Spread your magic around....
This Universe is a shapeable Universe, it responds to our thoughts, imaginations and emotion. We, 'the subject,' are a powerful creative center, the mental energy that emanets from our thoughts and emotions creates the physical reality that we desire. We are the creator of our own reality..

We are the self expression of our subconscious mind. We are a cluster of energy, so is everything else. The energy cluster that is constantly in motion, moving and changing to form new configuration and intelligently maintaining its form. This is the consciosness that keeps the energy in that particular form.

Consciousness is the mind, the mind is reality, this mind is the creator. This Universe is the collective consciousness of its people. By learning how to guide and focus our thought patterns we all can become an effective co-creator and live successfully with the matter and events of our outer physical world. We all participate in creating the exterior world that we live and this is essential for our growth. The better our abilities at creating reality, the better we are at solving problems, creating abundance and able to live in perfect harmony with this Universe. There is nothing paranormal in this Universe except our limited understanding of the Universe around us...

Psycophysics views all matters including human body as a bio-electro magnectic that vibrates in waves with specific oscillation frequencies. Electro- myograth, a devise that measures electrical activities of muscles, was discovered by Dr. Hunt. The science of Kirlian Photography is designed to detect human body's electro-magnetic field also known as human Aura. This devise is able to detect minute electrical, magnetic and optical changes in an object's environment. The color of human aura enable scientist to analyse a person's current physical, mental and emotional health.

The cosmo has certain forms of wave energy and all living things have their own unique wave energy. When this wave rythm is damaged by various factors of environment, polutions, stress and worries, the cells of our body sends out signals called disease. Human brain emitts certain electro-magnetic impulse, the brain waves alfa, beta, theta and delta waves. Human brain has two main parts the pelio cortex, which controls vital body fuctions and the neo cortex, which control thinking and cognition.

Mind and body are two parts of our being, one physical the other non physical, and they are completely dependent on each other. All illness are psychosomatic because we are not just body but mind and body.

Hippocrates (father of the modern medicine) said that everyone is a doctor within. However, our bodys ability to fuction at its optimum has been suppressed by various environmental factors, pollution, strain and stress of everyday life. We are constantly being exposed to pollutants, virus and bacteria and electromagnetic radiation. While there are inumerable new disease on the rise today, and with all these modern medical marvels, yet the answer can be found within the subconcious self. Self healing begins when mind, body and spirit regains balance with each other. Healing is a process of bringing together all parts of our being, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual self, in the symphony of life creating wholesome.

Human being has the natural abilities to heal itself. Good health is a state of mind, a state of emotional, mental, spiritual and physical balance. Human brain has the ability to manifest healing naturally. All we need to do is learn how to control our mind and unleash this ability that we were all born with. Overwhelming scientific evidence has proven it that human mind is the most potent tool in our quest for healing the body and soul.

Psychotherapy, a form of alternative practice that help eliminate traumatic experience, underlying causes of anxiety and fear from within deep subconscious. Reframing and affirmation is the methods of chanting our mind's perceptions into a perception that positively benifit the current reality. It allows one to overcome emotional blockages and hindering spirit and leads one toward the pathway of health and wellness...































































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Sunday, January 25, 2015

By Dr. Mercola
What is the proper role of sugar in our society? It used to be a condiment; now it’s a diet staple. Mounting evidence clearly shows that refined sugar is a primary factor causing not just obesity, but also chronic disease.
According to Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco (USCF), sugar acts as a chronic, dose-dependent liver toxin (poison) when consumed in excess.
You might recognize Dr. Lustig from one of the most popular YouTube videos on sugar that has over 5 million views. You might also have seen him on 60 Minutes, which ran a report on the dangers of sugar in 2012.
You might also have seen him sparring with Stephen Colbert or Bill Maher. Or you might know him from his book, Fat Chance.
Never before have humans consumed as much sugar as we do today, and the ramifications of this dietary change are quite clear. Fructose, found in most processed foods, is by far the worst form of sugar, causing the greatest amount of harm in the shortest amount of time.
For example, in one clinical trial, test subjects who consumed high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) developed higher risk factors for cardiovascular disease in just two weeks.

Chronic Disease Has Risen in Lockstep with Sugar Consumption

Historically, sugar was used as a condiment. As early as 1200 BC, India developed a process to extract cane juice, called khanda, which is where we got the word “candy” from.
"It was for nobility and it was hard to come by, until about year 1700, when the pot still allowed for mass production of refined sugar. It was still extraordinarily expensive until the middle of 18th -19th century," Dr. Lustig says.
"At that point, we started seeing it appearing in various venues. We started seeing the growth of American sugar industry in Louisiana, Texas, and Hawaii. That's when we started seeing chronic metabolic disease.
In fact, the very first demonstration of an increase in chronic metabolic disease was in 1924, when Hayden Emerson, the commissioner of health of New York City, noticed a seven-fold increase in diabetes rate in the [city’s] population.
Then in 1931, Dr. Paul Dudley White (cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital) called attention to the fact that we had an epidemic of heart disease.
Finally, in 1988, we learned about the advent of adolescent type 2 diabetes. These are the three seminal hallmarks of chronic metabolic disease pervading our population. It goes up in lockstep with our increase in per capita sugar consumption.”
The bottom line is that sugar used to be something we added to coffee and tea. We had full control over the amount we ate. Today, we consume about 20 times more sugar than our ancestors did, and we have very little control over the amount since it’s become a diet staple.
It’s now found in virtually every processed food you can think of. On average, sugar makes up 15 percent of total calories consumed (about 19.5 teaspoons per day), and your liver, which processes sugar, simply cannot handle that kind of load. When you overload your liver in this way, you inevitably end up with chronic metabolic disease.
"Basically, sugar is metabolized virtually identically to that of alcohol, and we are now seeing diseases in children that we never saw before, and they are alcohol-related diseases, like non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes.
Kids don’t drink alcohol but they certainly consume sugar, and that’s the point,” Dr. Lustig says. “Sugar is the alcohol of the child. And we are all overdosed.
We have gone beyond our limits and we are now evidencing a massive increase in chronic metabolic disease that is chewing through the health care resources of every developed and developing country on the planet, and this is unsustainable."

Insulin Resistance—A Hallmark of Metabolic Syndrome

According to Dr. Lustig, whatever organ becomes insulin resistant ends up manifesting its own chronic metabolic disease. For example, when you have insulin resistance of the liver, you end up with type 2 diabetes.
When you have insulin resistance of the brain, you end up with Alzheimer’s disease. Insulin resistance of the kidney leads to chronic renal disease, and so forth. All of these diseases are insulin resistant states. The question is what causes the insulin resistance in the first place?
"[W]e have some new data that we are very excited about, which demonstrate that if you overload the mitochondria, the little energy-burning factories within cells, in any given organ, you'll end up manifesting various forms of chronic metabolic disease," Dr. Lustig says.
“The chemical that overloads the mitochondria best is trans-fats. But the chemical that overloads the mitochondria next best is sugar. Trans fats and sugar pretty much characterize the processed food diet.”
In November 2013, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) removed trans fats from the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) list. This is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, instead of reverting back to healthy saturated fats like coconut oil, lard, and butter, trans fats have been replaced with other non-saturated vegetable oils, that when heated, produce toxic aldehydes which cause cellular damage.  
We may not realize the full ramifications of this switch until a decade or two down the line. Sugar, on the other hand, is going to be even more difficult to dislodge from the food system.
According to SugarScience.org, added sugars hide in 74 percent of processed foods under more than 60 different names.1 And yet, getting rid of the excess sugar in processed food is exactly what needs to be done.
"As long as sugar is on that (GRAS) list, the food industry has license to use as much as it wants to in any given food stuff. So, sugar has become the biggest problem in our diet since the advent of trans fats," Dr. Lustig says. "Granted, there are many problems with processed food. There's too much of five things and too little of three things.
There's too much trans fats; too much omega-6 fatty acids (which are pro-inflammatory); too much branched-chain amino acids (which also overload your liver and cause chronic metabolic disease)... too much alcohol, and too much sugar.
On the too-little side, there's too little fiber, too few micronutrients, and too little omega-3 fatty acids, which are anti-inflammatory. Processed food has a zillion things wrong with it. Unfortunately, processed food is what we subsidize. Processed food is what we expect people to consume because of 1) expense and 2) shelf life. That’s making a fortune for the food industry, but it’s killing us.”

Is There a Safe Threshold for Sugar?

According to Dr. Lustig, trans fats are “without question consumable poison.” But is sugar as bad or worse than trans fat? Dr. Lustig says no, it’s not worse, because while there is no threshold at which trans fats are safe, there may be a threshold below which sugar will not cause a problem. While there are individual differences, as a general rule the safety threshold for sugar appears to be around six to nine teaspoons (25-38 grams) of added sugar per day.
“That’s what the data suggest, because your liver does have the capacity to metabolize fructose, as long as the mitochondria don’t get overwhelmed,” Dr. Lustig says. “So as long as you keep it below the threshold, above which toxicity would occur, I think that, probably, sugar is okay.”
Whether or not you're insulin resistant will play a role, as insulin resistance generates hyperinsulinemia. Hyperinsulinemia means that there's more insulin at the fat cell, which means you'll shunt more energy into those fat cells because that's what insulin does. Insulin resistance is clearly associated with weight gain. But while many believe that insulin resistance is the result of weight gain, recent data argues against that notion, Dr. Lustig says. Instead, the data shows that insulin is whatdrives the weight gain.
When your liver turns excess sugar into liver fat and becomes insulin resistant, that generates hyperinsulinemia, and hyperinsulinemia drives energy storage into body fat.
Currently, about two-thirds of the American population is overweight. About one-quarter to one-third is diabetic or prediabetic, and another quarter of the population is hypertensive. Many also have high serum triglycerides.  Insulin resistance is a component of all of these health issues. According to Dr. Lustig, the data shows that at least 50 percent of Americans have some form of insulin resistance—whether you’re overweight or not—and that is what’s driving our seemingly out-of-control disease statistics.

Metabolic Disease in America

As Dr. Lustig notes, if you were to do a Venn diagram2,3 of the United States population, you'd have 240 million adults in that diagram, divided into two circles. One circle would be about twice as big as the other: the obese population forming a smaller circle of about 30 percent, and the non-obese population forming a larger circle of about 70 percent. Eighty percent (57 million people) of the obese population is metabolically ill. They have insulin resistance that manifests itself in a myriad of ways, including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, heart disease, cancer, and dementia.
"The standard mantra is, 'If they would just diet and exercise, they wouldn't be obese and we could solve this problem,'"Dr. Lustig says. "This is patently untrue. It is true that 80 percent of the obese population is metabolically ill. But that means that 20 percent of the obese population is not. They're metabolically healthy. They are called metabolically healthy obese. They will live a completely normal life, die at a completely normal age, and not cost the taxpayer a dime. They are just fat. They're not contributing to our runaway medical train, as it were."
Conversely, it turns out that of the 70 percent that are of normal weight (168 million people), 40 percent of them (67 million people) have insulin resistance on lab testing, and they manifest aspects of the metabolic syndrome as well. They too get type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and dementia. The prevalence of metabolic disease among normal weight people is not as great as among obese people—40 percent versus 80 percent—but they do get ill and there are far more people in this group.
“When you do the math, there are more thin sick people than there are fat sick people,” Dr. Lustig says.  “The thin sick people are actually costing more, and when you do the math on the two together, the sick population is 124 million—that’s more than half of the US adult population. It turns out the thin sick people are costing us more...
And you can't attribute this to gluttony and sloth or diet and [lack of] exercise, because they're normal weight. If it's not about behavior, then there's only one other option: it must be about exposure. This is an exposure that obese people are exposed to and it's an exposure that even normal weight people are exposed to. That is called the Western diet. The Western diet is replete with sugar. Sugar is mechanistically the thing that drives this insulin resistance."

How Do You Resolve Insulin Resistance?

The answer can be summarized in two words: real food. According to Dr. Lustig, the overwhelming majority, 60-70 percent of the patients seen in his clinic are there as a result of their processed food diet.
"What we have to do is we have to move them back [to real food], and what we do is we explain what real food is. A lot of kids don't even know what real food is. A lot of kids think that fruit flavored yogurt is real food; it is not. We explain that yogurt is sour milk [it's not sweet]... So if you want yogurt, have plain yogurt and throw whole fruit in, just like what Europeans do. That's called real food."
Intermittent fasting may be another way to address insulin resistance. Although Dr. Lustig doesn’t think most people have to go this far, he believes it can work for some. When you fast, your liver burns off the available liver fat. So you’re temporarily depleting your liver fat stores, restoring metabolic stability to your liver and improving hepatic insulin sensitivity. That said, he believes that the long-term answer for most people lies simply in eating real food.
"I think you can do this rationally, by eating properly all the way through the week rather than having to do intermittent fasting. I think, ultimately, the goal is get the liver fat down. And since the cause of the liver fat is dietary sugar, via the process of De novo lipogenesis... once you get rid of the sugar, the liver fat will go down, and we have data that supports that, both in adults and in children... I think, ultimately, what you have to do is get the liver fat down. Will intermittent fasting do that? Yes, it will. But will eating properly do that too? It does it even better," he says.
"What we tell people are these very simple rules, all of which are evidence-based: get rid of every sugared beverage in the house. Then, eat your carbohydrate with fiber. Whole food is okay because the fiber mitigates the negative effects of the fructose on hepatic metabolism, because it reduces the rate of absorption... We don't tell people they can't eat sugar. But they have to eat sugar in a form that nature provided it, and it's called whole fruit."

The Importance of Exercise

Exercise is also an important component. Interestingly, Dr. Lustig notes that exercise works not by promoting weight loss; rather its benefits are related to the fact that exercise promotes muscle gain. It may be a fine distinction, but one worth noting nonetheless. There is a transcription factor known as Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1-alpha (PGC-1α), which is involved in mitochondrial biogenesis. When you turn up PGC-1α, you make more mitochondria. Increasing your sympathetic muscle tone. This is what exercise does, it turns on PGC-1α. So, in short, exercise increases muscle mass, which increases mitochondria, and this in turn improves insulin sensitivity.
"Every doctor who tells their patient, 'Well, if you'd exercise, you'd lose weight.' Given what we know now, this statement is tantamount to malpractice, because it isn’t true. There are no studies that show [exercise leads to weight loss]. Yet, exercise is the single best thing you can do for yourself and we should be promoting it, but we have to explain to patients what the outcome variable they should be looking at is. And the outcome variable is belt size [waist size], because they will reduce their visceral fat. They will lose inches, not pounds. And losing inches means improved metabolic health," Dr. Lustig explains.

Research Proves Causation—Sugar Definitely Increases Risk for Disease

At present, there are 15 agencies and 51 separate agreements controlling food regulatory activities in the US, and according to Dr. Lustig, “no one knows what the other hand is doing, and the food industry takes complete advantage of this.” Dr. Lustig and many others are pushing for a national food policy. He also insists that “it’s time for us to take food back as a mode of therapy.” And if food is medicine, doctors really must be taught a thing or two about nutrition...
“We have the data. We don’t have correlation anymore. Now, we have causation. We have causation for sugar and obesity (although sugar is not the only cause). We have causation for sugar and diabetes, for heart disease, and for fatty liver disease... We now have causation. It’s time to do something about it.”
For example, a paper by Yang, et al, published in JAMA Internal Medicine last year looked at consumption of added sugar over two decades, as a percentage of total calories, concluding that it significantly contributed to cardiovascular deaths. People who consumed 30 percent of their daily calories as added sugar (like many teenagers are) had a four-fold greater risk of dying from heart disease.
"If you think we got a problem now, wait until our teenagers hit heart disease age; things are really going to be even worse shortly," he notes. "Food should confer wellness, not illness, and it used to. But then, the food industry got involved. And now it confers illness, not wellness. We have to take back our food."
To counter the propaganda provided by profit-driven industry interests, dozens of scientists at three American universities—including Dr. Lustig—have created a new educational website called SugarScience.org,4 aimed at making independent research available to the public. To learn more about what the science really says about sugar, I highly recommend browsing through the site.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

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Saturday, January 3, 2015

By Dr. Mercola
Collectively, microorganisms outweigh the human population by 100 million times. They're all around you, and inside you. Your gastrointestinal tract alone houses some 100 trillion bacteria.
The microorganisms in your gut, commonly referred to as your microbiome, are responsible for about 80 percent of your immune system function, and these gut bacteria outnumber your body's cells by about 10 to one.
As noted in the featured Frontline documentary, The Trouble With Antibiotics,1American farmers routinely use antibiotics to make their livestock grow bigger, faster (in addition to preventing disease caused by cramped, filthy quarter, and an unnatural diet). After decades of this practice, antibiotic-resistance in humans has risen substantially.
We’ve also come to realize that, scientifically, we’ve barely scratched the surface with regards to everything there is to know about bacteria; how they work, and why we might actually need them.
Far from being a scourge, bacteria of all kinds serve important roles in human health. It’s a double-edged sword. On the one hand we need bacteria; on the other, when our microbiome becomes unbalanced, it can kill us.

Microbes Rule...

For example, it is microbes in the soil that are largely responsible for plant growth and nutrient uptake. Adding plant nutrients without regard for nourishing these microbes is a recipe for crop failure in the long-term.
In recent years, we've also started to gain a greater understanding of the role gut microbes play in human health and disease—and it's a very significant one.
We're also seeing that indiscriminately killing bacteria in an effort to achieve cleanliness and health comes at a steep price. In fact, antibiotic resistance has quickly turned into a worldwide health threat of massive proportions.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention2 (CDC), two million American adults and children become infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year, and at least 23,000 of them die as a direct result.
Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus, better known as MRSA, alone kills more Americans each year than the combined total of emphysema, HIV/AIDS, Parkinson’s disease, and homicide.3
The victims include young, otherwise healthy people, raising suspicions that theMRSA infections originate from the food they eat. Drug-resistant tuberculosis, urinary tract infections, and gonorrhea are also on the rise.
As reported by Frontline, researchers have found that people living close to confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) also suffer drug-resistant infections at much higher rates than others, again suggesting that antibiotic-resistant bacteria originate from large-scale agriculture.

We've Wasted One of Medicine's Most Important Tools

What we’re seeing is the evolution of bacteria—and we’ve catalyzed that evolution. As it turns out, the use of antibiotics in agriculture breeds these hardy bacteria very efficiently. Over time, microorganisms have learned to teach each other how to outsmart the best pharmaceutical drugs we have to offer, and they are winning the battle.
Many experts have issued strong warnings, saying that we are quickly reverting back to the pre-antibiotic age when some of the most important advances in modern medicine – intensive care, organ transplants, care for premature babies, and surgeries – will no longer be possible.
We're already very close to the end of the road where ALL antibiotics fail, and once that happens, it will be the end of modern medicine as we know it. Common illnesses such as bronchitis or strep throat may turn into deadly sepsis.
Surgeries previously considered low risk or "routine," such as hip replacements, might suddenly be too risky without antibiotics, and complex surgeries like organ transplants may not be survivable anymore.
One of the most prestigious research hospitals in the US recently struggled with an outbreak of a highly lethal antibiotic-resistant superbug called Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC)4—a bacterium that has developed resistance to multiple drugs. KPC is not alone in this feat.  
A 2013 paper by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) titled "Antibiotic Resistance in Foodborne Pathogens,"5 report that between 1973 and 2011, there were 55 antibiotic-resistant foodborne outbreaks in the US, and more than half of them involved pathogens resistant to five or more antibiotics.

How Did This Epidemic of Antibiotic Resistance Occur?

Antibiotic overuse and inappropriate use in medicine is one factor. As much as half of all antibiotics used in clinics and hospitals are inappropriately used.6 But the routine use of antibiotics in agriculture is likely at the very heart of the matter.
First of all, agriculture accounts for about 80 percent of all antibiotics used in the US, so it's really a primary source of antibiotic exposure. Second, it is the continuous use of low dose antibiotics that really allows the bacteria to survive and become increasingly hardy and drug resistant.
At present, 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics are administered to livestock in the US every year for purposes other than treating disease, such as making the animals grow bigger faster. When eating meat from antibiotic-treated animals, you consume low dose antibiotics. For example, 80 different antibiotics are allowed in cows’ milk!
Treated animal products may also be contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 22 percent of antibiotic-resistant illness in humans is in fact linked to food. In the words of associate director of the CDC Dr. Srinivasan:7
“The more you use an antibiotic, the more you expose a bacteria to an antibiotic, the greater the likelihood that resistance to that antibiotic is going to develop. So the more antibiotics we put into people, we put into the environment, we put into livestock, the more opportunities we create for these bacteria to become resistant.”
In the featured documentary, researchers using state of the art genome sequencing were able to compare E.coli samples found on supermarket meat with E.coli samples collected from patients with drug-resistant urinary tract infections. In this way, they were able to genetically link more than 100 urinary tract infections to tainted supermarket meat products...
Avoiding antibiotic-resistance is but one of several good reasons to avoid meats and animal products from animals raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). This is partly why grass-fed and grass-finished antibiotic- and hormone-free meat is the ONLY type of meat I recommend—again because it is repetitive low-dose exposure that allows bacteria to adapt and develop strong resistance. Most Americans eat meat several times a week, and that kind of exposure can add up.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), meanwhile, has known for more than 12 years that routine use of antibiotics in livestock is harmful to human health, yet it has taken no meaningful action. Promptings to voluntarily reduce usage has not resulted in positive change. On the contrary, the most recent FDA report shows that antibiotic usage actually increased by 16 percent between 2009 and 2012, and nearly 70 percent of the antibiotics used are considered “medically important” for humans.8
Another contributing factor is the genetic engineering of our foods. As Jeffrey Smith explained at a recent GMO Summit, it's possible that GMOs from food can transfer genetic material to your normal gut bacteria, conferring antibiotic resistance and turning them into superbugs. GMOs have been scientifically proven to activate and deactivate hundreds if not thousands of genes, and we have no idea about the risks associated with this, as no one has studied it.

What's the Solution?

The impending superbug crisis has a four-prong solution:
  • Improved infection prevention, with a focus on strengthening your immune system naturally. Avoiding sugars, processed foods, and grains is foundational for this. Adding in traditionally fermented and cultured foods is equally important, as this will help optimize your microflora
  • More responsible use of antibiotics in human medicine
  • Limiting use of antibiotics in livestock animals, along with a return to biodynamic farming and a complete overhaul of our food system
  • Innovative new approaches to the treatment of infections from all branches of science, natural as well as allopathic. Fortunately, Mother Nature gives us a cornucopia of botanicals with inherent antibiotic activity that does not promote resistance like antibiotic drugs do. Natural compounds with antimicrobial activity include:
GarlicCinnamonOregano extractColloidal silver
Manuka honey(Clinical trials have found that Manuka honey can effectively eradicate more than 250 clinical strains of bacteria, including some resistant varieties, such as MRSA)Probiotics andfermented foodsEchinaceaSunlight andvitamin D

What You Can Do Right Now to Avoid Promoting Antibiotic Resistance

When it comes to avoiding antibiotic-resistant disease, one major key is to keep your immune system healthy and strong. This is primarily done through lifestyle choices such as proper diet, sleep, stress management, and exercise. In terms of diet, remember to opt for whole organic foods, raised without antibiotics and preferably locally sourced.
Optimizing your own immune system function will help keep you safe from developing a potentially lethal infection in the first place. I also urge you to consider the following strategies, which will help curtail the spread of antibiotic resistance in general. While the problem of antibiotic resistance needs to be stemmed through public policy on a nationwide level, the more people who get involved on a personal level, the better.
Such strategies include:
  • Use antibiotics only when absolutely necessaryFor example, antibiotics are typically unnecessary for most ear infections, and they do NOT work on viruses. They only work on bacterial infections, and even then, they're best reserved for more serious infections.
  • Avoid antibacterial household products, such as antibacterial soaps, hand sanitizers, and wipes, etc., as these also promote antibiotic resistance by allowing the strongest bacteria to survive and thrive.
  • Properly wash your hands with warm water and plain soap, to prevent the spread of bacteria. Be particularly mindful of washing your hands and kitchen surfaces after handling raw meats, as about half of all meat sold in American grocery stores is likely to be contaminated with pathogenic bacteria. Avoid antibiotic soaps that typically have dangerous chemicals like triclosan.
  • Take common-sense precautions in the kitchen: Kitchens are notorious breeding grounds for disease-causing bacteria, courtesy of contaminated meat products, including antibiotic-resistant strains of E-coli. To avoid cross-contamination between foods in your kitchen, I suggest adhering to the following recommendations:
  • Use a designated cutting board, preferably wood, not plastic, for raw meat and poultry, and never use this board for other food preparation, such as cutting up vegetables. Color coding your cutting boards is a simple way to distinguish between them
  • To sanitize your cutting board, be sure to use hot water and detergent. Simply wiping it off with a rag will not destroy the bacteria
  • For an inexpensive, safe, and effective kitchen counter and cutting board sanitizer, use 3% hydrogen peroxide and vinegar. Keep each liquid in a separate spray bottle, and then spray the surface with one, followed by the other, and wipe off
  • Coconut oil can also be used to clean, treat, and sanitize your wooden cutting boards. It's loaded with lauric acid that has potent antimicrobial actions. Olive oil is another alternative. The fats will also help condition the wood
  • Purchase organic, antibiotic-free meats and other foods. Reducing the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a significant reason for making sure you're only eating grass-fed, organically-raised meats and animal products. Besides growing and raising your own, buying your food from responsible, high-quality, sustainable sources is your best bet, and I strongly encourage you to support the small family farms in your area.

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

By Dr. Mercola
As noted in the featured video, there are currently five different artificial sweeteners on the market. The one you're most likely to encounter is aspartame, which also tends to be the worst of the bunch.
Aspartame and other artificial sweeteners are primarily promoted to diabetics and those concerned about their weight. This despite the fact that artificial sweeteners have repeatedly been shown to produce the exact opposite effects:
Over time, artificial sweeteners have also crept into a wide variety of products not directly targeting diabetics and dieters.
Artificial sweeteners are added to about 6,000 different beverages, snacks, and food products, making label-reading an ever pressing necessity. Disturbingly, food industry groups are now trying to hide the presence of artificial sweeteners in certain foods...

Like GMOs, Industry Wants to Hide Artificial Sweeteners in Foods

Last year, the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) filed a petition with the FDA requesting the agency amend the standard of identity for milk and 17 other dairy products, in order to allow for the addition of artificial sweeteners without having to indicate their use on the label.
The IDFA claims the proposed amendments would "promote more healthful eating practices and reduce childhood obesity by providing for lower-calorie flavored milk products" since many children are more inclined to drink flavored milk products than unflavored milk.
Not only is IDFA behind the push to put aspartame in milk,  but they are also one of four trade organizations suing Vermont1 in an effort to overturn the state's GMO labeling law, which was passed in May.
It would seem that, far from being concerned about providing Americans with high quality dairy, the IDFA is wholly invested in deceiving the American public for the benefit of the chemical technology industry. Why else would they be so insistent on hiding ingredients that are suspected of harmful effects?

Artificial Sweeteners Cause Metabolic Confusion

One of the reasons why artificial sweeteners do not help you lose weight relates to the fact that your body is not fooled by sweet taste without accompanying calories.2,3
When you eat something sweet, your brain releases dopamine, which activates your brain's reward center. The appetite-regulating hormone leptin is also released, which eventually informs your brain that you are "full" once a certain amount of calories have been ingested.
However, when you consume something that tastes sweet but doesn't contain any calories, your brain's pleasure pathway still gets activated by the sweet taste, but there's nothing to deactivate it, since the calories never arrive.  
Artificial sweeteners basically trick your body into thinking that it's going to receive sugar (calories), but when the sugar doesn't come, your body continues to signal that it needs more, which results in carb cravings.
Besides worsening insulin sensitivity and promoting weight gain, aspartame and other artificial sweeteners also promote other health problems associated with excessive sugar consumption, including:
  • Cardiovascular disease and stroke4,5,6
  • Alzheimer's disease. While poor diet is a major driver of Alzheimer's in general (the primary culprits being sugar/fructose and grains, especiallygluten), the key mechanism of harm here appears to be methanol toxicity—a much-ignored problem associated with aspartame in particular.
  • In a previous interview, toxicology expert Dr. Woodrow Monte (author of the book While Science Sleeps: A Sweetener Kills7), explains the links between aspartame and methanol toxicity and the formation of toxic formaldehyde.

Research Overwhelmingly Refutes 'Diet' Claims of Artificial Sweeteners

Contrary to industry claims, research over the last 30 years—including several large scale prospective cohort studies—have shown that artificial sweeteners stimulate appetite, increase cravings for carbs, and produce a variety of metabolic dysfunctions that promote fat storage and weight gain—often to the researchers' great surprise.
Below is sampling of some of the studies published through the years, clearly refuting the beverage industry's claims that diet soda aids weight loss. The 2010 review in the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine8 is particularly noteworthy.
It provides a historical summary of artificial sweeteners in general, along with epidemiological and experimental evidence showing that artificial sweeteners tends to promote weight gain. It also illustrates that as usage of artificial sweeteners has risen, so has obesity rates.
obesity trends
Source: Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine June 8 2010: v83(2
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