Get Those Jackhammers Out Of My Head: Keeping The Hangover Monster At Bay

Get Those Jackhammers Out Of My Head: Keeping The Hangover Monster At Bay

By Kurtis Bright

There’s No Real Cure, But Here Are Some Simple Ways Science Says You Can Avoid the Worst Hangovers

Here comes another New Year’s Eve, and with it will come the parties, overpriced club cover charges, fireworks, and midnight kisses for the lucky.

Also there may be some alcohol involved. That’s just a rumor.

And given oft-booze-soaked nature of this pinnacle of the holiday party season , it is an appropriate time to revisit the subject of the ever-elusive hangover cure.

Pretty much as long as humans have been drinking, we have also been trying to find a miracle cure for the crushing pain of the aftermath. It’s unfortunate, but the simple truth is that if you dump ungodly amounts of poison into your system, become dehydrated and lose sleep, you are not going to feel your best the next day.

So while there is no magic bullet cure for a hangover, there are a few ways to trim the edges off the time it takes to recover, and reduce the symptoms at least. Here are some that have been backed up by science.

• Asparagus - A 2009 study in Korea found researchers examining extracts taken from asparagus leaves and shoots that contain elevated levels of a certain enzyme, one that their studies showed were effective in helping the body to process alcohol. The jury is out on whether your average partier will be up for an asparagus juice shot the morning after tying one on, however.
• Prickly Pear - This is a cactus native to the Americas, especially Mexico and the western part of the U.S. that has been found to contain anti-inflammatory components that help the body fight back against the damage done by liquor. A group of Tulane University researchers--conveniently located near New Orleans’ famous booze-pit the French Quarter--found that study participants who ingested an extract of prickly pear five hours prior to drinking reported 50 percent fewer symptoms of hangovers.
• Clear liquids - Water, as even the most green college freshman knows, is your friend before, during and after a bout of drinking. However another substance to be aware of besides good old H2O is congeners. These nasty yet necessary devils are a byproduct of the fermentation process that give darker alcoholic beverages their color--and make hangovers much worse. By choosing white wine instead of merlot or cabernet, by sipping vodka martinis instead of bourbon or tequila you will give yourself a better chance of avoiding the full-on train wreck hangover where you can’t peel yourself off the couch all day. It’s also important to remember that a night of heavy, sweet cocktails will give you the same sugar crash that eating desserts does, an effect that amplifies a hangover.

• Coconut Water - Other things we learned in college: no doubt your buddies told you of the dubious virtues of sports drinks in terms of dealing with hangovers. However, despite the allure of the tasty sugar blast of an ice-cold neon blue or green drink for a dehydrated mouth, there isn’t much there, there. Sports drinks claim to contain electrolytes, but the truth is they are more heavily laden with sugar and chemical dyes--not to mention flame retardant--that are decidedly unhealthy than they are with electrolytes. Conversely, coconut water has naturally electrolyte-boosting components that are on par with those in a serving of Gatorade if you go with Zico brand--and you can safely swill coconut water without worrying about too much sugar or the other added chemicals.  

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From Cradle To Grave, Monsanto Is Always With You: Glyphosate Found In Baby Food, Oatmeal

From Cradle To Grave, Monsanto Is Always With You: Glyphosate Found In Baby Food, Oatmeal

By Kurtis Bright

We Are All Monsanto’s Children Now

Regulators and investors are still attempting to sort through the various legal and financial implications of Bayer’s proposed blockbuster merger with Monsanto, even as bad news continues to dog the agrichem giant.

For starters, the usually docile Indian government under the leadership of neoliberal Prime Minister Narendra Modi--a government that never met a genetically modified seed it didn’t like--has suddenly sprouted a backbone and started offering up some pretty stiff opposition to Monsanto’s proposed introduction of GMO mustard seed there.

In addition, the latest studies have found that glyphosate, the star weed-killing chemical in Monsanto’s Roundup brand herbicide is indeed likely responsible for the deaths of millions if not billions of honeybees in recent years, jeopardizing food production both commercial and personal.

However, don’t cry for our agrichemical overlords just yet, although it is truly amazing how they manage to so consistently bring this stuff on themselves.

For instance, yet another paper has backed up a blockbuster study from a few months ago showing that glyphosate is present in numerous samples of oatmeal--as well as baby food.

In the original study, a Food and Drug Administration chemist discovered a residue of glyphosate in a broad variety of oat-based cereal marketed for infants, some of which had concentrations of up to 1.67 parts per million.

That may not sound like much, but the fact is that for developing children who have weak immune systems and a body weight that is a mere fraction of that of an adult, any amount of what the World Health Organization has called a probable carcinogen is too much.

I mean, put it this way: is that too much for your child?

This of course also comes out on the heels of the news that samples of U.S. honey have also been demonstrated to be tainted with glyphosate--little surprise there, given the mounting evidence that honeybees have been contaminated via the copious spraying that has blanketed the crops of the nation with literally billions of pounds of glyphosate over the past 20 years.

What many observers found to be particularly alarming on that front was the revelation that these tainted honey samples often came in with glyphosate levels double what is legally allowed in the E.U.

For its part, the EPA has stated that the glyphosate residue tests they are currently officially conducting do not include oats or honey, and thus they would not comment on the aforementioned studies that were not conducted under their purview.

The EPA is currently testing for glyphosate residues in corn, soy, eggs and milk, they say, and so far none of them has shown levels that exceed what is legally allowed, although the analysis is ongoing.

Of course, the agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs recently released the conclusion that glyphosate is “...not likely to be carcinogenic to humans at doses relevant to human health risk assessment,” and that the WHO study was wrong, regardless of the fact that their own research is ongoing.

Which is conveniently--and suspiciously--good news for Monsanto. But it is not at all surprising, coming as it does from a captive government agency that is staffed with dozens of former and future Monsanto employees, especially when you consider that people are just starting to awaken to the fact of how much glyphosate we are ingesting every day.

The takeaway here is probably that, despite the reassurances of the FDA and its allegedly ongoing research, perhaps staying away from oat products for your infant is in order.

Hell, for yourself too, really.

We can thank Monsanto for poisoning even baby food for us, but let’s not forget to offer a slow-clap, sarcastic round of applause for the FDA to for its ponderous foot-dragging, and relentless efforts at providing cover for these sociopaths as they poison the entire land.

Your tax dollars at work, working hard to benefit big corporations--as usual.

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The Kids Are All Right: Changing U.S. Marijuana Laws Have Had No Effect On Teen Marijuana Use

The Kids Are All Right: Changing U.S. Marijuana Laws Have Had No Effect On Teen Marijuana Use

By Kurtis Bright

Adult Marijuana Use Outpaces That Of Teens, According To Latest CDC Study

The long, strange trip that U.S. citizens have been forced to endure regarding the outlawing of marijuana finally appears to be winding down.

Currently there are 25 states that allow some form of legal, regulated medical marijuana use, and there are now four--Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska--that allow recreational use. Nearly a dozen states entertained pro-marijuana initiatives in this November’s election, including the most populous state in the union, California which passed a law legalizing recreational use of up to an ounce per adult user.

No doubt Harry Anslinger, the regent of reefer madness, the prophet of prohibition, the man who kicked off the marijuana mania Americans suffered under for so may decades starting in the 1930s is rolling over in his grave.

Support for legalization is “rapidly outpacing opposition” according to one recent Pew poll--which is quite stunning news when you consider the modern era of anti-drug wars that have been fought so hard and so viciously and which have employed such tremendous resources devoted to propaganda.

Other good news for those who support marijuana law sanity--and what may be the final nail in the coffin for opponents--is a recent Centers for Disease Control report showing that middle-aged parents are now more likely to smoke marijuana than their teen children.

Which turns the perpetual question of busybody Maude Flanders of Simpsons fame on its head: what about the children?

Indeed, Maude, indeed. What about the children?

It turns out that decriminalization and outright legalization, far from a deadly scourge that might lay waste to a generation of teens and turn them all into instant heroin addicts upon taking their first hit of weed--as some of the more rabid anti-marijuana literature would have you believe--has instead led to a decline in use among the younger generation.

Between 2002 and 2014, over 8 percent of adults between the ages of 35 and 44 reported smoking marijuana regularly. And marijuana use doubled in U.S. adults age 45 to 55, actually quadrupling for those 55 to 64--and tripling for those aged 65 and older.

So the kids are all right, it would seem, in that they haven’t turned en masse like a pack of rabid lemmings to wolfing down copious amounts of weed in response to the opening up of legal avenues with which adults can acquire it, despite the querulous warnings from Maude Flanders’ real-life counterparts.

Indeed, one wonders why, with so many people using marijuana to treat chronic pain, anxiety, and even a large number of veterans using it to treat PTSD, the Drug Enforcement Agency’s recently rejected the proposal to re-classify the plant from a Schedule 1 drug. Those are the substances that are considered most dangerous and have no known medical value, like heroin and LSD.

In fact it is downright madness that this designation continues in light of current knowledge and changing mores.

As there are now so many aging baby boomers reaching for the bong as opposed to the predicted wave of schoolkids, we eagerly await hearing some panicky anti-drug warrior to cry out: “What about the elderly? Won’t someone think of the elderly?”

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Monsanto-Funded Glyphosate Study Pleased to Inform the World That Glyphosate Is Completely Safe

Monsanto-Funded Glyphosate Study Pleased to Inform the World That Glyphosate Is Completely Safe

By Kurtis Bright

Thanks For Clearing That Up, Monsanto

 

They just won’t give up, will they?

Once again Monsanto is in the news, and this time it isn’t about their proposed merger with Bayer, a troubling enough development to anyone who thinks food and the means to feed ourselves shouldn’t be controlled by a half-dozen chemical corporations.

And weirdly the news isn’t about their genetically modified seeds either, the seeds that the rural people of India call “suicide seeds” due to the rate at which impoverished farmers in hock to the corporation because of their usurious patent fees kill themselves.

For once it isn’t even about their lawyers continuing to avoid the corporation’s culpability in the poisoning of millions of acres of U.S. wetlands and waterways with their PCB chemical runoff.

No, Monsanto is in the news this time around due to something they actually want to see in the news--which is there thanks no doubt to their massive PR department. The chemical concern-turned-seed-company recently made headlines due to the release of a study that has shown that glyphosate, the active ingredient in their signature herbicide Roundup has been determined to be perfectly safe.

If you’re wondering why that doesn’t sound quite right, given that the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm found that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen, or because you’re aware of the mounting evidence that keeps piling up indicating that glyphosate is largely responsible for the massive bee die-offs of recent years, well, you wouldn’t be alone in your confusion.

What you should probably know is that Monsanto funded the research and paid the scientists who reached this conclusion, so there’s that.

Miracle of miracles, they sided with Monsanto’s long-time claims.

Of course disclosing their financial interest in the results isn’t something Monsanto’s pet scientists felt compelled to do, at least not in any clear, transparent way. Published in Critical Reviews in Toxicology, the study conveniently didn’t mention these blatant industry ties until the very end of the article, in an obscurant “Declaration of Interests.”

And those confessions were anything but candid. In part:

“...it should be recognized that each individual participated in the review process and preparation of this paper as an independent professional and not as a representative of their employer.”

And who are those employers? Well you’d have to read on to find the Monsanto name on there. But at any rate, how big-hearted, how clear-eyed and objective of them to dig deep and find their independence while working on this study--despite living in homes paid for by Monsanto, sending their kids to high-end schools financed by Monsanto, and eating food put on the table by their Monsanto paychecks.

And in case you didn’t take the point about how liberated the scientists were from the constraints of pleasing their bosses in their day jobs, there were multiple, prominent  references to the “independence” of the study’s authors, a curious use of the word to say the least.

And this “independent” study couldn’t have been released at a better time for Monsanto, as the company attempts to justify its sale to Bayer. Given the current ongoing cultural context of glyphosate being found in more and more consumer products, including baby food, wine, beer and oatmeal, and more and more people questioning GMO farming versus organic methods, and expressing an overwhelming preference not to eat these chemicals, Monsanto could be viewed as somewhat desperate to make sure the deal goes through.

But another place the company has found more of that much-vaunted “independent” corroboration that glyphosate is as safe as mother’s milk is at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Recently the EPA announced that it would be holding a four-day open forum with public meetings to address citizen concerns over the cancer risk of glyphosate.

Luckily, just to keep things crystal clear, the agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs was able to reach the conclusion that glyphosate is “...not likely to be carcinogenic to humans at doses relevant to human health risk assessment” just before the hearings began.

Such a convenient “independent” conclusion to come to for both Monsanto and the EPA, especially given that the EPA is complicit in allowing billions of pounds of glyphosate to be dispersed all over the planet over the course of the last 20 years.

Imagine how ashamed they would be if some independent study were to find that glyphosate causes cancer.

Oh, wait. That already happened, and neither entity has shown the least scrap of shame.

But then that’s one of the traits of great liars: their inability to be ashamed of what they’ve done.

When the government agency in charge of protecting people from corporate poisons is providing cover for those same corporations, we’re no longer living in a liberal democracy nor even a free-market capitalist society.

That is what you call fascism (from Wikipedia):

“Fascist economics supported a state-controlled economy that accepted a mix of private and public ownership over the means of production. Economic planning was applied to both the public and private sector, and the prosperity of private enterprise depended on its acceptance of synchronizing itself with the economic goals of the state. Fascist economic ideology supported the profit motive but emphasized that industries must uphold the national interest as superior to private profit.”

The only difference between the economic side of this neo-fascism and that of pre-World War II Italy and Germany is that back then, the state called the shots and controlled the corporations.

Today the corporations control the state.

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Tryptophan And Happiness: Here Are Some Great Foods That Boost Your Serotonin Levels

Tryptophan And Happiness: Here Are Some Great Foods That Boost Your Serotonin Levels

By Kurtis Bright

Long Considered the Scourge of Thanksgiving, Tryptophan Can Actually Help Regulate Your Serotonin

It’s tough to shake a bad reputation. Just ask Tryptophan. The relatively common amino acid, which is found in turkey and numerous other foods, was long thought to be the primary cause of a sleepiness that strikes after eating the traditional meal on the U.S.’s annual Thanksgiving Day.

Every year, Thanksgiving would come around again, and all people would talk about the tryptophan in turkey, so much that your Uncle Ralph was perfectly justified in falling asleep on the couch while watching football.

Like may myths surrounding food, the reality is both more simple and more complicated than that. Yes, tryptophan does indeed help boost your serotonin levels, which is a neurotransmitter that regulates mood, a sense of well-being and is partly responsible for helping us to sleep soundly.

But the thing is there are many foods that contain much higher levels of tryptophan than turkey. A more likely culprit for Uncle Ralph’s snoring and drooling on his sweater by halftime of the Detroit Lions game is perhaps simply because he ate so much high starch, high glycemic index food at one sitting and thus suffered a massive sugar crash. A couple of atypical afternoon beers never hurt either.

However, when considering trying to avoid tryptophan, it is important to keep in mind that, as mentioned above, it not only helps us sleep, it is also essential for keeping our moods stable, helping us produce niacin, and for promoting growth and development. Tryptophan comes with a recommended daily dose of 4 mg per kilogram of body weight, or 1.8 mg per pound, meaning that a person weighing 70 kilograms or 154 pounds should consume 280 mg of tryptophan per day.

But you don’t have to wait for Thanksgiving to roll around again to get your tryptophan fix. Start with these:

• Pumpkin seeds - One unassuming little ounce of these guys contains a whopping 50 percent of the U.S. recommended daily allowance for tryptophan. Other seed sources include chia seeds, sesame seeds, pistachios and sunflower seeds.
• Soya-based foods - Edamame, which is simply the Japanese name for roasted or blanched soybeans are also a great source for tryptophan. Products made from soya like tofu and soybean sprouts are also loaded with tryptophan.
• Cheese - One cheese stands out, good old mozzarella, which is remarkably high in tryptophan, ringing up 160 mg per ounce, or over 56 percent of the U.S. RDA.
• Lamb - You know how you feel so at peace and satisfied after a big meaty meal? There’s a reason for that. All meat, but lamb especially contains a lot of tryptophan, up to 228 mg in a 55 gram serving, or 81 percent of the U.S. RDA.
• Chicken and Turkey - This may fall under the “duh” list. But what you might not have known is that chicken breast is actually higher in tryptophan than turkey, bringing home 343 mg per three-ounce serving to light up your inner happy place.
• Tuna - Tuna is another over-achiever in the tryptophan wars, with 95 mg per one-ounce serving. That may not be quite as high as chicken or turkey, but it makes a nice change. And there are other great tryptophan-containing fish including halibut, salmon and trout.

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Paying for Expert Opinion: Dieticians Paid by Coke to Take Anti-Soda Tax Position

Paying for Expert Opinion: Dietitians Paid by Coke to Take Anti-Soda Tax Position

By Kurtis Bright

Coca-Cola Secretly Pays Low-Life Dietitians to Look the Other Way

Living in a state where a soda tax was on the ballot this last election? If so, did you happen to notice how many registered dietitians came out against the issue on Twitter and in letters to the editor in the weeks running up to November 8?

It has recently come to light that you may have Coca-Cola to thank for that.

Last year we learned that Coca-Cola, the world’s biggest producer of sugary soft drinks is in the habit of paying university researchers and health experts to downplay the dangers of drinking soda and instead try to force the focus onto getting more exercise and never mind about caloric intake. So it should come as no surprise that the corporation was at it again, muddying the waters by using secretly paid “expert opinion” to toe the corporate line on the soda tax issue.

The American Beverage Association--a big soda lobbying group--along with Coca-Cola was found to have--surprise surprise--resorted to sleazy tactics to get their message out.

Many of those dietitians who were “concerned” about the proposed soda taxes on the ballot in California and Boulder, Colorado among other places suddenly turned up on Twitter and in the pages of local newspapers in the weeks just before the election. But it turns out their concern may have been more with their own pocketbook than anything else.

An investigative reporter for Ninjas For Health grew suspicious when these tweets and letters to the editor started rolling out all at once, all of them repeating the industry talking points that a soda tax is a stealth grocery tax (it isn’t) and suggesting that reducing soda intake may not even help make people healthier (it does). The reporter discovered a nest of these sleazy dietitians who turned out to be on the payroll of Coca-Cola--and who are surely planning for a long and cozy afterlife in the darkest corners of hell, where they will be forced to swill gallons of Coke while strapped to chair a la Homer Simpson and the hellish donut machine.

Of course there is nothing illegal about paying people to say things for you, even things that are demonstrably false, and which those paid shills then tweet publicly or send to the letters to the editor section of newspapers.

The tricky part about this group of dietitians is that they have been less than candid about where their money comes from. The tweets they posted were purportedly the opinions of “health experts” who are simply weighing in on a public controversy as concerned public citizens. But as the NFH reporter said, shouldn’t they at least have to listed as “sponsored posts?”

The industry, as usual, has evaded any admission of responsibility for its huge part in the obesity and diabetes crisis. They’ve been trying to walk an ever-narrower line, for instance by using these dietitians to write blog posts downplaying the importance of avoiding sugar without going so far as to actually recommend drinking soda.

A recent AP story illustrated this nicely: when confronted with evidence of its PR campaign disguised as health advice, Coca-Cola acknowledged that they have been “...working with health experts on such social media efforts for several years.” But of course such an admission only came once they’d been caught with their hand in the cookie jar full of paid liars.

If a company finds the need to resort to tricks to promote its position, you can be sure it is a terrible position. Click this link for a list of shame naming the Coca-Cola-sponsored dietitians that have thus far been identified and samples of their posts.

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Tiny Hemp House Grandma--Washington State Senior Upgrades Tiny House Movement

Tiny Hemp House Grandma--Washington State Senior Upgrades Tiny House Movement

By Kurtis Bright

Her House May Be Small, but this Washington State Grandmother Has Defied Expectations About Retirement--and Hemp

The days of striving to own a McMansion have gone the way of the pastel-colored Miami Vice sport coat.

It may be partly due to changing tastes and values, and is almost certainly partly a result of the forced cutbacks and austerity (for people, not banks, curiously) following the banking meltdown in 2008. But unless you’re a college football head coach or a television preacher, those ostentatious, tacky, giant houses are no longer on the short list of what most people want for Christmas.

These days, in growning pockets of the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, quite the opposite is the case. Dubbed the tiny house movement, a shift toward minimizing the footprint we take us as well as the resources we consume has people all over the U.S. building homes of minimal square footage, often scavenging materials and even retrofitting shipping containers to be used as homes.

Of course, a portion of the driving force behind the movement is economic: if you can build a house that is semi-mobile for a few thousand dollars that will require little or no outside resources--especially if you are already in debt up to your eyeballs--a 30-year mortgage on a too-large house in the suburbs begins to dim as a viable choice.

However it is important to note that the tiny house movement is also an environmental one.

Take for instance Washington state’s Pam Bosch. The grandmother of 62 years of age has made headlines and shaken up expectations about retirement by taking it upon herself to construct her first tiny home using a unique material: hemp.

What’s so great about her story is that, not only is she a grandmother, she’s no homebuilder--or at least she wasn’t. As artist and a thinking person who can see that the way we live these days isn’t sustainable, Bosch’s solution was to evade the archaic U.S. ban on growing hemp--marijuana’s non-psychoactive cousin--by importing it from the U.K.

To her it is insane to live any other way.

“We should have as many buildings as we can that are built out of a renewable resource that sequesters carbon, that is healthy and if it were legal would be very affordable,” she said in an interview with Collective Evolution. “It’s an agricultural waste product we’re using.”

They say waste not, want not, and Bosch’s tiny home takes that notion to the extreme.

She says the material functioned amazingly well for creating plaster for the house, and hemp is a CO2 sink, so it doubles its environmental effect: by not using new materials or chopping down trees, and additionally sequestering carbon dioxide. (Bosch notes that it is important to choose the right time of year to work with hemp as a building material, as well as the right climate.)

“You want conditions like we’re starting to see now--overcast, high humidity--because you don’t want it to dry out too fast,” she said.

Absurdly, hemp remains on the DEA’s Schedule 1 list of the most dangerous drugs, right up there with heroin and LSD, despite the fact that the most dangerous thing it can be used for is rope. Thus there is no such thing as a building permit for a hemp house; Bosch was forced in a way to join the tiny house movement.

Her hemp cottage boasts a modest 120 square feet, and she hopes it can be part of a wave of like-minded home builders who seek to not only live more simply, but also change the planet one tiny hemp house at a time.

“I’m investing in this because I believe in it and believe someone’s got to do it to make it legal,” she said.

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Physical Activity For Seniors May Be Even More Important Than We Thought

Physical Activity For Seniors May Be Even More Important Than We Thought

By Kurtis Bright

Exercise and Staying Active May Speed Recovery From Injury

It becomes more and more apparent every day how important exercise is for us throughout all of life’s cycles, especially as we age. Studies continue to pile up confirming what we have long known: people who choose not to exercise as they age due to discomfort or fear of injury or simple lack of energy are, counterintuitively, exacerbating those very same problems.

To not exercise is to unwittingly participate in a self-fulfilling prophecy, one made doubly lamentable by the illumination of recent studies showing that nearly a third of people over 50 don’t get any exercise at all.

That is to say, shockingly, beyond the movement that is required for basic existence, 33 percent are completely sedentary.

But a recent study will perhaps encourage sedentary folks to take a second look at finding ways to stay more active into their senior years. A study out of Yale University School of Medicine led by Dr. Thomas Gill followed a group of 1,600 seniors who were mostly inactive. Dr. Gill and his team then asked half the group to undertake a regimen of strength and balance training, and to take regular walks.

The results couldn’t have been more clear: those people in the group that exercised were 25 percent less likely to spend time disabled or injured than the non-exercising group.

Indeed they were apparently more fit and presumably less prone to injury, but according to Dr. Gill, that isn’t all.

“The benefit wasn’t just limited to preventing initial onset of disability but was also effective in promoting recovery after a disability,” Dr. Gill said. “Then, once the recovery occurred, the intervention was effective in preventing subsequent episodes of disability.”

And we would do well not to overlook the importance of that distinction, says Dr. Gill. Most studies only examine the ways exercise can prevent disability.

However, due to the fact that most seniors spend a lot of time lurching back and forth between periods of immobility and full function due to injury plaguing them in their fragility, an exercise program might well reduce the time they spend with limited activity. And by maximizing their activity, their increased strength and balance would presumably reduce their chances of further injury.

“This demonstrates that a physical activity program really has continued, sustained benefit over an extended period of time,” said Dr. Gill. He also suggested that perhaps the exercise helps to create a back-up storehouse of energy that helps to aid recovery when and if injury does occur.

The results were especially promising for the lives of seniors, according to Dr. Gill, considering that most of the participants who entered the study did so with some pre-existing hindrance to their ability to get exercise: they presented with problems of mobility, balance or lack of muscle tone.

This study should be a tremendous boost in the information available out there showing that virtually anyone and everyone can benefit from an exercise program, regardless of their level of fitness at the outset.

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Breakthrough Study Shows Reduced Recurrence Of Breast Cancer In Women On Mediterranean Diet

Breakthrough Study Shows Reduced Recurrence Of Breast Cancer In Women On Mediterranean Diet

By Kurtis Bright

Surprise, Surprise: A Diet Heavy In Fresh Fruit And Veg, Nuts, Fish And Whole Grains Is Better For You

Even with so many negatives in the world, it is undeniable that this is a great time to be alive--at least when it comes to the cornucopia of medical paradigm shifts that are taking place right before our eyes.

We seem to have new revelations on the benefits of marijuana every day, for example. And these days kratom is joining venerable marijuana as a widely accepted aid to humans suffering a variety of ailments.

But one healthy choice that has been known for decades now in the West, and much longer in Europe continues to produce amazing results: the Mediterranean diet.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 40 years, the Mediterranean meal plan leans heavily on fresh plant-based foods like fruits and vegetables, as well as whole grains and nuts. It also replaces butter with olive oil and limits red meat while emphasizing fish, and it has long been a staple of the diet section in bookstores, as well as fodder for celebrity chat shows.

And the latest study seems to show that there may well be a connection between eating a Mediterranean diet and reducing your chances of the recurrence of breast cancer.

Presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the researchers’ study followed 307 women who had previously faced early-stage breast cancer but who were then in remission. The study split the women into two groups, one of which was given a regular western diet (199 women); the other group was given a Mediterranean diet (108 women).

The women were tracked for three years, and what they found was stunning: all 11 women who had a relapse were eating a Western diet, none of them were on the Mediterranean diet.

Of course, this is a very small sample size. The study must be replicated in order to prove the results conclusive. But if nothing else, it is an undeniably promising first step, providing further evidence that a diet heavy in red meat, refined grains and sugar is not as healthy as a Mediterranean diet.

“The preliminary results of this small study suggest that a Mediterranean diet could lower the risk of breast cancer returning,” said Professor Amie Purushotham, senior clinical adviser for Cancer Research UK. “We'd need much longer follow-up than three years to confirm the diet’s impact.”

But yet further evidence that they are on the right track is a similar study that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine. This study included 4,000 women, and it produced similar results: those participants who followed the Mediterranean diet and switched to olive oil had a 68 percent reduced risk of breast cancer.

The latest work should be taken as something promising if not certain, another building block in the edifice of evidence showing that diet and lifestyle choices can and do have a powerful impact on everything that happens to our bodies--including cancer. This effect, we’re seeing more and more, is not just limited to direct cause and effect linkages like obesity and type 2 diabetes.

The Mediterranean diet is just one more way we can take control of our health and change long-term outcomes for ourselves.

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Prominent Scientists Say U.S. Position on GMOs Is “Horribly Exposed”

Prominent Scientists Say U.S. Position on GMOs Is “Horribly Exposed”

By Kurtis Bright

U.S. Stance On GMOs Called Out As Shoddy Science

The proposed merger of Monsanto and Bayer edges ever closer to a done deal every day. At the same time, consumer awareness grows, of just how ubiquitous and dangerous genetically modified crops and the massive doses of chemicals needed to grow them really are. Indeed, genetically modified foods, Monsanto, glyphosate, and other subjects like these are drawing unwanted scrutiny that is making some people in high places very uncomfortable.

As this process has developed, the corporations predictably have rolled out their typical denial, reassurances, and platitudes. But another entity has been complicit in the massive cover-up of the vast array of problems with GMOs: the Federal Government.

A pair of prominent researchers finally got fed up. A conference at Cornell University was the site of their defection from the mandated talking points, as they instead talked about their growing unease as study after study further breaks down the scientific basis for the U.S. approval of widely-used GMO techniques and products.

Executive director of the Bioscience Resource Project Jonathan Latham said the official U.S. position on GMOs is “horribly exposed” as a result of the latest research, stating further that contradictions even within the framework of the original research “were never resolved.”

“There was obviously a lot of political pressure and economic pressure to just sweep things under the carpet,” Latham added.

Joining Latham in his disgust with the way GMO research was conducted when biochem companies were seeking U.S. regulatory approval was Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at the Consumer’s Union. Immersed in the issue of GMOs for over 30 years at both the state and federal level, as well as in an international context, Hansen has a depth and breadth of knowledge on the subject that rivals that of anyone.

And he has sounded the alarm, saying that it’s high time for stricter regulations on GMOs.

He adds that it may already be too late.

“Most of the environmental movements of the 20th century have basically been people cleaning up disasters after the fact,” Hansen said at the Cornell event. “With pesticides and all these things that were initially considered perfectly safe, we only find out years later that they’re contaminating the environment and causing all these problems. We wanted to make sure that biotechnology was regulated properly.”

The troubling fact is, according to Hansen, most U.S. citizens don’t realize that the U.S. doesn’t hew to internationally agreed-upon safety regulations when it comes to GMO crops. The U.S. Federal Government has chosen its own strange path for its citizens, and it tracks alarmingly close to exactly what Big Agrichem wants.

“There is global agreement on required safety assessments [for food that is derived from genetically modified organisms] and yet the United States does not do them,” Hansen said. “So we are actually on the outside of the global scientific standard.”

So when you encounter concern trolls on chat boards who want to try to “educate” you about how you just don’t understand how safe GMO products really are, or how Monsanto and companies like it simply want to feed the hungry of the world, keep in mind that they are not only likely to be on the payroll of Big Agrichem or hoodwinked by those who are, they are doing so using badly flawed research and data that was gathered and processed with one goal in mind: find a way--any way--to justify the approval of widespread use and sale of GMO crops.

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GMO Safety Cheerleaders Debunked: Why You Shouldn’t Believe The Online Shills

GMO Safety Cheerleaders Debunked: Why You Shouldn’t Believe The Online Shills

By Kurtis Bright

Government Lining Up with Paid Corporate Shills to Disseminate Disinformation on the Safety of GMOs

There are semi-smart people out there who find it fashionable these days to deride opinions that speak negatively about Monsanto, genetically modified crops, and all things GMO.

And maybe some of them are not even being paid by the company and its cut-out middlemen.

Maybe.

If you follow certain comment boards on sites like Reddit, you will quickly find they are flush with comments using surprisingly similar wording, argumentation, and fallacious reasoning to defend poor little picked-on Monsanto and its ilk.

It’s almost as though the same talking points were distributed along with marching orders on how to use them...

One huge part of this trend is of course due to Monsanto’s massive public relations arm distributing millions of dollars into various sources combating its cartoonishly evil (but well-deserved) reputation. The company and its busy little sock puppets have worked hard to create social media buzz that pushes back.

Their sophistication in recent years has grown exponentially in the ways they manage these sock puppet accounts; there are some people among these trolls who are very smart. But you can spot the paid shills when you start to notice the people who lack the capacity for nuance and reasoning in the face of contradictory opinion.

It’s not only that these people would have you believe that GMOs are safe, and that only dangerous paranoiacs and the uneducated believe otherwise. The ludicrousness of the straw-man positions they argue against is a dead giveaway.

Nonetheless, you should take care when you are stuck reading or listening to their arguments, just as you would with those of the government, which is equally untrustworthy as we have seen ad infinitum.

Forget for a moment that virtually all pro-GMO safety arguments neglect to acknowledge the use of pesticides and herbicides on the crops, residue from which then enters your system. Instead they like to pretend that the GMO argument is simply a matter of benignly tweaking the DNA of the plants or animals in a manner akin to that of dog breeders or wheat farmers over the millennia. But the fact is we can look back on the Food and Drug Administration’s early views on GMOs and see how far astray we’ve gone.

Author Steven Druker focuses on just this issue in his book Altered Genes, Twisted Truth. A delineation of his background, education and research can be found in a recent open letter he wrote to the Royal Society in Britain. In it, he lays out a truth that hides in plain sight beneath the entire GMO debate: government regulators are guilty of rigging the game heavily in favor of the corporations who are seeking to control the entirety of food production for all humanity, and they have done so without solid science to back their decisions.

“Although it purports to be based on solid science and the open flow of information on which science depends, the massive venture to reconfigure the genetic core of the world’s food supply has substantially relied on the propagation of falsehoods,” Druker said in his op-ed. “Its advancement and very survival have been crucially and chronically dependent on the misrepresentation of reality – to the extent that more than thirty years after the creation of the first genetically engineered plant, the vast majority of people the world-over (including most government officials, journalists, and even scientists) continue to be misled about the important facts.”

If you find yourself being pummeled by the arguments of the so-called “skeptics” on comment boards and the like, please take a moment to check out Druker’s piece--and maybe even his book.

The battle over our food supply and corporate profits is deadly serious, and we all need to educate ourselves on it.

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Toxic Education: Monsanto and the 26,000 Poisonous Public Schools it Poisoned

Toxic Education: Monsanto and the 26,000 Poisonous Public Schools it Poisoned

By Kurtis Bright

How Monsanto Is on the Hook for 26,000 Toxic Schools

You just can’t outrun your past. Wherever you go, there you are, complete with the litany of all the bad things you have ever done locked inside you.

It is a simple truism of life that we come to grips with more and more the older we get--or maybe it’s just that we have more accumulated past to contend with.

Either way, the big bosses at agrichem giant Monsanto are finding this to be more true than ever as scrutiny of the company is heating up with the news proposed merger with Bayer.

And any way you cut it, the company has had a rather...colorful past, shall we say. Ranging from their early days in the late 1800s and early 1900s when they worked tirelessly at popularizing saccharin despite its false promise of weight loss as a sugar substitute--and in the process fighting a decades-long court battle against allowing the proof of saccharin’s cancer-causing properties to force it from the market.

Then there’s the assist they provided on the Manhattan Project, from which experience working with the military they then pivoted to developing other tools of war, such as Agent Orange and white phosphorus. And of course there’s today, with the company gleefully blanketing the earth and everything growing on it with cancer-causing glyphosate and replacing natural systems with genetically modified crops.

There are not many companies that have wreaked so much havoc on the lives of so many people for so long.

But one oft-overlooked slice of the toxic cake that is Monsanto’s checkered history is now coming into the limelight once again: the company’s association with the manufacture of PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls.

Once widely used in electronics and as an industrial sealant, PCBs have long been the cause of numerous municipal lawsuits as cities try to force the company to pay for the cleanup of the now-toxic wetlands it has befouled with the stuff.

But the latest is that Monsanto may be on the hook for the clean up of at least 26,000 U.S. schools that still have PCBs in their caulking, sealants, and other building materials--PCBs that could still be leaching out in affecting students nationwide.

 By some estimates, nearly 14 million students may be affected by the leaks, which represents some 30 percent of the total student population.

That could spell big lawsuits for Monsanto.

PCB is an endocrine disruptor and cancer-causing agent, exposure to which is known to cause skin conditions, liver damage, ocular lesions, lowered immune response, fatigue, headaches, and coughs, and in the children of women who are exposed it can cause cognitive development issues and motor control problems in their offspring.

Despite the fact that the company’s decades-long battle to keep PCBs legal (boy, does that ever sound familiar) ended in 1979 when the Environmental Protection Agency finally banned their manufacture, numberous older buildings across the nation still contain construction materials and wiring containing PCBs.

The angle on schools in particular comes out of the offices of U.S. Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass), the Environmental Working Group, and America Unites Kids.

And the news ain’t good: at minimum some 12,960 schools contain PCB-laden caulk, and that number could be as high as 25,920.

“That number comes by looking back at those periods of time where public schools were most extensively built. About 60 percent of the schools were built from 1950 to the early '80s, the time when PCBs were most commonly used in building materials,” wrote primary author and researcher at Harvard School of Public Health Robert Herrick.

Studies have shown that people can be exposed to PCBs by simply touching contaminated surfaces, and possibly even by inhaling PCB-laden dust. In schools that were constructed so long ago, it is a near-certainty that some such dust exists.

One can only hope that this latest round of Monsanto PCB disclosures and pending lawsuits will finally put a stake in the heart of this vile company that has visited so much evil on humankind.

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Cancer-Fighting Plant Found Only In The Exotic Tropics Of...Indiana?

Cancer-Fighting Plant Found Only In The Exotic Tropics Of...Indiana?

By Kurtis Bright

Meet The Paw-Paw Fruit: ‘Tropical’ Midwest Plant May Prove The Best Tool Yet For Fighting Cancer

 

Every day it seems like Western science is bumbling across health secrets derived from exotic, mysterious plants discovered in faraway lands, secrets previously only understood by a handful of indigenous people who stuck with the Old Ways that were handed down by their elders.

The paw-paw fruit fits that description to a T: it is a little-known, relatively rare plant that is found only in one specific region, it has long been known to the locals as a healthful, nutritious food, and its curative properties are only now beginning to emerge.

It fits the bill perfectly, were it not for the fact that the paw-paw comes from the exotic, faraway land of Indiana and southern Michigan--not exactly a tropical Pacific island.

Sometimes called the Hoosier banana or the Michigan banana, the paw-paw fruit has a smooth texture that has been likened to custard, and a subtle flavor that is reminiscent of bananas and strawberries. The paw-paw has been known to natural health food enthusiasts for a while now, but it has yet to truly enter the mainstream, although you can occasionally find paw-paw supplement capsules on the shelves of health food stores.

But it's hard to understand why it remains so obscure: boasting antioxidant levels on a par with that of cranberries, 20 times the magnesium of apples, bananas or strawberries, 70 times the iron of the above mentioned fruits, more vitamin C than oranges, and an excellent source of amino acids, the paw-paw fruit is truly a miracle food.

Even more exciting, new research is showing that its cancer-fighting properties may be even more miraculous.

For starters, the bark of the paw-paw tree seems to be one of the strongest anti-cancer compounds known to date, according to a large-scale study conducted at Purdue University.

That study along with a second one, which was also led by Dr. Jerry McLaughlin of Purdue, has led to several patents, and was found to offer strong evidence that the tree bark of the paw-paw can be a powerful ally in the fight against even drug-resistant cancers.

The study McLaughlin led showed that over 40 anti-cancer compounds are in paw-paw bark. And while he noted that cancer cells are famously complex and hard to kill in humans, the study’s results showed promise that with wider studies, the bark could prove to be the basis for a whole new range of cancer treatments in practice.

“The paw-paw compounds are not only effective in killing tumors that have proven resistant to anti-cancer agents, but they also seem to have a special affinity for such resistant cells,” according to a Purdue News piece accompanying McLaughlin’s study.

Meanwhile, we’ll just have to be content with pounding paw-paw pills--unless you are lucky enough to be able to visit the exotic climes of northern Indiana and southern Michigan, and find yourself with an opportunity to sample the fruit that the native peoples there have might offer you.

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Poisonous Fields Forever: Why You Should Always Buy Organic When It Comes To This Fruit

Poisonous Fields Forever: Why You Should Always Buy Organic When It Comes To This Fruit

By Kurtis Bright

Delicious But Deadly, This Fruit Is Almost Certainly Loaded With Deadly Chemicals

With each passing day it becomes ever more clear that the agencies purportedly regulating the food market are firmly in the pocket of Big Agriculture. Neither lawsuits, pleading, marches, nor any other kind of citizen action is going to make them pull their heads out of the toxic sand and actually do the job of protecting consumers from dangerous chemicals.

However, the flipside of this is that more and more people are coming to realize that we’re essentially all alone out there when it comes to making healthy decisions on the food we eat and provide for our families. You just cannot trust what they tell you anymore, it’s as simple as that.

And if you look at this the right way, there is a certain freedom in being on your own when it comes to making healthy food choices--more on that later.

One prominent case in point illustrating the utter failure of the regulators to regulate the poisons that go into our food comes in the form of one of Americans’ favorite fruits, the humble strawberry. Recently a loophole was pried open--following several intense rounds of lobbying by the Dow Chemical corporation--allowing California strawberry growers to double the amount of cancer-causing pesticide Telone they may legally spray on their fields.

You may think, so what? What difference can one more chemical make in a land that is already awash in them?

The thing about strawberries is, much like certain recently elected neo-politicians, they are notoriously thin-skinned.

Which is to say that strawberries literally have a very thin outer covering. What this means in terms of your health is that anything they are sprayed with is almost impossible to wash off. In fact, they actually absorb the chemicals with which they are treated, so no amount of washing can make a chemically-treated strawberry clean.

And here’s another fun fact, but one most of us already realize about strawberries: they are delicious. The consequence of this is that not only do humans love to spend time in strawberry fields nibbling on them, so do bugs of all kinds--not only Beatles.

(Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)

So strawberry producers who use conventional growing methods--which means heavy, multiple treatments with harsh and toxic chemicals--are among the worst for chemical contamination of their product.

And strawberry manufacturers not only douse their fields before planting--using gasses that were developed for chemical warfare but have since been banned from combat (pity the soldiers that eat strawberries; there’s no Geneva Convention protecting them against U.S. agriculture). They use up to 60 different kinds of pesticides on their crops.

One USDA study in 2014 found that 98 percent of all strawberries sampled came back with pesticide residues, and 40 percent of them had residues resulting from 10 or more pesticides. So keep in mind, if you buy non-organic strawberries, here’s what you are getting as a garnish:

• Carbendazim - This fungicide disrupts the male reproductive system and was found on 30 percent of the strawberry samples tested in the aforementioned USDA study. Banned in the E.U.
• Bifenthrin - 40 percent of the samples tested turned out to have traces of this chemical, which is identified in California as a possible carcinogen.
• Malathion - Most of us have probably heard of this neurotoxin and probable human carcinogen, which is used to kill mosquitoes. However it is especially dangerous to humans because when it breaks down into its core components it becomes malaoxon, an even more toxic chemical.

The real takeaway here should be an awareness that any and all of these chemicals are going to be on--and importantly, in--your strawberries. It doesn’t matter how well you scrub and soak and clean them: if you buy conventionally-grown strawberries they will have absorbed some or all of these deadly toxins.

The pain of paying through the nose for organic foods is real, especially in the deadly stagnant economy the neoliberal elites have seen fit to impose on us in order to the stock market and unemployment high and job security low, thus protecting their own fortunes. And in all honesty there are some foods you can take a chance on buying non-organic, thick-skinned fruit and veg like bananas, pineapples and avocados.

But non-organic strawberries--at least those grown in the U.S.--simply aren’t safe.

But don’t expect any agency to tell you that--in this age of misinformation serving money uber alles, we have no one to watch out for us except ourselves.

We are truly on our own.

But while this might sound like a rather doom-filled concept on the face of it, it doesn’t have to be disheartening.

There is something compellingly liberating, something that feels like a weight being taken off your chest about finally, once and for all understanding that there is no one looking out for you, at least not in the halls of government. When we finally realize we can no longer rely on our elites to defend our interests, and that we must fend for ourselves, we become truly free.
 
But just because the government has been fully assimilated by the businesses it is supposed to regulate doesn't mean you are alone. There are resources out there for finding out the truth about the unhealthy foods Big Ag is trying to foist off on us. There are communities of like-minded people to be found on the internet and in real life, places to commiserate, trade recipes and tips, and gain support. There are tons of resources on how to start your own organic garden.

But what we must realize is that we can no longer trust the food that corporations--with the assistance of complicit, compromised government regulators--want to sell us.

The moment you fully understand you are truly alone is the moment you become free.

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Cancer Hiding In Your Kitchen: Avoid These Foods At All Cost

Cancer Hiding In Your Kitchen: Avoid These Foods At All Cost

By Kurtis Bright

How These Foods Hide Their True, Cancer-Causing Nature

 

As more and more information about how the powers-that-be really operate comes to light, more people are beginning to suspect that maybe they don’t have our best health interests at heart. Forget about politics--look at the ongoing fights against Monsanto, Big Pharma, Big Soda, Big Oil, Big Agriculture, and more.

Do you ever wonder why we are paying billions of dollars to government regulators who are supposed to protect us from these entities when they threaten our health? It’s almost like their jobs aren’t to protect the public, but rather to protect businesses, even as they poison us and the environment.

Thankfully, people are starting to wake up to the fact that we are going to have to be responsible for watching out for our own health.

What this means in practical terms is that we are going to have to do our own research and make our own choices--for instance, when it comes to shopping for food--while taking what labels tell us with a giant grain of salt. These days it has become all too apparent that just because something is on the shelf of your local supermarket that doesn’t mean it is safe for human consumption. The corruption of the USDA, the FDA, Congress and other regulators is without end, as proven over and over again as in the Vermont GMO labeling battle.

Having said that, here are a few foods that have been proven carcinogenic--and yet are still widely available on store shelves--foods you may not typically think of as unhealthy.

• Microwave popcorn - The fact that this product is still available with no warning label or media campaign against it is downright criminal. Those convenient bags that cause your microwave popcorn to pop so quickly and evenly are lined with perfluoroctanoic acid, a toxin found in Teflon and which has been linked to infertility along with a cornucopia of cancers, including bladder, kidney, liver, pancreas and testicular cancer. Also, let’s not forget that the popcorn itself is rife with chemicals and likely contains GMOs, for instance soybean oil.
• Canned tomatoes - Tomatoes and the lycopene they contain in particular are good for the prostate and other health functions, so it is easy to understand how a person might want to take advantage of a quick and convenient option for getting a dose of tomato goodness. However, the sad truth is that canned tomatoes--along with almost every other canned fruit and vegetable--comes in cans that are lined with bisphenol A, aka BPA, a chemical that has been linked to endocrine problems as well as cancer. This is a serious enough issue that the use of the chemical has been discontinued in children’s items. But for industry-friendly regulators, the health of adults--and any children who are fed canned veggies and fruits, it should be noted--allowing its continued use in all manner of plastics and other consumer items that come in contact with food is A-ok. The problem with tomatoes in particular is that, in coming into contact with BPAs, their natural acidity causes the chemicals to leach out into the food.
• Processed meats - Sorry, lovers of meats like prosciutto, cacpicola, salami or even plain old hot dogs: these highly processed foods are likely to contain sodium nitrates, which have been shown to be cancer-causing in rat studies, increasing the chances of early death by 44 percent. Do keep in mind also that even unprocessed red meat causes you to run a risk: a recent bombshell of a study showed that red meat actually causes a toxic, allergic reaction in humans eliciting an immune response, one that may be the precursor of cancer among red meat eaters.

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Natural Born Cancer Killers

Natural Born Cancer Killers

By Kurtis Bright

Cancer-Killing Substances the Pharmaceutical Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know About

As the litany of greedy and short-sighted acts of the food industry and the pharmaceutical industries continue apace, more and more people are turning to natural, healthy alternatives whenever possible. Naturally, big business doesn’t much cotton to the idea of your money going anywhere but directly into their pockets. Thus they work very hard to keep information about these alternatives out of the public forum.

This is especially true when it comes to herbal medicine. It is far too easy to overlook all the “new” discoveries that are made on a near-daily basis, as modern researchers chase down remedies that have been known to indigenous peoples for centuries. These are just a few substances that have been shown to have extraordinary capabilities for combating cancer.

• Brucea Javanica - Native to southeast Asia and northern Australia, this shrub has been used in Chinese medicine for centuries to treat a plethora of ailments. Studies have shown promise for the plant’s abilities to combat breast cancer, bladder cancer and leukemia.
• Graviola - This tree native to South America is the source of the soursop fruit, which has shown tremendous promise in killing cancer on a cellular level. One study from Purdue University showed that it can selectively kill cancer cells, while another study conducted by the organization Cancer Research U.K. showed that it was especially promising in killing the cells of liver cancer and breast cancer.
• Paw-Paw - This little-known plant sprouts a tropical-looking fruit similar to the papaya, however the paw-paw only grows in the Midwest region of the U.S. Despite these decidedly non-exotic beginnings, the paw-paw may disguise the most remarkable anti-cancer plant yet discovered. The aforementioned Purdue study on the graviola plant also examined the paw-paw and found it also showed great promise in killing cancer on a cellular level.
• Fucoidan - Found on the sea bed, the fucoidan plant has been proven to stop lung cancer in its tracks, according to a study published in the journal Phytotherapy Research. It also boosted white blood cell counts while triggering the death of cancer cells.
• Artemisinin - The sweet wormwood plant’s extract artemisnin is another staple of Chinese medicine that has shown signs of being able to discern and attack cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone. The rate at which it does so is about 12,000 to one--pretty good odds if you can get them.
• Lei Gong Teng - This plant has long been called the “thunder god vine,” and it has tremendous potential for fighting cancer. It also set off a cascade of cancer cell death in studies, and specifically showed strong anti-leukemia properties.

The sad fact is that most of us have never heard of these plants. This is partly due to the suppression of long-term human studies that might prove a threat to the medicinal monopoly western medicine has on health and treatment. However you should continue to research them, perhaps setting up google alerts on them. You can be sure that the future of human health is not to be found in a lab--it is hidden deep in the forest and on the bottom of the sea.

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Fountain Of Youth in the Food Store: Five Foods You Should Be Eating To Live Longer

Fountain Of Youth in the Food Store: Five Foods You Should Be Eating To Live Longer

By Kurtis Bright

Choosing the Right Foods for Longer Life

We humans have had a fascination with death since we’ve been human. There is evidence of funerary practices occurring at some of the oldest human habitations, so we know that we have been pondering death for a very long time.

The flip side of considering death and what it is and what meaning it has is of course focusing on life, and how to stay alive for as long as possible. Even before Ponce de Leon’s search for the Fountain of Youth in the Florida Everglades, and right up to Howard Hughes’ mad regimen of germophobia designed to allow him to live forever, our obsession with long life continues.

Well good news, everyone: there actually is a fountain of youth--uh, sort of. But you don’t have to hack your way into the wilds of central Florida to find it. These five foods will help you live a longer, healthier life.

• Nuts - Bodybuilders along with casual dieters have long relied on nuts, knowing that they provide a protein punch at just a tiny caloric cost. A handful of almonds will keep you going for a long time. Even better, they can help you keep up your daily energy, but even your life itself. A study performed at the Harvard School of Public Health showed that the more often people ate nuts, the lower their risk of dying was.
• Whole grains - It is well known nowadays that white bread is virtually devoid of nutrients and sets off a glycemic roller coaster reaction in your body. Luckily it turns out that whole grain breads, pastas and other bakery items not only don’t trigger as severe a glycemic reaction, they can also help you live longer. A Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine study found that for each additional one ounce serving of whole grains a person ate, they had a 5 percent lower overall mortality risk, and a 9 percent lower risk of death from heart problems.
• Spice it up - A study in China that followed over 450,000 men and women demonstrated that those who ate spicy foods six or seven days a week had a 14 percent lower mortality risk than those who ate them once each week. Pass the hot sauce!
• Seaweed - There have been over a thousand studies on seaweed and counting, demonstrating all kinds of benefits: lowered risk of inflammation, immune system boosting capabilities, and retarding the growth of cancer just to name a few. And a recent meta-study looked at all of these, seeking to quantify the copious use of seaweed in Japanese cuisine to help explain the longevity rate in that country, which is one of the highest in the world.
• Something Fishy - We’ve known for a long time that fish contain carotenoids, compounds that protect against neurological diseases, as well as omega-3s. These fatty fish help reduce inflammation, which has been linked to allergies, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s. Make sure you buy only organic, sustainable fish that isn’t loaded with heavy metals or toxins--go to seafoodwatch for more.

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