Heart of the Matter – Dietary Villains – Part 1

Heart of the Matter – Cholesterol Drug War – Part 2

How Many Lives Have Been Destroyed by Faulty Science and Wrong U.S. Dietary Advice?

The science clearly showing how the “lipid theory of heart disease,” the belief that saturated fats and cholesterol cause heart disease, is false, but that science can never be published or exposed by Big Pharma, Big Food, or the U.S. Government.

To do so would be to admit that such dietary advice, and the cholesterol lowering drugs that have earned them hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars, have been a scam and have led to increased rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

The irony in all of this is that traditional saturated fats such as coconut oil, the most saturated dietary fat one can consume, has been shown to actually be heart healthy by numerous scientific studies.

Thank God for honest researchers such as Cristin E. Kearns, DDS, MBA; Laura A. Schmidt, PhD, MSW, MPH; and Stanton A. Glantz, PhD with the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California at San Francisco.

Their honest research provides the information the public needs to understand how government dietary advice is corrupt, and how to make intelligent choices when it comes to food and nutrition.

This information is increasingly being published in the alternative media, as the dinosaur corporate-sponsored “mainstream” media for the most part no longer represents the interest of the public, but instead the interest of their corporate sponsors dominated by Big Pharma and Big Food, and their incestuous ties to government regulatory agencies such as the FDA, USDA, and CDC.

These Scientists Say Cosmic Ray Radiation Has an Effect on Climate Change

Posted by

0


Cloud formation depends on a number of factors, including atmospheric temperature and the amount of water vapour in the air, but we might be able to add another influence to the mix: cosmic rays beaming down through space.

 

New research suggests these rays are capable of seeding clouds with their radiation bursts, affecting weather conditions and even climate change in the long term.

Scientists from the Technical University of Denmark (the Danmarks Tekniske Universitet or DTU) suggest that their experiments show varying radiation from the Sun and other supernovae could lead to variations on our weather – but not everyone is convinced.

cosmic clouds 2Artist’s impression of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere. (H. Svensmark/DTU)

“Finally we have the last piece of the puzzle explaining how particles from space affect climate on Earth,” says lead researcher Henrik Svensmark.

“It gives an understanding of how changes caused by Solar activity or by supernova activity can change climate.”

The clouds in our skies develop from cloud condensation nuclei: that is, water vapour condensing on what are called aerosols – such as small bits of dust, ice, and salt in the atmosphere. This happens when the amount of water vapour and temperature conditions are just right.

Then we have the cosmic rays, high energy radiation made from protons and the nuclei of elements including hydrogen and helium. These rays barrel through our entire Universe, ejected by the Sun and other stellar objects.

We know that when cosmic rays hit Earth’s atmosphere, they produce a shower of electrically charged “secondary” particles or ions.

What Svensmark and his colleagues are proposing is that these ions add extra material to the aerosols, ultimately forming bigger clouds, and impacting cloud cover and the temperature at ground level.

To test this, they rigged up a test chamber that was 8 cubic meters (about 283 cubic feet) in size. They were able to get more small clouds to form from aerosols when passing electrically charged particles through the chamber.

The researchers also produced computer models to back up their hypothesis that extra cosmic ray activity could produce more low clouds, eventually cooling Earth’s surface.

Based on their experiments and modelling, the team estimates that between 5-50 percent of aerosol growth rate could be down to ions – that’s based on two years of testing in the chamber with over 3,100 hours’ worth of data samples in total.

Big shifts in cosmic ray activity, like exploding supernovae, could even cause enough of a difference to shift the temperature on our planet, the team suggests.

However, the researchers themselves do admit that parts of their hypothesis are “speculative” – there are a lot of factors at play in cloud formation, and it’s impossible for a cloud chamber in a lab to properly model the Earth’s atmosphere.

While the findings suggest that cosmic rays could play at least some part in cloud formation, claims about effects on climate change must be weighed up against the evidence we have for the effect of greenhouse gases and other factors down here on the planet.

“Of itself, this is an interesting and plausible result, and if it stands up to more detailed scrutiny it may prove an important contribution to aerosol microphysics,” says atmospheric scientist Hamish Gordon, from the University of Leeds in the UK.

“However, it is very far from ‘the last piece of the puzzle explaining how particles from space affect climate on Earth’.”

Recent research carried out at CERN by Gordon and others suggests that particles released by human beings and trees are likely to be much more influential in terms of affecting cloud cover than showers of particles from space.

“In the climate of the last few thousand years, [cosmic rays] can make no appreciable difference to overall cloud-seeding particle concentrations in the atmosphere or to temperature,” Gordon told Ryan F. Mandelbaum at Gizmodo.

Whatever’s happening above our heads – and we’re still only part of the way through understanding it all – the idea that cosmic ray activity can add to the build up of clouds is going to be worth investigating in the future.

“The theory of ion-induced condensation should be incorporated into global aerosol models, to fully test the atmospheric implications,” conclude the researchers.

Risky Virus Research Renewed

Posted by

0


Gain-of-function genetic manipulation can enhance the transmissibility or lethality of viruses

The federal government is lifting the 3-year-old ban on research that involves genetic manipulation of viruses in ways that could enhance their transmissibility or potential lethality, according to a report in STAT.

Research into so-called “gain of function” genetic changes was put on hold after accidents at government facilities involving anthrax and avian flu. These experiments are intended to anticipate future changes in viruses such as Ebola and avian influenza that might result in devastating pandemics, and to help researchers develop strategies to prevent such events.

 But some scientists are skeptical, suggesting that the potential for future accidents remains, such as if a lab worker accidentally becomes infected with a deadly virus that has been altered to permit airborne transmission.

Are Ubers the New Ambulance?

Posted by

0


With expensive transportation often cited as a leading barrier to emergency care, ride sharing apps like Uber might be the key to connecting patients with quality healthcare when they need it, reported NPR.

According to a study from the University of Kansas, U.S. cities with Uber had reduced per capita ambulance usage rates by approximately 7%. Demand for ambulances decreased with the availability of Uber, allowing emergency personnel to quickly reach patients and apply treatment on the way to the hospital, explained study author David Slusky.

“In order to lower health care spending while improving health outcomes, people can use the least-skilled professional who is still qualified,” said Slusky. “It’s the same in the provider space: you don’t need a neurosurgeon to diagnose strep throat.”

Rapid Antibiotic Testing Comes of Age

Posted by

0


image

 

In recent years, there has been an explosion of FDA-approved rapid diagnostic testing methodologies for infectious diseases. During an education session at the 2017 annual meeting of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy, pharmacists discussed some of the excitement surrounding the recent advances in treating the most worrisome bugs.

“Rapid diagnostic tests represents one of the few bright spots in the changing world of escalating antimicrobial resistance and stewardship,” said Katherine Perez, PharmD, BCPS-AQ ID, an infectious disease clinical specialist at Houston Methodist.

Dr. Perez pointed out that rapid identification of microorganisms and resistance is critical for targeted treatment in serious infections caused by multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacteria (GNB). Research efforts have focused on pathogens associated with increased morbidity, mortality and excessive health care costs, including influenza virus, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus,vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus species, Clostridium difficile, extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Klebsiella species, carbapenemases, Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Candida species.

Current conventional culture-based methods to isolate and identify a pathogen, followed by susceptibility testing, can take 72 hours or more. This is concerning, Dr. Perez noted, because delaying administration of appropriate antimicrobials is associated with increased mortality rates for patients with gram-negative septicemia and septic shock (Clin Infect Dis 2013;57:S139-S170). Having the ability to detect the presence of resistant bacteria in a clinical sample in less than one hour, Dr. Perez noted, helps improve the effectiveness of antimicrobial stewardship programs.

In an ideal world, antimicrobial treatment would be prompt; appropriate; administered at an adequate dose and interval, guided by pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic principles; and discontinued appropriately, based on clinical response and microbiological data. All of this, Dr. Perez noted, is contingent on accurately determining a pathogen’s identification and antimicrobial susceptibility.

Various Methodologies

Emerging rapid detection methods of pathogens include a variety of technologies that vary greatly in complexity, price, speed and ability to identify single or multiple pathogens. Dr. Perez highlighted a number of rapid infectious disease diagnostics using different methodologies, including the polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based FilmArray Blood Culture Identification panel (BioFire Diagnostics LLC). The panel tests for 24 pathogens and three antibiotic resistance genes associated with bloodstream infections. The test can accurately identify pathogens in more than nine of 10 positive blood cultures in about an hour, with only two minutes of hands-on time, she said (J Clin Microbiol2016;54:687-698).

The advantages of PCR-based testing, she noted, include rapid results, low detection limits, specific organism detection and subtyping, not requiring growth on media, high throughput and, generally, short hands-on time for laboratory staff. Disadvantages include susceptibility to contamination, the need for dedicated laboratory space for instruments, and dependence on quality of products used, and most require initiation from positive cultures/single colonies. PCR cannot indicate viability of the pathogen detected and comes with practical limitations that can affect turnaround time.

Targeting Worrisome Bugs

Ryan Shields, PharmD, MS, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Pittsburgh, said carbapenem-resistant bugs top the list of most worrisome bugs. Carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) are listed as critical priorities for research and development of new antibiotics by the World Health Organization. The CDC lists multidrug-resistant A. baumannii and P. aeruginosa as serious threats, and CRE as an urgent threat.

Carbapenem-resistant pathogens, Dr. Shields said, are associated with loss of our last line of defense against resistant pathogens and cross-resistance to other antibiotic classes. They are also associated with increased lengths of stay, health care expenditures and increased mortality rates among patients. “Carbapenem resistance is a major threat to public health,” he said.

A recent study concluded that antibiotic stewardship and infection prevention and control have been unable to prevent the rapid spread of resistant GNB, particularly carbapenem-resistant P. aeruginosa and other nonfermenting GNB, ESBL-producing and CRE (Intensive Care Med 2017 Jul 21. [Epub ahead of print]). Carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, Dr. Perez said, is an emerging nosocomial pathogen associated with considerable mortality.

Rapid tests should detect all carbapenem-resistant organisms and distinguish carbapenemase-producing organisms from isolates that are resistant to carbapenems because of other mechanisms, Dr. Perez noted. The organisms have diverse enzyme types and considerable variation in levels of phenotypic carbapenem resistance (e.g., minimum inhibitory concentration evaluation). Non–carbapenemase-mediated carbapenem resistance complicates things.

The Rapidec Carba NP biochemical test (bioMérieux) detects any type of carbapenemase activity by monitoring the color change of a pH indicator according to hydrolysis of the substrate, imipenem. The tests are rapid, easy to read and handle, and cost-effective, and have a turnaround time of approximately one hour. They can be used for first-line screening in the absence of molecular typing, Dr. Perez said.

Table. Integrating Rapid Diagnostics Into Practice
Beta-Lactamase Bacteria Recommended Therapy
CTX-M (ESBL) Enterobacteriaceae Ertapenem (Invanz, Merck)
KPC Klebsiella pneumoniae and other enteric gram-negative organisms Colistin + tigecycline/aminoglycoside/carbapenem; ceftazidime-avibactam (Avycaz, Allergan)
NDM carbapenemases K. pneumoniae and other enteric gram-negative organisms Colistin + tigecycline; aztreonam (Azactam, Bristol-Myers Squibb) + ceftazidime-avibactam
VIM or IMP carbapenemase Pseudomonas aeruginosa Colistin + aztreonam/aminoglycoside/tigecycline
OXA beta-lactamases P. aeruginosa Colistin + high-dose carbapenem
Acinetobacter baumannii Colistin + minocycline; high-dose carbapenem
ESBL, extended-spectrum beta-lactamase Source: Katherine Perez, PharmD, BCPS-AQ ID.

Integrating Into Practice

Dr. Perez noted that the Infectious Diseases Society of America, CDC and National Quality Forum have recognized the emerging role of rapid diagnostics and biomarkers in antimicrobial stewardship programs. Molecular biology and testing can be used to improve antimicrobial stewardship interventions, assist in anti-infective escalation and de-escalation efforts, and improve clinical outcomes.

Implementation of rapid diagnostic tests may be cost-neutral or even constitute a cost savings when stewardship efforts streamline care. “Rapid diagnostic tests can reduce total hospital costs by decreasing length of stay,” Dr. Perez said.

Multiple stakeholders, including infectious disease physicians, microbiologists and laboratory pharmacists, need to create guidance for clinicians up front regarding the use of rapid infectious disease diagnostics, Dr. Perez noted. “There is a need to connect the dots among antimicrobial stewardship, rapid diagnostics and improved outcomes to make this case,” she said. “Who gets notified when an organism and a resistance marker are identified by rapid diagnostics?”

Providing Guidance

Stewardship pharmacists can provide guidance to clinicians to positively affect patient care. Some stewardship programs use automated alerts for positive blood cultures coupled with antimicrobial stewardship interventions, to ensure that a patient is prescribed effective antibiotics sooner, Dr. Perez said. Selective antibiogram reports for blood culture isolates are helpful for driving empirical choices and may be useful particularly for multidrug-resistant organisms.

“Advances in testing provide new opportunities for stewardship programs to streamline care for patients with serious infections,” she added. “Rapid diagnostic tests are game-changing for patient care moving forward.”

Photobiology: How Therapeutic Use of Full-Spectrum Light Can Improve Your Health

Posted by

0


Photobiology is the scientific study of the interaction between light and living organisms, and specifically, the therapeutic use of light to improve health and treat disease.

In the interview featured below, Dr. Alexander Wunsch, a physician, researcher and one of the leading experts in photobiology, explains the modern significance of photobiology. In this article we will also look at the historical development of photobiology, to help you get a better appreciation of its incredible healing potential.

I recently interviewed Dr. Wunsch about the dangers of light-emitting diode (LED) lighting. That interview has been viewed nearly three-quarters of a million times at this point. If you haven’t seen it already, please take a look, as that interview went into some very practical, real world aspects of photobiology.

Photobiology%20-%20How%20Therapeutic%20Use%20of%20Full-Spectrum%20Light%20Can%20Improve%20Your%20Health%201

Historical Use of Light Therapy

Light has been used therapeutically for thousands of years. In ancient Egypt, we know that sunlight was used for hygienic purposes, and once humans began manufacturing glass, it also became possible to produce colored light using colored glass as filter technology.

Humans have not only evolved to adapt to sunlight but also to the influence of fire — near-infrared and mid-infrared radiation that is very low in in the blue range wavelength, which is also emitted by incandescent light sources. An important point that needs to be understood is that the human retina is not designed to be exposed to blue light at night. As humans evolved, we were ever only exposed to fire light at night. This is why it’s so crucial to block blue light, particularly at night, but also during the daytime when the light is emitted from artificial sources. Incandescent and halogen lights are acceptable as they produce near-infrared wavelengths, however LEDs are best avoided, since they’re virtually devoid of these healing near-infrared wavelengths, primarily emitting blue light — the effects of which we will explore here.

Around the turn of the 18th century, light began to be used therapeutically to treat illness.

“I call the time before the 18th century the ‘mystical phase’ of light use, because humans already had clear indications that light does them good, but they didn’t explore it in a scientific manner,” Wunsch says.

“In the 18th century — we also call it ‘the age of enlightenment’ — people became much more interested in the reasons why the occurrences happen around them.”

The First Phototherapeutic Device

Andreas Gärtner, known as the “Saxonian Archimedes,” built the first phototherapeutical device. It was a foldable hollow mirror made from wood and plaster, covered with gold leaf. Using this, he could concentrate sunlight onto aching joints of patients. People suffering from arthritis, rheumatism and gout found pain relief from this phototherapeutical unit.

Today, we can explain how this device worked without causing a phototoxic reaction or burns. The gold leaf actually absorbs all of the ultraviolet (UV) radiation from sunlight, emitting luminous heat rays in the near-infrared and red wavelengths, which is beneficial because it can penetrate deeply into the tissue.

“It’s interesting that UV behaves quite peculiar in combination with certain metals. For example, silver only reflects about 4 percent of the incident UV radiation. Gold almost absorbs all the parts. The best reflector for UV is aluminum.

When we talk about phototherapy, besides the heliotherapeutic application, we always have to look at the light source, and we have to look at the beam shaping media, such as the reflector or lenses, because they all contribute to the final blend of wavelengths, which then come into action in the phototherapeutical intervention,” Wunsch explains.

The Science of Light in the 19th Century

In the late 19th century, we started gaining a great deal of knowledge about how light acts on the human body. It started with the experiments of A. Downes and T.P. Blunt, who discovered that UV radiation kills bacteria. Researchers were also interested in other parts in the optical spectrum.

General Augustus Pleasonton published “Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight” in 1876 in which he described experiments performed between 1861 and 1876.

He grew grapes for wine, using not only transparent colorless glass, but also blue window glass. With the latter, he got a significant increase in plant growth. Later, he performed similar experiments on humans.

“People in the late 19th century, especially in the United States, would walk around with blue glasses. In a way, they did exactly the opposite of what we do today to protect our eyesight… They even enhanced the blue part of the spectrum because they used it as a kind of booster, a kind of doping, and didn’t care about the long-term effects, which are pretty negative …”

Wearing blue-colored glasses increases the blue exposure and limits the red and infrared. The problem with that is that while short-term use of blue-enriched light has an activating effect, you can quickly develop a tolerance and, long-term, the stimulating effect is harmful to your biology. Hence, wearing blue-tinted glasses on a daily basis is not a good idea.

“You can use them for a few minutes. This can be a good idea. From today’s scientific viewpoint, we need at least one hour of unfiltered daylight [each day] during adolescence in order to prevent myopia. But it’s not pure blue, and not pure blocking. Somewhere in between is the golden pathway to health.”

Reinventing the Wheel

The same year General Pleasonton published his book on blue light experiments, Dr. Seth Pancoast published “Blue and Red Light: Light and Its Rays as Medicine,” covering both blue and red light experiments. Pancoast understood the antagonistic effect of red and blue light, using red light to stimulate sympathetic activity and blue light to stimulate parasympathetic activity.

A year later, in 1878, a year before Edison invented the incandescent lamp, Dr. Edwin Dwight Babbitt published “Principles of Light and Color.” He used the full set of rainbow colors discovered by Newton, and later on used the color set of Goethe. The book is about 800 pages long, but for those with an interest in photobiology, it’s a treasure trove.

“Today in medicine, we start to reinvent what they already knew or what they already found out in the late 19th century — that the colors have specific effects on our health, on our organism. Using the correct colors means you can communicate with all your different organs in your system,” Wunsch explains.

According to Dr. Wunsch, Dr. Babbitt’s tome covers everything we’re currently rediscovering about photobiology and phototherapy. Babbitt even presented information about how atoms are frequency and oscillation.

With regards to the use of colored light, Babbitt used a kind of bottle shaped as a lens. By adding a salt solution, he produced different colors. He then focused colored light on different parts of the human body. Like Pleasonton and Pancoast before him, Babbitt produced therapeutic results using colored light. Wunsch explains:

“The problem was that it’s very difficult to reproduce these effects, starting with the problem that the sun doesn’t always shine… They were pioneers in chromotherapy in a time where electrical lighting was not available… People, in a way, had better circadian rhythm without electrical lighting. But in terms of scientific precision with regard to producing colored light, they had worse conditions than we have. Today, we can exactly produce the same colors anytime, during the day and during the year.”

Dr. Mercola Interviews Dr. Alexander Wunsch About Photobiology

Treating Disease With Light

In 1897, Dinshah Ghadiali, an India native who lived out the second half of his life in the United States, rescued the life of a patient using Babbitt’s instructions. The patient had colitis, an inflammatory disease of the intestines. Dinshah knew, from reading “Principles of Light and Color,” that indigo colored light could stop vomiting and break the disease process. This started a new chapter in chromotherapy, and Dinshah experimented with colored light for more than 23 years before he presented his system to the public.

Another chromotherapy pioneer during the late 19th century was Niels Ryberg Finsen in Denmark. He was the first to make a discrimination between negative phototherapy and a positive phototherapy. He used a very specific red light to treat small pox patients. He removed the short wavelength part of the spectrum, especially the ultraviolet, violet, indigo and blue, leaving the colors located in the longer wavelength of the light spectrum.

“You can be 100 percent sure that if you paint a room completely in red and you’re using red curtains and red tissue or cloth, that you would have 100 percent elimination of blue. The short wavelength part, the blue and the indigo, was the reason for the inflammatory reaction in patients with small pox,” Wunsch explains.

“Finsen … reinvented the negative phototherapy, which means you eliminate certain parts of the spectrum, which would exaggerate the development of a disease … This observation — that the short wavelength in the spectrum would amplify the inflammatory reaction in small pox — led him to the idea that light acts as an incitement. It is able to produce the inflammatory reaction. In small pox, this would be a problem. But he was thinking about the treatment of tuberculosis.

In treating tuberculosis, his idea was if he could produce the inflammation in the tissue, then the body would be able to cure itself. This is what he finally developed: the positive phototherapy, which means he produced exactly this part in the spectrum he formerly wanted to exclude. Using the short wavelength part enabled him to very successfully treat tuberculosis, especially in the skin … His idea was to use electric light …  

In the late years of the 1890s, he established the Finsen Institute in Copenhagen and successfully treated patients with tuberculosis from all over the world. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1903. This was one of the most important persons in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.”

Phototherapy Becomes State of the Art Medicine

Finsen’s work fueled the progress of phototherapy for the next several decades. From 1900 to 1950, phototherapy was a state of the art therapeutic intervention in medicine. Remember, Finsen effectively treated tuberculosis nearly 50 years before the advent of pharmacological medication. There really was no treatment for tuberculosis prior to light therapy. Tuberculosis is a very slow-growing organism that is hard to treat. Today, patients are typically given multiple drugs to treat it.

The reason light works for tuberculosis is because UV light is germicidal. This is one of the reasons why it’s useful to hang your clothes to dry outside. Exposing your laundry to sunlight kills bacteria, viruses and other microbes that might contaminate your bed linens and clothing.

The easiest way to benefit physically from the light therapy provided by the sun is to expose your bare skin to the sun on a regular basis, ideally daily. Most people rarely ever expose more than their face and hands to the sun. Indeed, one of the most important points I want to make here is that a lack of exposure to sunlight can have some really serious adverse consequences for your health.

In the late 19th century, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg invented a phototherapeutic method using red and the near-infrared rays (the luminous heat rays). He founded the Battle Creek Sanitarium, where he performed heliotherapy on patients as early as 1876. In 1891, shortly after the invention of the incandescent lamp, he filed a patent for an incandescent light bath. In the following two years, he treated thousands of patients with this light.

Kellogg exhibited his incandescent light bath system at the world exhibition in Chicago in 1893, where it caught the attention of German chemist Dr. Willibald Gebhardt. Gebhardt visited Kellogg at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, where he learned all about its use, and then brought the technology and knowledge back to Berlin. Over the next few years, Gebhardt established hundreds of light institutes throughout Germany, treating psoriasis and pain associated with gout and rheumatism. These institutes were so successful they even posed a threat to the medical community, as doctors could not provide better relief than what people were getting from self-treatment at these light institutes.

Light Therapeutics

In 1910, Kellogg published a text book called “Light Therapeutics.” It’s a seminal work that has stood the test of time, being as valuable and revolutionary today as it was back then, if not more so, considering all the knowledge we’ve lost to modern science, and are just now rediscovering. You can download the book for free at the link above. It is a great read to see what he was doing more than a century ago.

“I really would recommend this [book] to everyone who is interested in phototherapy, because this is the basic knowledge. Everything you have to know about sunlight, ultraviolet light, visible light, the near infrared, about the use of cold, the use of heat — it’s all contained in this book from John Harvey Kellogg,” Wunsch says.

“It’s still, in my understanding, the first book to read if you want to understand how light in the different parts of the spectrum interact with the organism. It’s very systematically structured … For example, everyone warns you about sunburn, but in the pre-antibiotic era, the medical doctors sometimes had to completely change the direction in a patient … Here, sunlight was one of the therapeutic options.

I would not recommend to use this today, but Kellogg describes in detail the four different stages of a sunburn. The first thing that he says is ‘Sunburn is not a burn injury. A burn injury appears immediately. And a sunburn appears with delayed time of several hours.’

He didn’t know anything about reactive oxygen species these days, but he exactly explained that there is definitely a huge difference between an immediate heat-induced burn and a kind of phototoxic reaction that you find in a sunburn.

He discriminated or described four different stages of a sunburn from one to four. Four is with blisters. One is just the mild erythema. In those days, without antibiotics, sometimes [they] deliberately chose to induce a second degree or third degree erythema in order to change the direction of the development of the health of a certain patient.”

Heliotherapy During Surgery

Dr. Oscar Bernhard, a Swiss surgeon, even used heliotherapy (i.e. sun therapy) during surgery. Bernhard was actually using sunlight even before Finsen inaugurated and popularized his method. At this time in the late 19th century, it had become apparent that as people moved from the country to the cities, rates of rickets and tuberculosis rose, and that a lack of sunlight clearly had something to do with it, eliciting more extensive exploration of light therapy. Further, Bernhard, who lived and worked in the Swiss mountains near Davos, would place his surgical patients in direct sunlight for 10 to 15 minutes, just before closing the wound. He found this significantly improved wound healing after surgery.

Another Swiss “sun doctor” was Dr. Auguste Rollier, who began treating patients using sunlight in 1905. In the 1930s and ’40s, he ran up to 40 different hospitals in Switzerland.

“Rollier only used heliotherapy,” Wunsch says. “He was convinced that artificial light cannot do the job, and that sunlight is superior. Rollier was the master of heliotherapy in these days up to the 1950s … He was treating patients [with heliotherapy for] more than 50 years, from the beginning to the mid of the 20th century …

He was a holistic physician who not only used sunlight in a very skillful manner, but also all the other options, using music and a kind of physiotherapy or work therapy. He invented a lot of different appliances, which enabled the patient to lie in their bed and do some work and be productive …

This was very important for people suffering from tuberculosis being treated in Switzerland, because it was quite expensive to stay there as a patient … He had very good results — much better compared to what we expect from tuberculosis treatment using the five-phase antibiotics treatment we have nowadays.”

This isn’t so surprising when you consider that UV light is directly germicidal to many microbes, and UVB exposure specifically helps your body produce vitamin D. In fact, vitamin D is a biological marker for UVB radiation exposure. When your body has enough, your vitamin D levels go up.

Why Vitamin D Supplements Cannot Fully Replace Sun Exposure

Today, many simply resort to taking a vitamin D supplement, but it’s naïve to believe you’re going to get the same benefits from a synthetic oral supplement as you would from natural UVB exposure. Your body is designed to produce vitamin D in response to sunlight, not through oral intake. I’m not saying you should avoid vitamin D supplements. If you cannot get enough sunlight, that’s your next best option. But the goal should not be to raise and maintain your vitamin D levels only through swallowing a pill. As Wunsch explains:

Photobiology - How Therapeutic Use of Full-Spectrum Light Can Improve Your Health

“[I]f you administer vitamin D orally, it signals your system that you have lots of UV around you. This might even start processes that are not adequate because your skin didn’t actually have the exposure. I think the best idea, if you have the skin type so that you can stand sun exposure, is that you use this natural pathway [i.e. sun exposure]. Because then you have coordinated, coherent action pathways, which are not granted [otherwise].

Another aspect that is still unclear is if orally administered vitamin D really reaches the skin layers where you normally need it as well, in the keratinocyte layer. Cathelicidin is a substance produced under the influence of vitamin D in the skin, which helps the organism to fight germs. This might be one of the reasons why the heliotherapy and the UV therapy were so efficient with regard to tuberculosis treatment.”

Candles — A Healthy Light Alternative

Candles are even better light sources than incandescent bulbs; there is no electricity involved, and candles are the lights our ancestors have used for many millennia, so our bodies are already adapted to the light they produce. The only problem is that you need to be careful about using just any old candle, as most commercially produced candles produce poisonous emissions when burned.

As you may or may not know, many candles available today are riddled with toxins, especially paraffin candles. Paraffin is a petroleum by-product created when crude oil is refined into gasoline, and a number of known carcinogens and toxins are also added to the paraffin to increase burn stability. There is also the potential that lead has been added to the wicks of your candles, and soot can invade your lungs.

To complicate matters, a lot of candles, both paraffin and soy, are corrupted with toxic dyes and fragrances; some soy candles are only partially soy with many other additives, and/or many commercial candles use GMO soy. The candles I use are non-GMO soy, which is clean burning without harmful fumes or soot, is grown in the U.S. and is both sustainable and renewable. They’re also completely free of dyes. The soy in these candles is not tested on animals, and is free of herbicides and pesticides. It’s also kosher, 100 percent natural and biodegradable. The fragrances are body safe, phthalate- and paraben-free, and contain no California prop 65 ingredients. You can search online for healthy candles, but if you like, you can use the ones I found at www.circleoflifefarms.com. I am not affiliated with the company and I earn no commissions on promoting their candles; I just thought you might benefit from using the ones I use in my home.

You may also like to try genuine Himalayan crystal salt lamps. The wavelengths of salt crystal colors fall within the upper nanometer zone (600-700 nanometers) producing orange/red light. Because of the neutral atomic structure of crystal salt, a heated salt lamp helps you balance artificial frequencies and neutralize electromagnetic radiation. (See: Why You Should Have a Himalayan Crystal Salt Lamp in Every Room of Your House.) — the Editor.

How to Make Digital Screens Healthier

When it comes to computer screens, it is important to reduce the correlated color temperature down to 2,700 K — even during the day, not just at night. It’s even better to set it below 2,000K or even 1,000K. Many people use a program called F.lux to do this, but I have found a far better alternative that health and fitness author Ben Greenfield introduced to me, created by 22–year–old Bulgarian programmer Daniel Georgiev.

Daniel was using F.lux but became frustrated with the controls. He attempted to contact the F.lux programmers but they never got back to him, so he created a massively superior alternative called Iris. It is free, but you’ll want to pay the $2 and reward him with the donation. You can purchase the $2 Iris mini software here.

Iris is better because it has three levels of blue blocking below F.lux: dim incandescent, candle and ember. I have been using ember after sunset and measured the spectrum and it blocked nearly all light below 550 nm (which is spectacular) as you can see in the image below when I measured it on my monitor in the ember setting. When I measured the F.lux software at its lowest setting, incandescent, it showed loads of blue light coming through, as you can clearly see in the second image below.

So, if you are serious about protecting your vision, I’d recommend you switch to Iris. I have been using it for about three months now, and even though I have very good vision at the age of 62 and don’t require reading glasses, my visual acuity seems to have dramatically increased. I believe this is because I am not exposing my retina to the damaging effects of blue light after sunset.

Photobiology - How Therapeutic Use of Full-Spectrum Light Can Improve Your Health - Iris vs F.lux PC light block software

More Information

Dr. Wunsch, who has studied photobiology and light therapy for decades, understands the influence of light on health perhaps better than anyone. Having this historical grounding will hopefully help you understand some of these benefits, and inspire you to apply heliotherapy in your own life. All you have to do is step outside and take some clothes off! There’s no question in my mind that sun exposure is as important — or nearly as important — as eating a healthy diet and exercising.

Unfortunately, virtually no one is talking about or teaching this. The point is, they did in the past. We’re now rediscovering what was common knowledge 100 years ago! Sadly, the pharmacological focus of modern medicine has created an enormous, manipulated bias, which essentially directs most of the research away from non-pharmaceutical medicine. If the focus of the medical establishment was authentically and sincerely motivated, based on specific healing principles, we would have expanded on the research into heliotherapy and photobiology. The reason we haven’t is because it’s been artificially suppressed. That’s the sad reality.

The good news is that this is the 21st century — a time when we have access to extremely powerful methods of communication, allowing us to share this information with literally millions of people. By doing so, we can create a foundation of a new understanding, thereby catalyzing research and therapeutic interventions that can help us avoid the expensive and toxic interventions typically recommended for diseases that respond perfectly well to interventions such as light.

It’s truly so simple. Take myopia for example. We’re now realizing that nearsightedness is closely linked to lack of sun exposure, especially during childhood — not a lack of vitamin D, mind you, but a lack of natural sunlight striking the eye. (If you missed my article on preventing myopia with sunlight, please take a moment to check it out now.) Understanding this connection, and doing something about it — sending your kids outdoors for at least an hour a day — could help prevent this extraordinarily common vision problem without costing a cent.

How Sugar Harms Your Brain Health and Drives Alzheimer’s Epidemic

Posted by

0


Sugar-and-brain

Alzheimer’s disease, a severe form of dementia, affects an estimated 5.2 million Americans, according to 2013 statistics.[1]

One in nine seniors over the age of 65 has Alzheimer’s, and the disease is now thought to be the third leading cause of death in the US, right behind heart disease and cancer.

A growing body of research suggests there’s a powerful connection between your diet and your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, via similar pathways that cause type 2 diabetes.

Contrary to popular belief, your brain does not require glucose, and actually functions better burning alternative fuels, especially ketones, which your body makes in response to digesting healthy fats.

According to some experts, such as Dr. Ron Rosedale, Alzheimer’s and other brain disorders may in large part be caused by the constant burning of glucose for fuel by your brain.

Alzheimer’s disease was tentatively dubbed “type 3 diabetes” in early 2005 when researchers discovered that in addition to your pancreas, your brain alsoproduces insulin, and this brain insulin is necessary for the survival of brain cells.

Sugar Damages Brain Structure and Function

In your brain, insulin helps with neuron glucose-uptake and the regulation of neurotransmitters, such as acetylcholine, which are crucial for memory and learning. This is why reducing the level of insulin in your brain impairs your cognition.

Research[2] has also shown that type 2 diabetics lose more brain volume with age than expected—particularly gray matter. This kind of brain atrophy is yet another contributing factor for dementia.

Studies have found that people with lower levels of insulin and insulin receptors in their brain often have Alzheimer’s disease. But according to recent research published in the journal Neurology,[3] sugar and other carbohydrates can disrupt your brain function even if you’re not diabetic or have any signs of dementia.

To test their theory, they evaluated short- and long-term glucose markers in 141 healthy, non-diabetic, non-demented seniors. Memory tests and brain imaging were administered to assess their brain function and the actual structure of their hippocampus. As reported by Scientific American:[4]

“Higher levels on both glucose measures were associated with worse memory, as well as a smaller hippocampus and compromised hippocampal structure.

The researchers also found that the structural changes partially accounted for the statistical link between glucose and memory. According to study co-author Agnes Flöel, a neurologist at Charité, the results ‘provide further evidence that glucose might directly contribute to hippocampal atrophy.’”

The findings suggest that even if you’re not diabetic or insulin resistant (and about 80 percent of Americans fall into the latter category), sugar consumption can still disrupt your memory.

Long-term, it can contribute to the shrinking of your hippocampus, which is a hallmark symptom of Alzheimer’s disease. (Your hippocampus is involved with the formation, organization, and storage of memories.)

The authors of the study suggest that “strategies aimed at lowering glucose levels even in the normal range may beneficially influence cognition in the older population.”

‘Normal’ Blood Sugar Levels May Still Be High Enough to Cause Problems

Normally, a fasting blood sugar level between 100-125 mg/dl is diagnosed as a pre-diabetic state. A fasting blood sugar level of 90-100 is considered “normal.” But in addition to the featured research, other studies have also found that brain atrophy occurs even in this “normal” blood sugar range.

Neurologist Dr. David Perlmutter, MD insists that being very strict in limiting your consumption of sugar and non-vegetable carbs is one of THE most important steps you can take to prevent Alzheimer’s disease for this very reason.

He cites research from the Mayo Clinic, which found that diets rich in carbohydrates are associated with an 89 percent increased risk for dementia. Meanwhile, high-fat diets are associated with a 44 percent reduced risk.

Download Interview Transcript

Sugar Lobby Threatens Organizations and Buries Science on Health Effects

Compelling research shows that your brain has great plasticity, which you control through your diet and lifestyle choices. Unfortunately, the American public has been grossly brainwashed by the sugar and processed food industries into believing that sugar is a perfectly reasonable “nutrient” that belongs in a healthy diet.

Without accurate information, it’s certainly more difficult to make health-affirming choices. Newsweek[5] recently ran an article revealing just how far the sugar industry will go to defend its market share:

“According to a new report[6] from the Center for Science and Democracy… industry groups representing companies that sell sweeteners, like the Sugar Association and the Corn Refiners Association… have poured millions of dollars into countering science that indicates negative health consequences of eating their products.

For example, when a University of Southern California study from 2013 found that the actual high fructose corn syrup content in sodas ‘varied significantly’ from the sugar content disclosed on soda labels, the Corn Refiners Association considered paying for its own counter research.

A consultant suggested that the counter research should only be published if the results aligned with their goal of disputing the USC study: ‘If for any reason the results confirm [the University of Southern California study], we can just bury the data,’ the consultant wrote, according to the report.”

According to the Center for Science report, the Sugar Association even threatened the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO had published a paper on sugar, recommending a 10 percent limit on added sugars, stating that added sugars “threaten the nutritional quality of diets.”

The Sugar Association shot off a letter to the director general, warning him that, unless WHO withdrew the study, the Sugar Association would persuade the US Congress to withdraw the WHO’s federal funding. The following year, when WHO published its global health strategy on diet and health, there was no mention of the offending sugar study.

The Sugar Lobby Deserves Blame for Fueling Chronic Disease Epidemics

Indeed, despite overwhelming evidence showing that sugar, and processed fructose in particular, is at the heart of our burgeoning obesity and chronic disease epidemics, the sugar lobby has been so successful in its efforts to thwart the impact of such evidence that there’s still no consensus among our regulatory agencies as to the “factual” dangers of sugar…

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data,[7] 13 percent of the average American’s diet is sugar. In the UK, a recently published report[8] by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) recommends limiting your added sugar intake to five percent, in order to avoid obesity and type 2 diabetes. They calculate this to be the equivalent of 25 grams of sugar (5-6 teaspoons) per day for women, and 35 grams (7-8 teaspoons) for men.

This matches my own recommendations for healthy, non-insulin resistant individuals—with one key difference. I recommend restricting sugar/fructose consumption to 25 grams from ALL sources, not just added sugar. This includes limiting your non-vegetable carbohydrates as well. Crazy enough, the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition still recommends you get 50 percent of your daily energy intake in the form of starchy carbohydrates, which will undoubtedly and significantly raise your risk of insulin resistance. If you’re insulin/leptin resistant, diabetic, overweight, or have high blood pressure, heart disease, or cancer, I recommend restricting your sugar/fructose consumption to a maximum of 15 grams per day from all sources, until your insulin/leptin resistance has been resolved.

Dietary Guidelines for Maintaining Healthy Brain Function and Avoiding Alzheimer’s Disease

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the same pathological process that leads to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes may also hold true for your brain. As you over-indulge on sugar and grains, your brain becomes overwhelmed by the consistently high levels of glucose and insulin that blunts its insulin signaling, leading to impairments in your thinking and memory abilities, eventually causing permanent brain damage.

Additionally, when your liver is busy processing fructose (which your liver turns into fat), it severely hampers its ability to make cholesterol, an essential building block of your brain that is crucial for optimal brain function. Indeed, mounting evidence supports the notion that significantly reducing fructose consumption is a very important step for preventing Alzheimer’s disease.

Because of the very limited treatments, and no available cure as of yet, you’re really left with just onesolid solution, and that is to prevent Alzheimer’s from happening to you in the first place. As explained by neurologist Dr. David Perlmutter, Alzheimer’s is a disease predicated primarily on lifestyle choices; the two main culprits being excessive sugar and gluten consumption.

Another major factor is the development and increased consumption of genetically engineered (GE) grains, which are now pervasive in most processed foods sold in the US. The beauty of following my optimized nutrition plan is that it helps prevent and treat virtually ALL chronic degenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s. Dr. Perlmutter’s book, Grain Brain, also provides powerful arguments for eliminating grains from your diet, particularly if you want to protect the health of your brain. In terms of your diet, the following suggestions may be among the most important for Alzheimer’s prevention:

  • Avoid sugar and refined fructose. Ideally, you’ll want to keep your total sugar and fructosebelow 25 grams per day, or as low as 15 grams per day if you have insulin resistance or any related disorders. In one recent animal study, a junk food diet high in sugar resulted in impaired memory after just one week![9] Place recognition, specifically, was adversely affected.

As a general rule, you’ll want to keep your fasting insulin levels below 3, and this is indirectly related to fructose, as it will clearly lead to insulin resistance. However, other sugars (sucrose is 50 percent fructose by weight), grains, and lack of exercise are also important factors. Lowering insulin will also help lower leptin levels which is another factor for Alzheimer’s.

  • Avoid gluten and casein (primarily wheat and pasteurized dairy, but not dairy fat, such as butter). Research shows that your blood-brain barrier, the barrier that keeps things out of your brain where they don’t belong, is negatively affected by gluten. Gluten also makes your gut more permeable, which allows proteins to get into your bloodstream, where they don’t belong. That then sensitizes your immune system and promotes inflammation and autoimmunity, both of which play a role in the development of Alzheimer’s.
  • Eat a nutritious diet, rich in folate, such as the one described in my nutrition plan. Vegetables, without question, are your best form of folate, and we should all eat plenty of fresh raw veggies every day. Avoid supplements like folic acid, which is the inferior synthetic version of folate.
  • Increase consumption of all healthful fats, including animal-based omega-3. Beneficial health-promoting fats that your brain needs for optimal function include organic butter from raw milk, clarified butter called ghee, organic grass fed raw butter, olives, organic virgin olive oil and coconut oil, nuts like pecans and macadamia, free-range eggs, wild Alaskan salmon, and avocado.

Contrary to popular belief, the ideal fuel for your brain is not glucose but ketones. Ketones are what your body produces when it converts fat (as opposed to glucose) into energy. The medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) found in coconut oil are a great source of ketone bodies, because coconut oil is about 66 percent MCTs. In 2010, I published Dr. Mary Newport’s theory that coconut oil might offer profound benefits in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. She has since launched one of the first clinical trials of its kind to test this theory.

Also make sure you’re getting enough animal-based omega-3 fats, such as krill oil. (I recommend avoiding most fish because, although fish is naturally high in omega-3, most fish are now severely contaminated with mercury.) High intake of the omega-3 fats EPA and DHA help by preventing cell damage caused by Alzheimer’s disease, thereby slowing down its progression, and lowering your risk of developing the disorder.

  • Optimize your gut flora by regularly eating fermented foods or taking a high-potency and high-quality probiotic supplement
  • Eat blueberries. Wild blueberries, which have high anthocyanin and antioxidant content, are known to guard against Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases.

Other Helpful Dietary Tips and Valuable Supplements

Another helpful tip is to reduce your overall calorie consumption, and/or intermittently fast. As mentioned above, ketones are mobilized when you replace carbs with coconut oil and other sources of healthy fats. A one-day fast can help your body to “reset” itself, and start to burn fat instead of sugar. As part of a healthy lifestyle, I prefer an intermittent fasting schedule that simply calls for limiting your eating to a narrower window of time each day. By restricting your eating to a 6-8 hour window, you effectively fast 16-18 hours each day. To learn more about intermittent fasting, please see this previous article.

Also be aware that when it comes to cholesterol levels and Alzheimer’s, lower is NOT better. Quite the contrary. According to Dr. Perlmutter, research shows that elderly individuals with the lowest cholesterol levels have the highest risk for Alzheimer’s. They also have the highest risk for dying. As he says, the war on cholesterol is fundamentally inappropriate and harmful.

Finally, there’s a short list of supplement recommendations worth noting for their specific benefits in preventing and treating dementia. So, although your fundamental strategy for preventing dementia should involve a comprehensive lifestyle approach, you may want to take special note of the following natural dietary agents. These four natural foods/supplements have good science behind them, in terms of preventing age-related cognitive changes:

  1. Gingko biloba: Many scientific studies have found that Ginkgo biloba has positive effects for dementia. A 1997 study from JAMA showed clear evidence that Ginkgo improves cognitive performance and social functioning for those suffering from dementia. Another 2006 study found Ginkgo as effective as the dementia drug Aricept (donepezil) for treating mild to moderate Alzheimer’s type dementia. A 2010 meta-analysis also found Ginkgo biloba to be effective for a variety of types of dementia.
  2. Alpha lipoic acid (ALA): ALA has been shown to help stabilize cognitive functions among Alzheimer’s patients and may slow the progression of the disease.
  3. Vitamin B12: A small Finnish study published in the journal Neurology[10] found thatpeople who consume foods rich in B12 may reduce their risk of Alzheimer’s in their later years. For each unit increase in the marker of vitamin B12 the risk of developing Alzheimer’s was reduced by two percent. Remember sublingual methylcobalamin may be your best bet here.

Lifestyle Strategies That Can Help Ward off Alzheimer’s Disease

Lifestyle choices such as getting regular sun exposure and exercise, along with avoiding toxins, are also important factors when it comes to maintaining optimal brain health. Here are several of my lifestyle suggestions:

  • Optimize your vitamin D levels with safe sun exposure. Strong links between low levels of vitamin D in Alzheimer’s patients and poor outcomes on cognitive tests have been revealed. Researchers believe that optimal vitamin D levels may enhance the amount of important chemicals in your brain and protect brain cells by increasing the effectiveness of the glial cells in nursing damaged neurons back to health.

Vitamin D may also exert some of its beneficial effects on Alzheimer’s through its anti-inflammatory and immune-boosting properties. Sufficient vitamin D is imperative for proper functioning of your immune system to combat inflammation that is also associated with Alzheimer’s.

  • Exercise regularly. It’s been suggested that exercise can trigger a change in the way the amyloid precursor protein is metabolized,[11] thus, slowing down the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s. Exercise also increases levels of the protein PGC-1alpha. Research has also shown that people with Alzheimer’s have less PGC-1alpha in their brains[12] and cells that contain more of the protein produce less of the toxic amyloid protein associated with Alzheimer’s. I would strongly recommend reviewing the Peak Fitness Technique for my specific recommendations.
  • Avoid and eliminate mercury from your body. Dental amalgam fillings, which are 50 percent mercury by weight, are one of the major sources of heavy metal toxicity. However, you should be healthy prior to having them removed. Once you have adjusted to following the diet described in my optimized nutrition plan, you can follow the mercury detox protocol and then find a biological dentist to have your amalgams removed.
  • Avoid aluminum, such as antiperspirants, non-stick cookware, vaccine adjuvants, etc.
  • Avoid flu vaccinations as most contain both mercury and aluminum, well-known neurotoxic and immunotoxic agents.
  • Avoid anticholinergics and statin drugs. Drugs that block acetylcholine, a nervous system neurotransmitter, have been shown to increase your risk of dementia. These drugs include certain nighttime pain relievers, antihistamines, sleep aids, certain antidepressants, medications to control incontinence, and certain narcotic pain relievers.

Statin drugs are particularly problematic because they suppress the synthesis of cholesterol, deplete your brain of coenzyme Q10 and neurotransmitter precursors, and prevent adequate delivery of essential fatty acids and fat-soluble antioxidants to your brain by inhibiting the production of the indispensable carrier biomolecule known as low-density lipoprotein.

  • Challenge your mind daily. Mental stimulation, especially learning something new, such as learning to play an instrument or a new language, is associated with a decreased risk of Alzheimer’s. Researchers suspect that mental challenge helps to build up your brain, making it less susceptible to the lesions associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Article References

[1] Alzheimer’s Association 2013 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures (PDF)[2] WebMD April 29, 2014[3] Neurology November 12, 2013: 81(20); 1746-1752[4] Scientific American June 12, 2014[5] Newsweek June 27, 2014[6] Center for Science and Democracy, Union of Concerned Scientists[7] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention NCHS Data Brief #122, May 2013 (PDF)[8] Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (PDF)[9] Worldhealth.net December 30, 2013[10] Neurology October 19, 2010: 75(16); 1402-3[11] Journal of Neuroscience, April 27, 2005: 25(17); 4217-4221[12] Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 2011: 25(1); 151-62

Scientific Links Between Processed Foods and Depression

Posted by

0


Research shows that the food you eat can have a profound effect on your mental health. So, regardless of your mental health problems, the importance of addressing your diet simply cannot be overstated.

In a very real sense, you have two brains — one in your head, and one in your gut. Both are created from the same tissue during fetal development, and they’re connected via your vagus nerve, the tenth cranial nerve that runs from your brain stem to your abdomen.

It is now well established that the vagus nerve is the primary route your gut bacteria use to transmit information to your brain, which helps explain why mental health appears to be so intricately connected to your gut microbiome 1 — the bacteria and other microbes living in your gut.

 Scientific%20Links%20Between%20Processed%20Foods%20and%20Depression%20Getting%20Stronger

For example, researchers recently found that fermented foods helped curb social anxiety disorder in young adults.2,3 Another study4 found that mice engaged in obsessive-compulsive repetitive behaviors were pacified when given a strain of the bacterium Bacteroides fragilis.

Gut bacteria also produce mood-boosting neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). In fact, the greatest concentration of serotonin is found in your intestines, not your brain.

At the end of the day, if you’re trying to address your mental state, optimizing your gut health should be toward the very top of your list.

The Strong Link Between Sugar and Depression

A number of food ingredients can cause or aggravate depression, but the number one culprit is refined sugar and processed fructose, which feed pathogens in your gut, allowing them to overtake more beneficial bacteria.

Sugar also suppresses the activity of a key growth hormone in your brain called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF levels are critically low in both depression and schizophrenia.

Diets high in sugar also triggers a cascade of chemical reactions in your body that promote chronic inflammation, which over the long term disrupts the normal functioning of your immune system and wreaks havoc on your brain.

Last but not least, refined sugar and processed fructose and grains are key contributors to insulin and leptin resistance, which also plays a significant role in your mental health.

One recent study5,6 found that high-glycemic foods (including those high in refined grains and added sugar) were associated with higher odds of depression.

Added sugar in particular was strongly associated with depression, reconfirming what William Dufty said in his classic best-selling book, Sugar Blues, first published in 1975. Sometimes it takes a while for science to catch up — in this case 40 years!

Other Processed Food Ingredients That Promote Depression

Other processed food ingredients that can contribute to depression and/or other mental health problems include:

  • Genetically engineered (GE) ingredients can significantly alter your gut flora, thereby promoting pathogens while decimating the beneficial microbes necessary for optimal mental and physical health.
  • Glyphosate— the most widely used herbicide on food crops in the world with nearly 1 BILLION pounds applied every year — has been shown to cause nutritional deficiencies, especially minerals, which are critical for brain function and mood control. It also causes systemic toxicity, and was recently declared a Class 2A probable human carcinogen. Roundup, in which glyphosate is the active ingredient, has also been shown to increase the antibiotic-resistance of E. coli and Salmonella.
  • Artificial food additives, especially the artificial sweetener aspartame, can wreak havoc with your brain function. Both depression and panic attacks are known potential side effects of aspartame consumption. Other additives, such as artificial colorings, are also known to impact mood.
  • Gluten, a protein found in grains such as wheat, rye, and barley, may negatively impact mood and brain health.In fact, a number of studies indicate that wheat can have a detrimental effect on mood, promoting depression and even more serious mental health problems such as schizophrenia. Most non-organic wheat is also treated with glyphosate in a pre-harvest processed called desiccation, which adds to its problematic effects (see glyphosate above).

To Heal Depression, Heal Your Gut

As noted by The Epoch Times:7

“In the last 20 years or so, scientists have developed a new respect for bacteria, and the paradigm is turning from a strategy of war, to one of co-existence. Science now considers a robust, diverse bacterial colony to be essential to good health.”

Indeed, the bacteria residing on and in your body outnumber your cells 10 to 1, and viruses in turn outnumber bacteria 10 to 1. In many respects, you are your microbiome.

As Tom Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, told The New York Times:8

“We are, at least from the standpoint of DNA, more microbial than human. That’s a phenomenal insight and one that we have to take seriously when we think about human development.’’

Rapidly mounting research reveals that many of these little microbes have very specific functions, and as a whole play a profound role in your biological processes and overall health — including your brain health.

“According to Dr. Raphael Kellman, a New York City-based physician who specializes in treating the microbiome…the microbiome not only influences our mood, but it also has a lot to do with how the brain functions and develops over time,” The Epoch Times9 notes.

‘By improving the microbiome we can actually see positive changes in mood, cognitive function, and executive function,’ Kellman said…

‘The microbiome communicates with the brain through a number of mechanisms… These pathways include direct neurotransmitters that the microbiome produces.

It communicates with the brain via the vagus nerve, and also via the endocrine system in the stress pathway — the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal axis.’

Current treatment for neurological disorders focus on direct changes to brain chemistry, tweaking levels of neurotransmitter chemicals in hopes of tuning in the right balance. But the future of mental health treatment may focus much more on the gut than the brain, and more on food than drugs.”

The fact that improving your microbiome can affect your cognitive function means it’s also important to nourish your gut to stand a better chance against neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s. Interestingly, researchers have also found that recurring depression is associated with shrinkage of the hippocampus, the area of your brain associated with memory formation,10 and depression itself appears to be a risk factor for dementia.

Here, it’s important to take your vitamin D levels into account, as both depression and Alzheimer’s disease are associated with vitamin D deficiency.

The Birth Of A More Holistic Model For Mental Health

Depression and anxiety are typically treated with antidepressants, despite the fact studies have shown them to only be on par with placebos in terms of effectiveness. They’re also associated with a slew of side effects, including the progression into more severe and/or chronic mental health problems. Recent research may in part explain why antidepressants can worsen the situation rather than making it better.

The ‘chemical imbalance’ theory states that depression and anxiety disorders are due to low serotonin levels. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) work by making more serotonin available for use in your brain, which is thought to improve your mood. Alas, recent research reveals that people with social anxiety do not have low serotonin; they have higher than normal levels. So further boosting serotonin with an SSRI will only make the anxiety worse…

The new focus on gut health is a welcome departure from the synthetic drug model. As discussed in The New York Times,11 researchers are listing and investigating psychoactive compounds found in feces, and are experimenting with fecal transplants in animals to assess its effect on neurodevelopment:

“Anxiety, depression, and several pediatric disorders, including autism and hyperactivity, have been linked with gastrointestinal abnormalities. Microbial transplants were not invasive brain surgery, and that was the point: Changing a patient’s bacteria might be difficult but it still seemed more straightforward than altering his genes. When Lyte began his work on the link between microbes and the brain three decades ago, it was dismissed as a curiosity.

By contrast, last September, the National Institute of Mental Health awarded four grants worth up to $1 million each to spur new research on the gut microbiome’s role in mental disorders, affirming the legitimacy of a field that had long struggled to attract serious scientific credibility… It seems plausible, if not yet proved, that we might one day use microbes to diagnose neurodevelopmental disorders, treat mental illnesses and perhaps even fix them in the brain.”

Abnormal Gut Flora Fosters Abnormal Brain Development

Researchers have also begun experimenting with fecal transplants in autistic children,12 and while such investigations are still in its infancy, there’s plenty of cause for optimism. There does in fact appear to be a close connection between abnormal gut flora in infancy and abnormal brain development — a condition Dr. Campbell-McBride calls Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS). GAPS is the result of poorly developed or imbalanced gut flora and may manifest as a conglomerate of symptoms that can fit the diagnosis of autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), attention deficit disorder (ADD) without hyperactivity, dyslexia, dyspraxia, or obsessive-compulsive disorder, just to name a few possibilities.

Dr. Campbell believes autistic children are born with perfectly normal brains and sensory organs, but once their digestive system becomes a major source of toxicity instead of being a source of nourishment, they start to develop autistic symptoms. This theory fits in well with more recent research13 published by the American Society for Microbiology, which identified a bacteria (Sutterella) that is unique to the intestines of children with autism. According to the authors:

“Many children with autism have gastrointestinal (GI) disturbances that can complicate clinical management and contribute to behavioral problems. Understanding the molecular and microbial underpinnings of these GI issues is of paramount importance for elucidating pathogenesis, rendering diagnosis, and administering informed treatment.

Here we describe an association between high levels of intestinal, ucoepithelial-associated Sutterella species, and GI disturbances in children with autism. These findings elevate this little-recognized bacterium to the forefront by demonstrating that Sutterella is a major component of the microbiota in over half of children with autism and gastrointestinal dysfunction (AUT-GI) and is absent in children with only gastrointestinal dysfunction (Control-GI) evaluated in this study.”

Nourishing Your Gut Flora May Boost Your Mood and Protect Your Mental Health

All things considered, it seems quite clear that nourishing your gut flora is extremely important to support a positive mood and stable mental health. To do so, I recommend the following strategies:

  • Avoid sugar and processed, refined foods in your diet. Remember eating real food is one of the most powerful and simple strategies you can implement to take control of your health. If you need help doing this, read through my nutrition plan for a simple, whole-food based diet. There is simply no question that eliminating refined sugars is the most powerful intervention the average person can make to improve their gut flora.
  • Eat traditionally fermented, unpasteurized foods. Fermented foods are the best route to optimal digestive health, as long as you eat the traditionally made, unpasteurized versions. Ideally, you want to eat a variety of fermented foods to maximize the variety of bacteria you’re consuming. Healthy choices include fermented vegetables, lassi (an Indian yoghurt drink, traditionally enjoyed before dinner), fermented milk like kefir, kimchee, and natto (fermented soy).
  • Take a high-quality probiotic supplement. If you don’t eat fermented foods on a regular basis, do consider taking a broad-spectrum probiotic. Research has shown that certain probiotics may help alleviate anxiety by modulating the vagal pathways within the gut-brain, affecting GABA levels, and lowering the stress-induced hormone corticosterone.

In summary, foods have an immense impact on both your body and your brain, and eating whole foods as described in my nutrition plan is the best way to support your mental and physical health. Whether you need a quick pick-me-up or you’ve been struggling with poor mood for a while, the best remedy is likely not found in your medicine cabinet but right in your pantry or refrigerator.

Article sources:

The Health Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

Posted by

0


 

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

Guest Writ

The Health Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

Is it a good idea to “starve” yourself just a little bit each day, or a couple of days a week? Mounting evidence indicates that yes, intermittent fasting (IF) could have a very beneficial impact on your health and longevity.

I believe it’s one of the most powerful interventions out there if you’re struggling with your weight and related health issues. One of the primary reasons for this is because it helps shift your body from burning sugar/carbs to burning fat as its primary fuel.

As discussed in the featured article,[1] intermittent fasting is not about binge eating followed by starvation, or any other extreme form of dieting. Rather what we’re talking about here involves timing your meals to allow for regular periods of fasting.

I prefer daily intermittent fasting, but you could also fast a couple of days a week if you prefer, or every other day. There are many different variations.

To be effective, in the case of daily intermittent fasting, the length of your fast must be at least 16 hours. This means eating only between the hours of 11am until 7pm, as an example. Essentially, this equates to simply skipping breakfast, and making lunch your first meal of the day instead.

You can restrict it even further — down to six, four, or even two hours if you want, but you can still reap many of these rewards by limiting your eating to an eight-hour window each day.

This is because it takes about six to eight hours for your body to metabolize your glycogen stores; after that you start to shift to burning fat. However, if you are replenishing your glycogen by eating every eight hours (or sooner), you make it far more difficult for your body to use your fat stores as fuel.

Intermittent Fasting — More a Lifestyle Than a Diet

I have been experimenting with different types of scheduled eating for the past two years and currently restrict my eating to a 6- to 7-hour window each day. While you’re not required to restrict the amount of food you eat when on this type of daily scheduled eating plan, I would caution against versions of intermittent fasting that gives you free reign to eat all the junk food you want when not fasting, as this seems awfully counterproductive.

Also, according to research published in 2010,[2] intermittent fasting with compensatory overeating did not improve survival rates nor delay prostate tumor growth in mice. Essentially, by gorging on non-fasting days, the health benefits of fasting can easily be lost. If so, then what’s the point?

I view intermittent fasting as a lifestyle, not a diet, and that includes making healthy food choices whenever you do eat. Also, proper nutrition becomes even more important when fasting, so you really want to address your food choices before you try fasting.

This includes minimizing carbs and replacing them with healthful fats, like coconut oil, olive oil, olives, butter, eggs, avocados, and nuts. It typically takes several weeks to shift to fat burning mode, but once you do, your cravings for unhealthy foods and carbs will automatically disappear. This is because you’re now actually able to burn your stored fat and don’t have to rely on new fast-burning carbs for fuel. Unfortunately, despite mounting evidence, many health practitioners are still reluctant to prescribe fasting to their patients. According to Brad Pilon, author of Eat Stop Eat:[3]

“Health care practitioners across the board are so afraid to recommend eating less because of the stigma involved in that recommendation, but we are more than happy to recommend that someone start going to the gym. If all I said was you need to get to the gym and start eating healthier, no one would have a problem with it. When the message is not only should you eat less, you could probably go without eating for 24 hours once or twice a week, suddenly it’s heresy.”

The Health Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

Aside from removing your cravings for sugar and snack foods and turning you into an efficient fat-burning machine, thereby making it far easier to maintain a healthy body weight, modern science has confirmed there are many other good reasons to fast intermittently. For example, research presented at the 2011 annual scientific sessions of the American College of Cardiology in New Orleans[4] showed that fasting triggered a 1,300 percent rise of human growth hormone (HGH) in women, and an astounding 2,000 percent in men.

HGH, human growth hormone, commonly referred to as “the fitness hormone,” plays an important role in maintaining health, fitness and longevity, including promotion of muscle growth, and boosting fat loss by revving up your metabolism. The fact that it helps build muscle while simultaneously promoting fat loss explains why HGH helps you lose weight without sacrificing muscle mass, and why even athletes can benefit from the practice (as long as they don’t overtrain and are careful about their nutrition). The only other thing that can compete in terms of dramatically boosting HGH levels is high-intensity interval training. Other health benefits of intermittent fasting include:

Normalizing your insulin and leptin sensitivity, which is key for optimal health Improving biomarkers of disease
Normalizing ghrelin levels, also known as “the hunger hormone” Reducing inflammation and lessening free radical damage
Lowering triglyceride levels Preserving memory functioning and learning

Intermittent Fasting is as Good or Better Than Continuous Calorie Restriction

According to Dr. Stephen Freedland, associate professor of urology and pathology at the Duke University Medical Center, “undernutrition without malnutrition” is the only experimental approach that consistently improves survival in animals with cancer, as well as extends lifespan overall by as much as 30 percent.[5] Interestingly enough, intermittent fasting appears to provide nearly identical health benefits without being as difficult to implement and maintain. It’s easier for most people to simply restrict their eating to a narrow window of time each day, opposed to dramatically decreasing their overall daily calorie intake.

Mark Mattson, senior investigator for the National Institute on Aging, which is part of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), has researched the health benefits of intermittent fasting, as well as the benefits of calorie restriction. According to Mattson,[6] there are several theories to explain why fasting works:

“The one that we’ve studied a lot, and designed experiments to test, is the hypothesis that during the fasting period, cells are under a mild stress, and they respond to the stress adaptively by enhancing their ability to cope with stress and, maybe, to resist disease… There is considerable similarity between how cells respond to the stress of exercise and how cells respond to intermittent fasting.”

In one of his studies,[7] overweight adults with moderate asthma lost eight percent of their body weight by cutting their calorie intake by 80 percent on alternate days for eight weeks. Markers of oxidative stress and inflammation also decreased, and asthma-related symptoms improved, along with several quality-of-life indicators.

More recently, Mattson and colleagues compared the effectiveness of intermittent fasting against continuous calorie restriction for weight loss, insulin sensitivity and other metabolic disease risk markers. The study, published in the International Journal of Obesity in 2011,[8] found that intermittent fasting was as effective as continuous calorie restriction for improving all of these issues, and slightly better for reducing insulin resistance. According to the authors:

“Both groups experienced comparable reductions in leptin, free androgen index, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, total and LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure and increases in sex hormone binding globulin, IGF binding proteins 1 and 2. Reductions in fasting insulin and insulin resistance were modest in both groups, but greater with IER [intermittent fasting] than with CER [continuous energy restriction].”

How Intermittent Fasting Benefits Your Brain

Your brain can also benefit from intermittent fasting. As reported in the featured article:

“Mattson has also researched the protective benefits of fasting to neurons. If you don’t eat for 10–16 hours, your body will go to its fat stores for energy, and fatty acids called ketones will be released into the bloodstream. This has been shown to protect memory and learning functionality, says Mattson, as well as slow disease processes in the brain.”

Besides releasing ketones as a byproduct of burning fat, intermittent fasting also affects brain function by boosting production of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Mattson’s research suggests that fasting every other day (restricting your meal on fasting days to about 600 calories), tends to boost BDNF by anywhere from 50 to 400 percent,[9] depending on the brain region. BDNF activates brain stem cells to convert into new neurons, and triggers numerous other chemicals that promote neural health. This protein also protects your brain cells from changes associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

BDNF also expresses itself in the neuro-muscular system where it protects neuro-motors from degradation. (The neuromotor is the most critical element in your muscle. Without the neuromotor, your muscle is like an engine without ignition. Neuro-motor degradation is part of the process that explains age-related muscle atrophy.) So BDNF is actively involved in both your muscles and your brain, and this cross-connection, if you will, appears to be a major part of the explanation for why a physical workout can have such a beneficial impact on your brain tissue — and why the combination of intermittent fasting with high intensity exercise appears to be a particularly potent combination.

Give Intermittent Fasting a Try

If you’re ready to give intermittent fasting a try, consider skipping breakfast, make sure you stop eating and drinking anything but water three hours before you go to sleep, and restrict your eating to an 8-hour (or less) time frame every day. In the 6-8 hours that you do eat, have healthy protein, minimize your carbs like pasta, bread, and potatoes and exchange them for healthful fats like butter, eggs, avocado, coconut oil, olive oil and nuts — essentially the very fats the media and “experts” tell you to avoid.

This will help shift you from carb burning to fat burning mode. Once your body has made this shift, it is nothing short of magical as your cravings for sweets, and food in general, rapidly normalizes and your desire for sweets and junk food radically decreases if not disappears entirely.

Remember it takes a few weeks, and you have to do it gradually, but once you succeed and switch to fat burning mode, you’ll be easily able to fast for 18 hours and not feel hungry. The “hunger” most people feel is actually cravings for sugar, and these will disappear, as if by magic, once you successfully shift over to burning fat instead.

Another phenomenal side effect/benefit that occurs is that you will radically improve the beneficial bacteria in your gut. Supporting healthy gut bacteria, which actually outnumber your cells 10 to one, is one of the most important things you can do to improve your immune system so you won’t get sick, or get coughs, colds and flus. You will sleep better, have more energy, have increased mental clarity and concentrate better. Essentially every aspect of your health will improve as your gut flora becomes balanced.

Based on my own phenomenal experience with intermittent fasting, I believe it’s one of the most powerful ways to shift your body into fat burning mode and improve a wide variety of biomarkers for disease. The effects can be further magnified by exercising while in a fasted state. For more information on that, please see my previous article High-Intensity Interval Training and Intermittent Fasting – A Winning Combo.

Clearly, it’s another powerful tool in your box to help you and your family take control of your health, and an excellent way to take your fitness to the next level.

Video: Dr. Mercola: The Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

Article References

Can a Hug a Day Keep Infection Away?

Posted by

1


Infants deprived of touch typically experience developmental delays. Their growth is often impaired, as is their cognitive development. Rates of serious infections and attachment disorders also increase in children who have been deprived of this apparently innate need.[1]

There are other signs, too, that touch is much more powerful than perhaps we give it credit for. When premature infants are held, skin-to-skin, by their mothers, they have better cognitive skills, are more resilient to stress, and show more organized sleep, among other benefits, even 10 years later.[2]

This might be construed as a benefit more of maternal contact than touch, but even studies on nurses giving infant massage show the babies benefit from touch, even when it’s from a stranger (they have increased weight gain and earlier discharge from the hospital, for starters).[3]

 Could%20a%20Hug%20a%20Day%20Keep%20Infection%20Away

Even nonhuman primates may spend up to 20 percent of their day grooming each other.[4] We are born with this need for touch, but many of us are now touch deprived. One study found that people in France touch each other an average of 110 times per hour during conversation. In the US, that dropped to two times and in England, zero.[5][6]

As for hugs, perhaps the “Holy Grail” of touch, one study found that one-third of people receive no hugs on a daily basis while 75 percent said they wanted more hugs. This isn’t only a recipe for loneliness … it might increase your risk of catching a cold, too.

More Hugs Might Help Keep Infections Away

It’s been shown that people who are under stress and in conflict with others are more susceptible to viruses like the common cold. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University set out to determine whether social support, as gauged by  hugging, might in turn be protective against such infections.

It turns out their hypothesis was right. Among 404 adults, those who had greater social support and more frequent hugs during conflicts were less likely to “catch” a cold after they were exposed to the virus.[7] The hugs, researchers said, were responsible for about one-third of the protective effect.

According to the study’s lead researcher:[8]

“This suggests that being hugged by a trusted person may act as an effective means of conveying support and that increasing the frequency of hugs might be an effective means of reducing the deleterious effects of stress…

The apparent protective effect of hugs may be attributable to the physical contact itself or to hugging being a behavioral indicator of support and intimacy… Either way, those who receive more hugs are somewhat more protected from infection.”

What Might You Gain from a 10-Second Hug a Day?

If you’ve ever needed an excuse for more hugging, let it be this: hugging increases levels of the “love hormone” oxytocin. This, in turn, may have beneficial effects on your heart health and more.

Can a Hug a Day Keep Infection AwayOne study found, for instance, that women had lower blood pressure following a brief episode of warm contact with their partner.[9]A 20-second hug, along with 10 minutes of hand-holding, also reduces the harmful physical effects of stress, including its impact on your blood pressure and heart rate.[10]

This makes sense, since hugging is known to lower levels of stress hormones like cortisol. Hugging also activates the orbitofrontal cortex in your brain, which is linked to feelings of reward and compassion.[11] [12] But research suggests there’s even more to it than that.

As reported by Mail Online:[13]

“The skin contains a network of tiny, egg-shaped pressure centers called Pacinian corpuscles that can sense touch and which are in contact with the brain through the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve winds its way through the body and is connected to a number of organs, including the heart.

“It is also connected to oxytocin receptors. One theory is that stimulation of the vagus triggers an increase in oxytocin, which in turn leads to the cascade of health benefits.”

A 10-second hug a day can lead to biochemical and physiological reactions in your body that can significantly improve your health. According to one study, this includes:  Lower risk of heart disease, stress reduction, a boost to your immune system, the easing of depressive symptoms.[14]

How Many Hugs a Day? At Least Four… Try for 12

It has been described in the medical literature that “four hugs per day was an antidote for depression, eight hugs per day would achieve mental stability and twelve hugs per day would achieve real psychological growth.”[15]

Neuroeconomist Paul Zak, also known as “Dr. Love,” recommends at least eight hugs a day to be happier and enjoy better relationships.[16] This may very well be the “hug threshold” that allows your body to produce ample amounts of oxytocin, which is released in response to physical touch.

This might seem like a tall order, but the growing popularity of “cuddle parties” and professional cuddlers gives merit to the fact that people are longing for more touch – even if they have to pay to get it.

There is some suggestion that hugs from strangers may be perceived as threatening and actually increase emotional burden and stress[17] — but if you enjoy the idea of cuddling with strangers, a cuddle party might be good for you.

Of course, making an effort to hug the people close to you is one of the best ways to get more hugs in return. This can include your spouse, children, and other family members along with close friends.

Can a Hug a Day Keep Infection Away .

With the already known and still-to-emerge health and quality of life benefits to be derived from the natural release of oxytocin in your body, your best course of action is to make sure you’re cultivating warm, loving, intimate relationships, no matter what stage of life you’re in.

Quite simply, the more oxytocin your pituitary gland releases, the better able you are to handle life’s stressors. Oxytocin decreases the level of stress hormones (primarily cortisol) your body manufactures and lowers your blood pressure response to anxiety-producing events.

Oxytocin quite likely plays a role in why pet owners heal more quickly from illness, why couples live longer than singles, and why support groups work for people with addictions and chronic diseases.

Hugging Is Only One Option

A full-body hug stimulates your nervous system while decreasing feelings of loneliness, combating fear, increasing self-esteem, defusing tension and showing appreciation.[18] That’s an impressive list, but hugs aren’t the only option to benefit from the power of touch. If you have a pet, just a few minutes petting your dog or cat can promote the release of your body’s “happiness” hormones, including oxytocin. Since touch anywhere on your body, as well as positive interactions and psychological support are known to increase oxytocin levels, you might also consider:

  • Holding hands and kissing
  • Giving and receiving a backrub
  • Nurturing others
  • Getting a massage
  • Practicing mind-body therapies like breathing exercises and yoga

Interestingly, past research has similarly found that positive emotions – including being happy, lively, and calm – also appear to play a role in immune function. One study found that when happy people are exposed to cold and flu viruses, they’re also less likely to get sick and, if they do, exhibit fewer symptoms.[19] So while a hug a day (or more) will certainly be beneficial, so, too, will striving to be happy or, ideally, do both.