Author: Natural Blaze

US The Worst Place In The World To Give Birth, USA Today Investigation

(Natural Blaze by Andrea Germanos) A new USA Today investigation offers a searing indictment of maternal care in the United States, and says the country “is the most dangerous place in the developed world to give birth.”

“Deadly Deliveries,” the result of a four-year investigation, references federal data showing that more than 50,000 women are “severely injured” and roughly 700 die during childbirth each year. Perhaps even more staggering is that “half of these deaths could be prevented and half the injuries reduced or eliminated with better care,” the investigation found.

The findings, based on interviews with women and a trove of internal hospital records, “reveal a stunning lack of attention to safety recommendations and widespread failure to protect new mothers.”

Related: Autism Correlates with Circumcision

Such failures often stem from inadequate or delayed responses to hemorrhages and dangerously high blood pressure.

A disturbing trend noted in the report: from 1990 to 2015, in most developed nations the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 births was steady or dropped. Not so in the U.S., where the figure soared. In Germany, France, Japan, England, and Canada the number had fallen to below 10 in the time frame. In the U.S., meanwhile, the figured soared to 26.4.

California, though, is an exception. The state’s maternal death rate fell by half—a drop attributed to it adopting “the gold standard” of safety measures.

Looking at the overall picture in the U.S., though, “it’s a failure at all levels, at national organization levels and at the local hospital leadership levels as well,” Dr. Steven Clark, a leading childbirth safety expert and a professor at Baylor College of Medicine, said to USA Today.

One of the investigative reporters, Alison Young, talked with “CBS This Morning” about the report.

Related: Trump’s Administration Is Not A Fan of Breastfeeding

The investigation follows a related analysis out late last year by ProPublica. Affirming previous studies, its analysis found “that women who hemorrhage at disproportionately black-serving hospitals are far more likely to wind up with severe complications, from hysterectomies, which are more directly related to hemorrhage, to pulmonary embolisms, which can be indirectly related. When we looked at data for only the most healthy women, and for white women at black-serving hospitals, the pattern persisted.”

This article (US the ‘Worst Place in the World’ to Give Birth: USA Today Investigation) appeared at Natural Blaze via Common Dreams. It can be reshared with attribution.  (Photo: steve_h/flickr/cc)

What You Don’t Know About Sugar Can Kill You

(Natural Blaze by Lisa Egan)

“Sugar causes diseases: unrelated to their calories and unrelated to the attendant weight gain. It’s an independent primary-risk factor. Now, there will be food-industry people who deny it until the day they die, because their livelihood depends on it.” – Dr. Robert Lustig

****

In part 1 of this series, How Sugar Keeps You Trapped in a Cycle of Addiction, we talked about the prevalence of sugar in the typical diet, how easy it is to inadvertently consume too much, and how addictive the tiny white crystals are. Here, in part 2, we will discuss just how dangerous sugar is.

****

Remember when dietary fat was demonized and “experts” told us it would give us heart disease and cancer and kill us all?

It didn’t take long for “food” manufacturers to capitalize on that information. Seemingly overnight, supermarkets were filled with non-fat and low-fat products: cookies, crackers, snack foods, cake, cheese, ice cream – you name it, there is a fat-free or low-fat version available.

For many, the assumption was that calories and carbohydrate content no longer mattered. As long as a food was low-fat or fat-free, it was fair game, and we indulged.

Related: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

Those of us who fell for the trend are paying for it now. Dearly.

That’s because in order to make reduced-fat and fat-less foods taste good, sugar was added. Lots and lots of sugar.

The low-fat/fat-free diet became the High Sugar Diet.

The food industry – aided and abetted by politicians and lobbyists – has undermined (to say the least) the American diet for decades. Without bribery partnerships between corporations and politicians, after all, who else would make the outrageous claims that ketchup and pizza are vegetables?

In 2014, Dr. Robert Lustig, pediatric endocrinologist and expert on sugar and obesity, told Time that since the low-fat/no-fat craze began, we’ve suffered some serious ramifications:

Since then, childhood obesity rates have increased from 5% to 30%, children developed type 2 diabetes (never seen before) and doctors discovered a new entity, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, now prevalent in one-seventh of all American children. At the same time, academic test scores fell, behavior problemsand the need for medication increased, and spending on health care rose from 9.0% of our GDP in 1980 to 17.2% today. More people are shuttled through the medical system every day, and 75% percent of healthcare dollars are spent on preventable diseases that are either caused by or related to sugar consumption.

Change Your Thinking – Change Your Life! Optimal Thinking Works (ad)

Oh, and Dr. Lustig added:

If we don’t acknowledge and aggressively address the inherent connection between “all dessert, all the time” and the medical, social and economic devolution we currently face, America will find itself fat, stupid, and broke.

Last year, Dr. Lustig and his colleagues published the results of a study they conducted on 43 children ranging in age from 8 to 18. First, the researchers collected detailed food questionnaires from each of the adolescents to get an idea of the average amount of calories they ate per day. Then they designed a special menu for each of them for nine days that matched the total numbers of calories they would normally eat. The only difference in the nine-day diet was that most of the sugar the children ate was replaced by starch – the overall number of calories remained the same.

Related: Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

The children weighed themselves daily, and if they were losing weight, they were told to eat more of the provided food in order to keep their weight the same throughout the study. Their total dietary sugar was reduced to 10% of their daily calories.

The results?

“Everything got better,” said Lustig.

Some of the children went from being insulin resistant (a precursor to developing diabetes in which the body’s insulin levels can no longer keep up with the pace of breaking down sugar that is being consumed), to insulin sensitive (that’s an improvement).

The children’s fasting blood sugar levels dropped by 53%, along with the amount of insulin their bodies produced since insulin is normally needed to break down carbohydrates and sugars. Their triglyceride and LDL levels also declined and, most importantly, they showed less fat in their liver. These improvements occurred in children whether or not they lost weight.

Dr. Lustig said the improvements happened even though the children were not given ideal diets for the study. Starches were given instead of more healthful options for a reason – he wanted to prove the point that even with a less than optimal diet, the removal of most sugars still resulted in significant improvements in health measures.

Best Paleo Cookbook for Beginners (Ad)

The good doctor’s study adds to accumulating evidence that sugar is damaging to health.

Here’s an overview of what research has discovered so far.

Sugar is a real heart-breaker…

Consuming a diet high in sugar has been shown to cause numerous abnormalities found in patients with coronary heart disease (CHD), such as high total cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL, oxidized LDL, uric acid, insulin resistance and abnormal glucose tolerance, low HDL, and altered platelet function. Oh – and these changes can occur within just a few weeks of high sugar consumption. It doesn’t take long for damaging effects to begin.

Added fructose – generally in the form of sucrose (table sugar) or high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in processed foods and beverages is especially harmful. Consuming these sugars can lead to resistance in leptin, which is a key hormone in the maintenance of normal body weight. The overconsumption of added fructose increases the risk for obesity, which is also a risk factor for CHD.

More than one study has shown a link between high sugar consumption and high blood pressure.

Sugar can damage your liver and kidneys, too

Related: Sugar Leads to Depression – World’s First Trial Proves Gut and Brain are Linked (Protocol Included)

Excess fructose significantly increases the risk for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) – the most common liver disease in the US and a strong independent risk factor for CHD. The association between NAFLD and CHD is stronger than the link between CHD and smoking, hypertension, diabetes, male gender, high cholesterol, or metabolic syndrome. Yikes.

Right now, you might be wondering how sugar causes fat to build up in the liver and arteries. Here’s an explanation. When there is more fructose in your body than it can use for energy, it stores the excess by converting it into fatty acids, which are then packaged into small fat molecules called triglycerides. Some of those fat globules enter your bloodstream and can line your arteries…increasing your risk of a heart attack. Other triglycerides build up in your liver and can lead to NAFLD.

Scientifically Proven Method to Reverse Diabetes (Ad)

NAFLD often has no symptoms, but it can cause fatigue, jaundice, swelling in the legs and abdomen, mental confusion, and more. If left untreated, it can cause your liver to swell, which is called non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). It can also contribute to cirrhosis, liver failure, and liver cancer.

Overweight and obese people aren’t the only ones who can develop NAFLD – it is seen in thin people too. In fact, doctors have coined the term “TOFI” (“thin on the outside, fat on the inside”) to describe such cases.

Some findings suggest that sugar consumption – particularly in the form of sugary drinks – may cause kidney disease. Diabetes is also a major risk factor for kidney disease.

Diabetes, cancer, and aging are linked with high consumption as well…

A diet high in sugar has also been found to promote prediabetes and diabetes. And people with both of these conditions have a much greater risk for CHD compared to normal healthy patients, particularly a severe narrowing of the left main coronary artery.

The amount of fat in the liver is associated with insulin resistance (a condition in which the body produces insulin but doesn’t use it effectively) and plays a role in Type 2 diabetes – whether or not a person is obese.

High amounts of dietary sugar in the typical western diet may increase the risk of breast cancer and metastasis to the lungs.

Added sugar can make tumors grow faster.

Sugary beverages may have been responsible for 133,000 deaths from diabetes, 45,000 from cardiovascular disease, and 6,450 from cancer.

Burn belly fat by avoiding this one food (Ad)

Regular consumption of sugary drinks has been associated with the onset of type 2 diabetes independent of obesity.

Drinking sugar-sweetened beverages every day is associated with an increase in visceral fat, a particularly nasty type of body fat that has been linked with diabetes, heart disease risk, and a multitude of other health issues.

Related: Best Supplements To Kill Lyme and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Lyme Disease

Studies have found a relationship between sugar consumption and the aging of our cells. Aging of the cells can be the cause of things as simple as skin aging to conditions as serious as chronic disease. But even more alarming is the evidence that sugar may affect the aging of the brain: it has been linked to deficiencies in memory and overall cognitive health.

I’ll conclude with a warning from part 1:

The only ones benefiting from your high sugar consumption are the sugar and processed food industries. Think you can rely on your government to provide you with accurate information about the dangers of sugar? That’s not going to happen – Big Sugar is a large, powerful, and wealthy industry that has been using Big Tobacco-style tactics to influence policy and ensure that government agencies dismiss troubling health claims against their product for decades.

Your health – and that of your family – is in YOUR hands.

****

Stay tuned for part 3 of this series – we will cover tricks that will help you break the sugar addiction cycle.

****

Additional Resources

Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease

Sugar Has 56 Names: A Shopper’s Guide

Good Calories, Bad Calories

Pure, White, and Deadly: How Sugar Is Killing Us and What We Can Do to Stop It

Explore our articles on SUGAR

This article appeared first at Nutritional Anarchy and appears here with permission.

Disclaimer

Nutritional Anarchy is owned and operated by Lisa Egan and may contain advertisements, sponsored content, paid insertions, affiliate links or other forms of monetization.

Study Shows School Gardens Help To Prevent Nutritional Deficiencies In Children

(Natural Blaze by Phillip Schneider) It’s no secret that kids in America don’t eat as many vegetables as they should. As non-processed fruit and vegetable intake have been linked to a lower risk of heart disease, stroke, obesity, and hypertension in adulthood, the importance of childhood vegetable consumption is becoming increasingly relevant.

According to the CDC’s 2nd Nutritional Report, some of the most common nutrient deficiencies in America could be alleviated with a greater intake of vegetables such as spinach, broccoli, and mushrooms.

Image credit: Hawaii Outdoors Institute

SEE: Farming Preschool Would Teach Kids How To Grow Their Own Food

In fact, 93% of kids aged 1-18 did not meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Patterns vegetable intake recommendations from 2007-2010, according to a 2014 study by the CDC titled Vital Signs: Fruit and Vegetable Intake Among Children.

Recommended: Circumcision Linked to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

Fortunately, researchers from Arkansas, Iowa, New York, and Washington State have analyzed vegetable intake among low-income elementary school children may have a solution.

The study, published in the Journal of Preventative Medicine, shows that children who attend elementary schools with school gardens also have a greater availability of vegetables at home. This effect is strongest among low-income kids in second or third grade, while fourth, fifth, and sixth graders benefit less.

These school garden programs, also called garden interventions, include raised-bed gardening kits and age-appropriate lessons to accompany them. After receiving data from questionnaires given over a period of three years, the researchers concluded that school gardens do in fact increase the availability of fruits and vegetables at home.

“The garden intervention led to an overall increase in availability of low-fat vegetables at home. Among younger children (2nd grade at baseline), the garden intervention led to greater home availability of vegetables, especially, low-fat vegetables.” – Nancy M. Wells, Study author

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

Although the exact reason that school gardens have this effect is unclear, previous studies have shown that the availability of vegetables at home does have an effect on vegetable consumption among school-age children.

SEE: New Preschool Teaches Gardening And Urban Farming

A CDC study from 2012 analyzed the fruit, vegetable, and dairy consumption of schoolchildren in Northern Serbia and compared various predictors such as parental reinforcement and availability.

Through researching the patterns of vegetable consumption for 212 children in Serbia, the study authors concluded that “vegetable intake was positively related to paternal modeling behavior and availability of vegetables at home.”

“Various personal and environmental factors are associated with children’s intake of fruits, vegetables, and dairy. Interventions to promote fruit, vegetable, and dairy consumption in Serbian schoolchildren should focus on modeling and reinforcement by parents and teachers and increasing availability at school and at home.” – Sanja Šumonja, Study author

Starting in the 1990’s with Alice Water’s Edible Schoolyard Project, proponents of school gardens have advocated for better availability of healthy vegetables for lower-income and minority students, as well as a more well-rounded and human education, rather than strictly as intellectuals.

“You can’t expect a whole person if you don’t educate the whole child, we don’t strictly learn within four square walls.” – Mud Baron, gardening guru for LAUSD and caretaker of the North Hollywood High School farm

Some teachers are incorporating other subjects such as geography into the courses by shaping the raised beds like continents and teaching their history.

Recommended: Trump’s Administration Is Not A Fan of Breastfeeding

However, some oppose school gardens on the grounds that they do not prepare students for some of the more challenging courses they will eventually take in high school such as Algebra. Caitlin Flanagan, a writer for the Atlantic, argues that school gardens not only fail to prepare students for higher education but are also reminiscent of Jim Crow laws.

This new research is likely encouraging for school gardening advocates as well as proponents of healthy eating and self-sufficiency among today’s youth. In the years to come, we may begin to see the full benefit that gardening can give to America’s youth.

Phillip Schneider is a student and a staff writer for Waking Times.

Lions Ate A Gang Of Poachers Who Tried To Kill Protected Rhinos

(Natural Blaze by Melinda Cafferty) The internet is celebrating an unlikely alliance of lions who saved endangered rhinos from being poached by killing and devouring the killers on a South African game reserve.

We’re fairly certain that we do not need to point out the poetic justice here, but have you noticed that animals are becoming more likely to fight back against their killers/captors? Or perhaps we are just hearing about it more?

At least two suspected rhino poachers have been mauled to death and eaten by lions on a South African game reserve, officials say.

Rangers discovered the remains of two, possibly three, people in a lion enclosure in the Sibuya reserve, near the south-east town of Kenton-on-Sea.

A high-powered rifle and an axe were also found.

There has been an rise in poaching in Africa in recent years, to feed growing demand for rhino horn in parts of Asia.

In China, Vietnam and elsewhere, rhino horn is believed to have aphrodisiac qualities.

Sibuya reserve owner Nick Fox said in a statement on the reserve’s Facebook page that the suspected poachers entered the reserve late on Sunday night or early on Monday morning.

Fox says that the unknown number of poachers must have wandered into the large lion pride without realizing it. “We’re not sure how many there were – there’s not much left of them,” he said.

The remains were first spotted on Tuesday 10:30 a.m. (EDT). The Sibuya game reserve lost three rhinos to poachers in 2016, and 9 rhinos were killed by poachers in the area (Eastern Cape province).

Sadly, this pales in comparison to the 7,000 rhinos killed in South Africa in the last decade.

The anti-poaching who arrived on the scene found an incriminating “hunting rifle with silencer, a long axe and wire-cutters.” They had to tranquilize three lions just to get to the remains.

Police are now patrolling the area to keep an eye out for any poachers who may have survived. However, it does appear that the lions took care of business, seeing how guarded they were about their kills.

Who knows, maybe humans have unknown medicinal qualities, and that the lions received full market value for the poachers who tried to scurry away.

In 2017, at least three “trophy kill” hunters were killed by the animals they were attempting to kill.

Again, we don’t need to say it…

This article (Lion Pride Ate a Gang of Poachers Who Tried to Kill Protected Rhinos) was created by and appeared first at Natural Blaze. It can be reshared with attribution but MUST include link to homepage, bio, intact links and this message. Photos: Pixabay

Landmark Case Makes It Illegal To Kill Dogs For Food In South Korea

S. Korea Dog Meat Farm dogs Santa, Dancer, Vixen, Blitzen, and Dasher get ready to fly to the United States.

(Natural Blaze By Brandon Turbeville) A landmark ruling by a court in South Korea has many activists hoping that the decision may pave the way for a ban on the horrific dog meat practice in the country.

Image credit: The Humane Society

This is because a South Korean court has ruled for the first time that it is illegal to kill dogs for their meat.

While lawmakers in South Korea have long hesitated to actually ban the practice, some have moved forward with laws governing hygiene and/or cruelty and cruelty in slaughter methods.

“It is very significant in that it is the first court decision that killing dogs for dog meat is illegal itself,” said Kim Kyung-eun, a lawyer with animal rights organization Coexistence of Animal Rights on Earth.

She also stated that the ruling has “paved the way for outlawing dog meat consumption entirely.”

The ruling came about after CARE filed complaints against a dog farm operator and accusing him of “killing animals without proper reasons,” in addition to violating hygiene and building regulations.

Prosecutors charged the man and he was convicted, being fined $2,700 and waiving his right to appeal. The fact that he was found guilty, however, is giving animal rights activists a reason to cheer due to the fact that his conviction sets the precedent that killing dogs for food cannot be used as a legal defense.

Park So-youn, the leader of CARE is planning to repeat the process with other dog meat farms, tracking down the farms and slaughterhouses, filing complaints, and hoping for a similar legal outcome.

“Over the past decades, public discourse over dog meat consumption has shifted towards banning it,” she said.

“The dog meat industry will take greater heat because of the court ruling.”

his article (Landmark Case Makes it Illegal to Kill Dogs for Food in South Korea) was created by and appeared first at Natural Blaze. It can be reshared with attribution but MUST include link to homepage, bio, intact links and this message.