Month: October 2017

New Finding: Broccoli Helps Heal Leaky Gut

(Dr. Mercola) Broccoli, a close relative of Brussels sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower, is perhaps most well-known for its chemoprotective properties. It’s an excellent source of phytonutrient glucosinolates, flavonoids and other health-boosting antioxidant and anticancer compounds. One of the compounds in broccoli known to have anticancer activity is sulforaphane, a naturally occurring organic sulfur.

Studies have shown sulforaphane supports normal cell function and division while causing apoptosis (programmed cell death) in colon,1prostate,2 breast3 and tobacco-induced lung cancer4 cells, and reducing the number of cancerous liver tumors in mice.5 Three servings of broccoli per week may reduce your risk of prostate cancer by more than 60 percent.6

Recommended Reading: You Need Sulforaphane – How and Why to Grow Broccoli Sprouts

Its beneficial effects on obesity, Type 2 diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) have also been highlighted in a number of studies. Researchers have now identified yet another major health benefit of this cruciferous vegetable: a healthy gut. In fact, researchers suggest broccoli can be very helpful in the treatment of colitis and leaky gut.7,8,9,10 As reported by CBS:11

“The Penn State study was carried out with mice, who were found to be much more capable of tolerating digestive issues than those who weren’t put on a broccoli diet. The scientists added that the results could be a breakthrough for humans, as digestive problems can reportedly lead to other severe issues.”

Broccoli Helps Heal a Leaky Gut

What they discovered is that when you eat broccoli, a compound called indolocarbazole (ICZ) is produced, which catalyzes a healthy balance not only in your gut but also in your immune system, as the two are intricately connected. In this study, 15 percent of the animals’ diet was swapped out for raw broccoli, equating to a human eating 3.5 cups of broccoli per day.

Admittedly, that’s quite a bit of broccoli, but the researchers note you can obtain an equivalent amount of ICZ from a single cup of Brussels sprouts, as they contain three times the ICZ of broccoli. Earlier studies had confirmed that one of the health benefits of broccoli is its ability to quench inflammation, so it makes sense it would be helpful for gastrointestinal (GI) inflammation as well.

Leaky gut is a condition that occurs due to the development of gaps between the cells (enterocytes) that make up the membrane lining your intestinal wall. These tiny gaps allow substances such as undigested food, bacteria and metabolic wastes that should be confined to your digestive tract to escape into your bloodstream.

Once the integrity of your intestinal lining is compromised, allowing toxic substances to enter your bloodstream, your body experiences a significant increase in inflammation. Your immune system may also become confused and begin to attack your own body as if it were an enemy — a hallmark of autoimmunity disorders.

Chronic inflammation in your body can also contribute and/or lead to other health conditions such as arthritis and heart disease. While leaky gut syndrome is primarily associated with inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis and celiac disease, even healthy people can have varying degrees of intestinal permeability leading to a wide variety of health symptoms, and this can be significantly influenced by your diet.

Removing lectins from your diet will also go a long way to healing a leaky gut. You can learn more about the details of this in the previous interview I did with Dr. Steven Gundry, who wrote the book “The Plant Paradox.”

Recommended Reading: Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases

How Broccoli Improves Gut Function

A key component of a healthy gut is having good barrier function to prevent particles from escaping from your intestinal tract into your bloodstream. Receptors located on the lining of your gut wall called aryl hydrocarbon receptors (AHRs) play a vital role in maintaining a well-functioning barrier. One of their primary jobs is to trigger a reaction when toxins are detected.

As mentioned, broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables contain glucosinolate compounds, which are broken down into ICZ and other byproducts during digestion in your stomach. By binding to and activating AHR, ICZ helps boost your immune function and improve the balance of the microbiome in your gut.

The compound sulforaphane also inhibits inflammation by reducing damaging reactive oxygen species (ROS) by as much as 73 percent.12 Sulforaphane is also an immune stimulant,13 so broccoli beneficially influences your immune function in more ways than one.

Interestingly, excessive activation of AHR will have an opposite, detrimental effect. According to the researchers in the featured study, dioxin activates this receptor, but in this case the resulting hyperactivation triggers toxicity. Lead author Gary Perdew, professor of agricultural sciences, said,14 “What we were interested in is: Could you locally activate the receptor naturally at a level that would cause only modest AHR activation in the gut, but not cause systemic activation, which could possibly lead to negative effects?”

The answer, as you may have guessed, is yes, you can — with cruciferous vegetables. Importantly, broccoli and other sulfur-rich cruciferous vegetables also improve detoxification, which is another important factor that influences your health, including your gut health. Broccoli sprouts, in particular, have been shown to help detox environmental pollutants such as benzene.15,16,17  As noted by The World’s Healthiest Foods:18

“… [S]ulforaphane increases the activity of the liver’s phase 2 detoxification enzymes. These enzymes … are well-known for their ability to clear a wide variety of toxic compounds from the body including not only many carcinogens, but also many reactive oxygen species, a particularly nasty type of free radical.

By jump-starting these important detoxification enzymes, compounds in crucifers provide protection against cell mutations … and numerous other harmful effects that would otherwise be caused by these toxins.”

The Importance of Fiber for Healthy Gut Function

Broccoli and other members of this family are also good sources of fiber — another important ingredient for good gut health. Fiber helps nourish your gut microbiome to strengthen your immune function and reduce your risk of inflammatory diseases.19 Fiber also activates a gene called T-bet, which is essential for producing immune cells in the lining of your digestive tract.20

These immune cells, called innate lymphoid cells (ILCs), help maintain balance between immunity and inflammation in your body and produce interleukin-22, a hormone that helps protect your body from pathogenic bacteria. ILCs even help resolve cancerous lesions and prevent the development of bowel cancers and other inflammatory diseases.

Recommended Reading: Raw Cruciferous Vegetables Prevent Cancer

Broccoli Has Many Valuable Health Benefits

As you can see, the benefits of broccoli are significant, making it well worth adding a few spears and/or broccoli sprouts to your meals on a regular basis. Doing so has been shown to:21

Boost mitochondrial health and energy metabolism via nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), an enzyme in broccoli that your body needs to produce nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD).

NAD may slow age-related decline in health by restoring your metabolism to more youthful levels22,23,24 Once in your system, NMN is quickly converted into NAD

 Aid with weight loss. Sulforaphane has been shown to slow weight gain, especially the accumulation of dangerous visceral fat, by speeding up tissue browning, a heat-generating type of fat that burns energy rather than storing it, and decreasing gut bacteria associated with obesity25,26,27
Boost overall immune function, thanks to compounds such as diindolylmethane (DIM). DIM has also been shown to be a valuable player in the prevention and treatment of cancer28,29 Lower your risk for atherosclerosis and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, thanks to phenolic compounds that reduce free radicals
Improve digestion and gut health, courtesy of significant amounts of fiber and AHR-activating ICZ Support eye health, thanks to high levels of the carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin
Benefit your skin, as sulforaphane helps repair skin damage Fight allergies, thanks to the flavonoid kaempferol
Provide important vitamins and minerals, including magnesium, potassium, calcium, protein and vitamin C Help reduce blood sugar levels, as it contains both soluble fiber and chromium
Support heart health and help prevent thickening of your arteries Reduce your risk of developing NAFLD by lowering triglyceride levels in your liver30,31
Reduce inflammation, which is at the root of many chronic diseases, including asthma, Type 2 diabetes and heart disease32,33,34 Improve Type 2 diabetes by lowering blood glucose levels and improving gene expression in your liver35,36

How to Get the Most Out of Your Broccoli

Contrary to what you might think, the medicinal qualities of mature broccoli are actually optimized through cooking. Precision is key, however, as there’s a fine line between optimizing its nutrient content and destroying it through overcooking. Here are some tips and guidelines to help you get the most out of your broccoli:

•Adhere to ideal cooking times: Research37 shows steaming mature broccoli spears for three to four minutes will increase the available sulforaphane content by eliminating epithiospecifier protein — a heat-sensitive sulfur-grabbing protein that inactivates sulforaphane — while still retaining the enzyme myrosinase, which converts glucoraphanin to sulforaphane. The latter is important, because without myrosinase, you cannot get absorb the sulforaphane.

Make sure you do not exceed the five-minute mark, as you start losing valuable compounds beyond that point. If you opt for boiling, blanch it in boiling water for no more than 20 to 30 seconds, then immerse it in cold water to stop the cooking process.

•Eat cruciferous veggies with mustard seed powder or other myrosinase-rich food: Eating your cruciferous veggies with a myrosinase-containing food38 such as mustard seed powder, which contains a particularly resilient form of myrosinase,39 will further maximize sulforaphane content. Aside from mustard seed, other alternatives include daikon radishes, wasabi, arugula or coleslaw. Adding a myrosinase-rich food is particularly important if you eat the broccoli raw, or use frozen broccoli.

•Opt for fresh: Ideally, use raw, freshly harvested broccoli whenever possible as frozen broccoli has diminished ability to produce sulforaphane. This is because myrosinase40 is quickly destroyed during the blanching process.41 Broccoli can also lose 80 percent of its glucoraphanin — the precursor of sulforaphane — in the first 10 days after harvest.

•For recipes calling for longer cooking times, chop and wait before cooking: When a cruciferous vegetable is chopped, myrosinase is activated. So, by chopping the food and waiting about 40 minutes, the sulforaphane will have formed, allowing you to cook the food in excess of the recommended three to four minutes of steaming, or 30-second blanching, without risking sulforaphane loss.42

The reason for this is because both the precursor to sulforaphane and the sulforaphane itself are largely resistant to heat. It’s the myrosinase that gets destroyed during cooking, which then prevents the formation of sulforaphane. By allowing the sulforaphane to form before you cook it, you circumvent this chain of events. As an example, if making broccoli soup, blend the raw broccoli first; wait 40 minutes for the sulforaphane to form, then boil it.

Meet the Billionaire Family Who Sparked America’s Opioid Crisis

(The Anti-Media by ZHE) Unbeknownst to many, the Sackler Family, with assets of $13 billion, the nation’s 19th wealthiest family is one the top players in philanthropy. You can find the Sackler Gallery in the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C. or visit the Sackler wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The Sackler’s even have a museum at Harvard, Guggenheim, and dozen of universities around the country. If it’s art— the Sackler family has it.

Participating in the art game takes money and a lot of it. So, where does the Sackler money come from?

According to Forbes, the “Sacklers continue to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from the businesses in 2016 – some $700 million last year, by Forbes’ calculations – from an estimated $3 billion in Purdue Pharma revenues plus at least $1.5 billion in sales from their foreign companies.”

Recommended: How to Detoxify From Chemotherapy and Repair the Body

Forbes outlines a brief history lesson of how the Sackler family got started in the world of medicine:

The family fortune began in 1952 when three doctors — Arthur (d. 1987), Mortimer (d. 2010) and Raymond Sackler — purchased Purdue, then a small and struggling New York drug manufacturer. The company spent decades selling products like earwax remover and laxatives before moving into pain medications by the late 1980s. To create OxyContin, Purdue married oxycodone, a generic painkiller, with a time-release mechanism to combat abuse by spreading the drug’s effects over a half-day.

The FDA approved the medication in 1995 and it soon took off. By 2003 OxyContin sales hit $1.6 billion as the drug helped drive a huge nationwide spike in opioid prescribing. At its peak in 2012, doctors wrote more than 282 million prescriptions for opioid painkillers, including OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet  — nearly enough for every American to have a bottle.

Now opioid prescriptions are declining amid increased scrutiny over drug addiction, down 12% since 2012 according to data from healthcare information firm IMS Health. OxyContin (which is also beginning to face competition from authorized generics while fighting to protect its patents over tamper-proof, extended-release oxycodone) saw prescriptions fall 17%.

Recommended: How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children:

It wasn’t until the 1980’s, as explained by Forbes, the Sackler family through their family-owned drug company called Purdue Pharma created OxyContin. Then in 1995, the FDA approved the medication and sales exploded. Sales hit $1.6 billion in 2003, as a nationwide spike in opioids was seen. By the peak in 2012, doctors wrote more than 282 million prescription for opioid painkillers, such as OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet. Good times for the Sacklers from 1996- 2012, as the family drug business exploded.

According to The New Yorker, Oxycontin ”has reportedly generated some thirty-five billion dollars in revenue for Purdue” since 1995. OxyContin’s sole active ingredient is oxycodone, a chemical cousin of heroin, which makes it highly addictive.

The New Yorker further says Purdue used marketing techniques to deceive the American public of the drug’s true addictive characteristics.

Purdue launched OxyContin with a marketing campaign that attempted to counter this attitude and change the prescribing habits of doctors. The company funded research and paid doctors to make the case that concerns about opioid addiction were overblown, and that OxyContin could safely treat an ever-wider range of maladies. Sales representatives marketed OxyContin as a product “to start with and to stay with.” Millions of patients found the drug to be a vital salve for excruciating pain. But many others grew so hooked on it that, between doses, they experienced debilitating withdrawal.

Oddly enough, around the time OxyContin was approved, prescription opioid deaths across the United States surged. Fast forward to more relevant times, where heroin and fentanyl deaths are exploding.

Recommended: How to Detoxify From Antibiotics and Other Chemical Antimicrobials

Diving into the opioid crisis onto the streets of Baltimore. It’s very common to see local citizens shooting up heroin on city streets. In this video, I asked a man how did this addiction start? Guess what he said?… It all started with legal painkillers, such as OxyContin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7o89RNoHi0

As a few parasitical elites make billions flooding America’s streets with opioids. We the every day American citizen have to deal with the consequences, as President Trump outlined in yesterday’s opioid crisis speech:

  • In 2016, more than two million Americans had an addiction to prescription or illicit opioids.
  • Since 2000, over 300,000 Americans have died from overdoses involving opioids.
  • Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of injury death in the United States, outnumbering both traffic crashes and gun-related deaths.
  • In 2015, there were 52,404 drug overdose deaths — 33,091 of those deaths, almost two-thirds, involved the use of opioids.
  • The situation has only gotten worse, with drug overdose deaths in 2016 expected to exceed 64,000.
  • This represents a rate of 175 deaths a day.

Bottomline: It’s time for the American people to learn the truth about the opioid crisis and the very few elites who have profited. The question you should ask: why did our government allow this to happen?

Laboratory Testing Reveals Substantial Amounts of Glyphosate in Foods and Population

(Dr. Mercola) As food has become increasingly adulterated, contaminated and genetically engineered, the need for laboratory testing has exponentially grown. John Fagan, president of Health Research Institute Labs (HRI Labs), is an expert in this area. As explained by Fagan, HRI Labs “makes the invisible, visible, giving you the ability to see what is in your food and your environment.”

Fagan studied biochemistry and molecular biology at Cornell University, where he also got his Ph.D. After doing research for eight years at the National Institutes of Health, he went into academia and conducted cancer research using genetic engineering as a research tool. This experience is ultimately what raised his concerns about genetic engineering, especially as it pertains to food.

As a result, he created the first lab for GMO testing in the U.S., followed by labs in Europe and Japan. He’s also trained laboratories in 17 other countries in GMO testing. “What this did was make GMOs visible. Before that testing was there, nobody could tell whether those soybeans, or that corn was genetically engineered or not,” Fagan says. “After GMO testing was available, people had a choice.”

HRI Labs tests both micronutrients and toxins — the good and the bad. “We feel that the kind of testing we’re doing can open a window for you in each of those areas, so you can make better choices about the food you eat, and that you share with your family,” he says.

Testing Techniques and Equipment

There are several types of tests that can be done on a GMO food. Antigens are one type of test. DNA testing is another. Since DNA is far more stable than proteins, genetically engineered foods, even when highly processed, can be easily identified with DNA testing. A test commonly used to check DNA is the polymerase chain reaction or PCR test. Because it amplifies the DNA signal, it can detect even a single genetically engineered corn kernel in a bag containing 10,000 or more corn kernels.

The chromatograph linked to a mass spectrometer is another central piece of equipment that HRI uses. It allows you to test for a wide variety of things at very high sensitivity. Unfortunately, the cost and complexity involved prevents many labs from having this tool.

“Liquid chromatography is capable of taking a sample of food … or whatever you’re interested in, and fractionating it into hundreds of compounds, separating them out. That is then fed into a mass spectrometer; a machine that measures, ultimately, molecular weight of whatever it’s looking at.

With that you can detect — at extremely low levels and identify very specifically — almost any natural or unnatural compound … down to the parts per trillion in many cases. To give you a sense of what that means, 40 parts per trillion, which is [the limit of] detection that we have for some materials, is like if you were to take a single drop of that chemical and dilute it into 20 Olympic swimming pools full of water.

That’s the extent of dilution required to achieve 40 parts per trillion. This is extreme sensitivity. These [instruments] are like the Teslas of analytical chemistry.

[Liquid chromatography linked to a mass spectrometer] is what we use for measuring glyphosate. Because these machines are very expensive, many of the analytical labs out there don’t have access to them. Also, because it is very specialized equipment, you need somebody with a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry, or equivalent, to do this kind of testing. What we’re doing is … unique in that way.”

The Politics of Food Testing

One of the reasons we decided to collaborate with HRI Labs in testing our own supplements is because many commercial laboratories used to confirm the purity of raw materials tend to provide distorted or prejudicial information. One of the great benefits of HRI Labs, in my view, is its objectivity and ability to provide accurate data, thanks to the sensitivity of their equipment. While many labs will claim to be independent, their primary customers are big food companies.

“They don’t want to embarrass [their customers]. They don’t want to bring anything to the surface on that level, so they tend to give very superficial numbers,” Fagan says. “Typically, they work to thresholds that are established based on politics and convenience, not science and safety.

For instance, you can go to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) website, or the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s website and they will say, ‘Wheat should have less than such and such amount of glyphosate in it.’

Glyphosate is … the most commonly used agrochemical, and it’s now been demonstrated to cause cancer, liver and kidney damage and birth defects. You’ll find there a number for it, but if you go to the scientific literature you discover that levels [of glyphosate] hundred or a thousand times lower … are in fact toxic to the system. For that reason, those government established thresholds are not very meaningful.”

This is a point worthy of reiteration: The use of politically-influenced safety thresholds to “prove” a food is safe is pervasive in the food industry. The only thing such safety levels accomplish is generating a false sense of security, which benefits food companies financially. HRI Labs, on the other hand, looks at the available research when establishing their threshold levels.

Recommended Reading: USDA Drops Glyphosate Testing Plans, Makes Monsanto’s Life Easier

Glyphosate Testing

One of the toxins HRI Labs is currently focusing on is glyphosate, and the public testing being offered (see below) allows them to compile data on the pervasiveness of this chemical in the food supply. When I participated in the environmental exposure test a while back, glyphosate was undetectable, which means levels in my system were below 40 parts per trillion, likely because I eat primarily organic and homegrown foods, and expel toxins I might come in contact with through exercise and regular sauna use.

“What we’re finding is there’s quite a range of levels of exposure, but that people who are eating organic generally have much lower levels. Women tend to have, on average, slightly lower levels than men. There are certain behaviors that tend to lead one to have higher levels.

For instance, it isn’t a super strong correlation, but it appears that if you are a golfer, you’re more likely to get exposed, because they use [glyphosate and other pesticides] on golf courses …

The reassuring thing is that if you … change your diet … and go to a diet that avoids things that might contain these chemicals, then within a week or two your levels of glyphosate will drop significantly. Glyphosate levels are a good indicator for guiding your dietary choices … Often people come back to us saying, ‘This changed my way of thinking about my diet.’ This is a good thing”

Glyphosate Found in Popular Ice Cream Brand

HRI Labs is often hired to test foods claiming to be non-GMO, “all natural” and/or organic. Unfortunately, many times testing reveals such claims to be untrue. A recent case in point is that of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. HRI Labs’ testing revealed their ice cream contains glyphosate. Fagan tells the story:

“Organic Consumers Association and … Regeneration Vermont were concerned about what was happening with Ben & Jerry’s. They were concerned … that the dairy producers … were not even able to get a price for their product that would cover their costs for producing the milk. There was also a concern from people in the state that the dairies were polluting the lakes, and creating problems for the Vermont tourist industry …

They wanted to look into what was going on with the quality of the milk. They sent us samples and we did some really in-depth testing using the very best methods out there.

We used triple quadrupole mass spectrometry linked to high pressure liquid chromatography to actually look at the quality of the ingredients in a product. What we found with Ben & Jerry’s ice cream was a bit shocking in that it contained substantial levels of glyphosate …

Ten of the 11 flavors we looked at contained measurable amounts of glyphosate, and at least one of them contained levels that, according to most recent research, raised questions about safety. In particular, it had been found that glyphosate at quite low levels — levels considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency and FDA — … could actually cause problems like fatty liver disease.

As you may know, there’s an epidemic of fatty liver disease in America today, and it’s linked with things like metabolic syndrome … Organic Consumers Association has been discussing those results around the country, and discussing with Ben & Jerry’s if they could do something about that.

The obvious and most logical thing for them to do is to begin to use ingredients that are organic instead of just conventional ingredients, because organic bans the use of things like glyphosate in the production of crops …”

Recommended Reading: Monsanto’s Glyphosate, Fatty Liver Disease Link Proven – Published, Peer-reviewed, Scrutinized Study

Substantial Amounts of Glyphosate Found in Many Foods

HRI Labs has investigated a number of other foods as well, including grains, legumes, and beans. Most if not all of these types of crops need to dry in the field before being harvested and to speed that process, the fields are doused with glyphosate a couple weeks before harvest. As a result of this practice, called desiccation, grain-based products, legumes and beans contain rather substantial amounts of glyphosate.

Quaker Oats,1 for example, were found to contain very high levels of glyphosate. People who regularly eat nonorganic oats also have elevated levels of the chemical in their urine. “These are the kinds of problems that are coming up out there,” Fagan says. “All that’s needed is for the grain producers to change their practices, so that they’re not spraying the fields with this weed killer immediately before they harvest it, and it will solve those problems.”

Wines also contain surprising amounts of glyphosate. As it turns out, weeds in vineyards are managed by spraying glyphosate, which ends up in the grapes as the roots of the grape vines pick it up through the soil.

“This testing … is making something that’s been invisible in our food system, visible to us,” Fagan says. “[A] vegetable like spinach that you buy in an American grocery store is going to contain, on average, eight different pesticides. That’s eight different pesticides, and you’re taking it home to feed your family without knowing that’s the case …

The reason you aren’t able to know that is because the chemical companies have done a really good job lobbying our government so that nobody in the supply chain has to talk about these … agrochemicals. The farmer doesn’t have to talk about them. The brands that are selling products made from those [raw ingredients] don’t have to talk about them. The grocery stores don’t have to. They’ve been made invisible in our food system, and that’s a big concern.

We’re doing testing using rigorous methods, the very best methods out there, the most sensitive methods out there, to make these invisible things visible, so that you know more about what’s in your food system, and in the foods you’re giving to your family. This is so important, because this allows each of us to make better choices about the food they provide to their children.”

Water and Environmental Exposure Tests Now Available

HRI Labs is unique in that they’ve created two glyphosate tests for the public — a water testing kit and an environmental exposure test kit. The environmental exposure test is a urine test that will tell you how much glyphosate you have in your system. As mentioned earlier, this will give you a good idea of the purity of your diet. If your glyphosate level is high, chances are you’ve been exposed to many other agrochemicals as well.

So far, HRI Labs has analyzed more than 1,200 urine samples. The testing is being done as part of a research project, which will provide valuable information about the presence of glyphosate in the diet. It will also help answer questions about how lifestyle and location affects people’s exposure to agrochemicals. Here are some of their findings to date:

  • 76 percent of people tested have some level of glyphosate in their system
  • Men typically have higher levels than women
  • People who eat oats on a regular basis have twice as much glyphosate in their system as people who don’t (likely because oats are desiccated with glyphosate before harvest)
  • People who eat organic food on a regular basis have an 80 percent lower level of glyphosate than those who rarely eat organic. This indicates organic products are a safer choice
  • People who eat five or more servings of vegetables per day have glyphosate levels that are 50 percent lower than those who don’t eat fewer vegetables

According to Fagan:

“So far, we haven’t seen any connection with rural versus city dwellers, or with seasonal changes. This indicates that most of the glyphosate is coming into our [bodies] through the food we eat and not through the environment around us. Though, we have seen some interesting things. For instance, in the Midwest, we’re seeing that rain water has quite substantial levels of glyphosate … Rain water, although you might think of that as being a healthy source of water, is a little risky that way.”

Recommended Reading – Glyphosate Found In 93% of Urine Samples

GMOs Linked to Dramatic Rise in Glyphosate Contamination

HRI Labs is also collaborating with a research group at the University of California in San Diego that has access to urine samples from epidemiological studies in which populations were tracked over 15 and 20 years. By comparing urine samples from people going back into the 1970s, up until the present, they’ve been able to show that once GMOs appeared in the marketplace, glyphosate levels rose dramatically.

“[I]t shows there’s a correlation between the use of [glyphosate] in agriculture and the level of exposure of the population,” Fagan says. “Remember, there’s growing evidence that low levels of [chemicals] interact with each other, so that you have a little glyphosate here, and maybe some atrazine from another place, and those together might have a nasty impact …

That’s where we are with things today. We’re working in a focused way to look at other aspects of our food system, and looking not just for the pesticides and the negative things, but we want to look and understand what the connections between the way food is produced … and its nutritional value are.

What we’re seeing is that healthy soil makes healthy food, makes healthy people. We’re going to go into that using these very sophisticated techniques, like high pressure liquid chromatography linked to mass spectrometry, to look at all of the nutrients at once.

With these machines, from a single sample of broccoli we can look at 500 to 1,000 different metabolites, different nutrients, and in one fell swoop get a sense of … how does regeneratively produced broccoli compare with broccoli that’s produced using chemicals, or how does a chicken produced in a confined animal feeding operation compare in nutritional value to a chicken produced in a regenerative pasture-based production system?

We don’t have the answers to that yet, but I’ll bet we’re going to find big differences in the nutrition. The protein value may be the same, and the fats and the carbohydrates, but [in] the micronutrients we’re going to see big differences, and it’s those micronutrients that make the difference in terms of the health of your physiology, the strength of bones, and the balance in your physiology. We hope to be able to bring some really powerful new information to you in this way …”

Food Testing Is Here to Stay

The advent of GMOs drastically altered our food system in several respects, and not a single change has been beneficial. Today, factory farms have become one of the largest sources of toxic pollution that destroys soil, water and air quality, and threatens human health in more ways than one. Nutritional quality of food has declined while contamination with toxic chemicals and drug-resistant pathogens has increased.

Nutritional and chemical testing is an invaluable tool to get an understanding of the full extent of the problem. It is our hope that, with enough evidence, change will eventually be brought about, if not from a government level, then from the ground up, driven by informed consumers demanding purer food.

As mentioned by Fagan, my product development team is now using HRI Labs to evaluate the purity and quality of our own product line as well — an extra double-check, if you will, to ensure our products are maximally pure and safe, and of the highest quality and nutritional value possible. This is being added as another layer of quality control on top of our standard quality protocols.

Again, if you want to test your drinking water or environmental exposure levels for glyphosate, those tests are now available to the public. You can find both of them in my online store. They’re provided as a service to my readers at the same price you’d pay if you were to order it right from HRI Labs.

Low-Carb Ketogenic Diet Proves As Effective As Antipsychotic Drugs, Without Negative Side Effects

(Natural Blaze By Alex Pietrowski) Among the many pharmaceutical options available for treating mental health issues, antipsychotic medications are some of the most overprescibed. So much so, in fact that in 2015 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report urging lower uses of antipsychotic meds for elderly patients suffering from symptoms of dementia, citing a number of dangerous side effects of this class of drugs.

They blunt behaviors. They can cause sedation. It increases a patient’s risk for falls. And, if you just want to get to the very basic bottom line, why should someone pay for something that’s not needed? ~Bradley Williams, geriatric pharmacist, University of Southern California [Source]

Just as is with depression and anxiety, numerous cases demonstrate that dietary changes and other lifestyle changes can often times achieve better results, more safely, than using psychotropic medications.

Recommended: Should You Be on the Ketogenic Diet? The Pros and Cons of Carb Limiting

Georgia Ede, MD, psychiatrist and pharmacologist in Massachusetts reports on two interesting cases where low-carb diets, specifically ketogenic diets, seemed to be exceptionally beneficial in improving conditions in patients who would ordinarily have been prescribed antipsychotic medications.

The cases involved “Dr. Chris Palmer, a psychiatrist from Harvard’s McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts.” A short summary…

Dr. Palmer described the experiences of two adults in his practice with schizoaffective disorder who had tried a ketogenic diet. Whereas schizophrenia is characterized primarily by psychotic symptoms, people with schizoaffective disorder have to cope not only with psychosis but also with overlapping periods of severe mood symptoms. Signs of psychosis include paranoia, auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, intrusive thoughts/images, and/or disorganized thinking. Mood episodes may include depression, euphoria, irritability, rage, suicidal thoughts, and/or mood swings. As a practicing psychiatrist for more than 15 years, I can tell you that schizoaffective disorder is a particularly challenging diagnosis for people to live with and for psychiatrists to treat. Even the most potent antipsychotic and mood stabilizing medications available often don’t bring sufficient relief, and those medications come with a significant risk of side effects. [Source]

The first case outlined involved a 31-year-old woman with an eight-year diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder who had tried twelve different medications, including, “a powerful antipsychotic agent considered by many psychiatrists to be the medication of last resort due to its risk of serious side effects.” The patient had also undergone extensive electroshock therapy, but saw incredible results with a ketogenic diet.

She had also undergone 23 rounds of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT or what used to be called “electric shock treatments”), yet remained troubled by serious symptoms. She decided to try a ketogenic diet with the hope of losing some weight. After four weeks on the diet, her delusions had resolved and she’d lost ten pounds. At four months’ time, she’d lost 30 pounds and her score on a clinical questionnaire called the PANSS (Positive and Negative Symptom Scale), which ranks symptoms on a scale from 30 (best) to 210 (worst), had come down from 107 to 70. [Source]

In a second case, a 33-year-old man with a fourteen-year diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder who had tried seventeen medication without success, and had decided to try a ketogenic diet for weight loss.

Within three weeks, he reported “dramatic” reduction in auditory hallucinations and delusions, as well as better mood, energy, and concentration. Over the course of a year, he lost a total of 104 pounds. When in ketosis, his PANSS scores improved significantly—falling from 98 to only 49. His daily function and quality of life also improved dramatically; he moved out of his father’s home, began dating, and started taking college courses. [Source]

In both of these cases, the patient’s negative side-effects returned once the ketogenic diet was abandoned, giving a strong indication of the power of a low-carb diet to treat the mental disorders for which antipsychotic medications are prescribed. Read more articles by Alex Pietrowski.

Alex Pietrowski is an artist and writer concerned with preserving good health and the basic freedom to enjoy a healthy lifestyle. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com. Alex is an avid student of Yoga and life.

This article (Low-Carb Ketogenic Diet Proves to be as Effective as Antipsychotic Drugs Without Negative Side Effects) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Alex Pietrowski and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement.

80% of Infant Formulas Contain Arsenic, Study Finds

(Independent) A large amount of baby food products contain dangerous chemicals, a new study has found.

Products were revealed to include arsenic, lead, cadmium and acrylamide in a test carried out by The Clean Label Project, a non-profit organisation that advocates consumer transparency.

They used Nielsen data to analyse 530 different snacks, cereals, formulas and drinks that had been purchased in the last five months.

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Out of the products analysed, researchers found that 65 percent contained arsenic, 58 percent contained cadmium, 36 percent contained lead and 10 percent contained acrylamide.

80 per cent of infant formula samples were also found to contain arsenic, a toxin which the World Health Organisation associates with a slew of health issues such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer.

 While the amounts of each chemical varied with each product, some contained up to 600 parts of arsenic per billion.
 Many of these were rice-based products such as crisps and “puffs”.
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The study also found that baby foods today had 70 percent more acrylamide than the average French fry, a chemical which has been linked to brain damage and reproductive challenges.

The report named and shamed some major baby food retailers, including Enfamil, Plum Organics and Sprout, who they deemed as some of the worst offenders for containing harmful chemicals.

They also found that 60 percent of products with “BPA free” labels, in fact, tested positive for bisphenol A, an industrial chemical which is used to make plastic.

Clean Label Project concluded their findings by identifying the top and bottom five cereals, formulas, snacks, drinks and jar meals in terms of dangerous chemical contents.

Their full list can be seen here.