Could This ‘Humble’ Vitamin Hinder Future Cancers?

People who have the highest intakes of vitamin K2, not vitamin K1, may significantly lower their risk of cancer and cancer mortality, according to results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study.

After analyzing data from over 24,000 participants who were followed for over 10 years, those who had the highest intakes of vitamin K2 were 14 percent less likely to develop cancer and 28 percent less likely to die of cancer compared to those with the lowest intakes.

A separate study by researchers at the Mayo Clinic also revealed impressive anti-cancer effects from vitamin K. Those with the highest dietary vitamin K intakes had a 45 percent lower risk of developing Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system, than those with the lowest.

Source:  Dr. Mercola

Posted:  Just One More Pet

S 510 is hissing in the grass

BUZZ THIS! - By Steve Green

S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010,  may be the most dangerous bill in the history of the US.  It is to our food what the bailout was to our economy, only we can live without money.

“If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes.  It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.”  ~Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistleblower

It is similar to what India faced with imposition of the salt tax during British rule, only S 510 extends control over all food in the US, violating the fundamental human right to food.

Monsanto says it has no interest in the bill and would not benefit from it, but Monsanto’s Michael Taylor who gave us rBGH and unregulated genetically modified (GM) organisms, appears to have designed it and is waiting as an appointed Food Czar to the FDA (a position unapproved by Congress) to administer the agency it would create — without judicial review — if it passes.  S 510 would give Monsanto unlimited power over all US seed, food supplements, food and farming.

History

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton introduced HACCP (Hazardous Analysis Critical Control Points) purportedly to deal with contamination in the meat industry.  Clinton’s HACCP delighted the offending corporate (World Trade Organization “WTO”) meat packers since it allowed them to inspect themselves, eliminated thousands of local food processors (with no history of contamination), and centralized meat into their control.  Monsanto promoted HACCP.

In 2008, Hillary Clinton, urged a powerful centralized food safety agency as part of her campaign for president.  Her advisor was Mark Penn, CEO of Burson Marsteller*, a giant PR firm representing Monsanto.  Clinton lost, but Clinton friends such as Rosa DeLauro, whose husband’s firm lists Monsanto as a progressive client and globalization as an area of expertise, introduced early versions of S 510.

S 510 fails on moral, social, economic, political, constitutional, and human survival grounds.

1.  It puts all US food and all US farms under Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, in the event of contamination or an ill-defined emergency.  It resembles the Kissinger Plan.

2.  It would end US sovereignty over its own food supply by insisting on compliance with the WTO, thus threatening national security.  It would end the Uruguay Round Agreement Act of 1994, which put US sovereignty and US law under perfect protection.  Instead, S 510 says:

COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS.

Nothing in this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the United States is a party.

3.  It would allow the government, under Maritime Law, to define the introduction of any food into commerce (even direct sales between individuals) as smuggling into “the United States.”  Since under that law, the US is a corporate entity and not a location, “entry of food into the US” covers food produced anywhere within the land mass of this country and “entering into” it by virtue of being produced.

4.  It imposes Codex Alimentarius on the US, a global system of control over food.  It allows the United Nations (UN), World Health Organization (WHO), UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the WTO to take control of every food on earth and remove access to natural food supplements.  Its bizarre history and its expected impact in limiting access to adequate nutrition (while mandating GM food, GM animals, pesticides, hormones, irradiation of food, etc.) threatens all safe and organic food and health itself, since the world knows now it needs vitamins to survive, not just to treat illnesses.

5.  It would remove the right to clean, store and thus own seed in the US, putting control of seeds in the hands of Monsanto and other multinationals, threatening US security. See Seeds – How to criminalize them, for more details.

6.  It includes NAIS, an animal traceability program that threatens all small farmers and ranchers raising animals.  The UN is participating through the WHO, FAO, WTO, and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in allowing mass slaughter of even heritage breeds of animals and without proof of disease.  Biodiversity in farm animals is being wiped out to substitute genetically engineered animals on which corporations hold patents.  Animal diseases can be falsely declared.  S 510 includes the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), despite its corrupt involvement in the H1N1 scandal, which is now said to have been concocted by the corporations.

7.  It extends a failed and destructive HACCP to all food, thus threatening to do to all local food production and farming what HACCP did to meat production – put it in corporate hands and worsen food safety.

8.  It deconstructs what is left of the American economy.  It takes agriculture and food, which are the cornerstone of all economies, out of the hands of the citizenry, and puts them under the total control of multinational corporations influencing the UN, WHO, FAO and WTO, with HHS, and CDC, acting as agents, with Homeland Security as the enforcer.  The chance to rebuild the economy based on farming, ranching, gardens, food production, natural health, and all the jobs, tools and connected occupations would be eliminated.

9.  It would allow the government to mandate antibiotics, hormones, slaughterhouse waste, pesticides and GMOs.  This would industrialize every farm in the US, eliminate local organic farming, greatly increase global warming from increased use of oil-based products and long-distance delivery of foods, and make food even more unsafe.  The five items listed — the Five Pillars of Food Safety — are precisely the items in the food supply which are the primary source of its danger.

10. It uses food crimes as the entry into police state power and control.  The bill postpones defining all the regulations to be imposed; postpones defining crimes to be punished, postpones defining penalties to be applied.  It removes fundamental constitutional protections from all citizens in the country, making them subject to a corporate tribunal with unlimited power and penalties, and without judicial review.  It is (similar to C-6 in Canada) the end of Rule of Law in the US.

For further information, watch these videos:

Food Laws – Forcing people to globalize
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia-P4rL2IWc

State Imposed Violence … to snatch resources of ordinary people
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onw_PkVvpts&feature=related

Corporate Rule 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PwqUQ_HIlg&feature=related

Reclaiming Economies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXoJHG-er7A&feature=related

Oak snake image at Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park, Florida
http://snipurl.com/vrg6p

Source:  S-510 is hissing in the grass - April 24, 2010

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/s-510-is-hissing-in-the-grass/

Re-posted:  TrueHealthIsTrueWealth

ELECTRO-MAGNETIC PULSE DETAILS REVISITED

There's no need for you to go back to the stone age if a nuclear war occurs. It is possible to avoid much of the EMP damage that could be done to electrical equipment—including the computer that brought this article to you—with just a few simple precautions.

First of all, it's necessary to get rid of a few erroneous facts, however.

One mistaken idea is that EMP is like a powerful bolt of lightning. While the two are alike in their end results—burning out electrical equipment with intense electronic surges—EMP is actually more akin to a super-powerful radio wave. Thus, strategies based on using lightning arrestors or lightning-rod grounding techniques are destined to failure in protecting equipment from EMP.

Another false concept is that EMP "out of the blue" will fry your brain and/or body the way lightning strikes do. In the levels created by a nuclear weapon, it would not pose a health hazard to plants, animals, or man PROVIDED it isn't concentrated.

EMP can be concentrated. That could happen if it were "pulled in" by a stretch of metal. If this happened, EMP would be dangerous to living things. It could become concentrated by metal girders, large stretches of wiring (including telephone lines), long antennas, or similar set ups. So—if a nuclear war were in the offing—you'd do well to avoid being very close to such concentrations. (A safe distance for nuclear-generated EMP would be at least 8 feet from such stretches of metal.)

This concentration of EMP by metal wiring is one reason that most electrical equipment and telephones would be destroyed by the electrical surge. It isn't that the equipment itself is really all that sensitive, but that the surge would be so concentrated that nothing working on low levels of electricity would survive.

Protecting electrical equipment is simple if it can be unplugged from AC outlets, phone systems, or long antennas. But that assumes that you won't be using it when the EMP strikes. That isn't all that practical and—if a nuclear war were drawn out or an attack occurred in waves spread over hours or days— you'd have to either risk damage to equipment or do without it until things had settled down for sure.

One simple solution is to use battery-operated equipment which has cords or antennas of only 30 inches or less in length. This short stretch of metal puts the device within the troughs of the nuclear-generated EMP wave and will keep the equipment from getting a damaging concentration of electrons. Provided the equipment isn't operated close to some other metal object (i.e., within 8 feet of a metal girder, telephone line, etc.), it should survive without any other precautions being taken with it.

If you don't want to buy a wealth of batteries for every appliance you own or use a radio set up with longer than 30-inch antenna, then you'll need to use equipment that is "hardened" against EMP.

The trick is that it must REALLY be hardened from the real thing, not just EMP-proof on paper. This isn't all that easy. The National Academy of Sciences recently stated that tailored hardening is "not only deceptively difficult, but also very poorly understood by the defense-electronics community." Even the US Military has equipment which might not survive a nuclear attack, even though it is designed to do just that.

That said, there are some methods which will help to protect circuits from EMP and give you an edge if you must operate ham radios or the like when a nuclear attack occurs. Design considerations include the use of tree formation circuits (rather than standard loop formations); the use of induction shielding around components; the use of self-contained battery packs; the use of loop antennas; and (with solid-state components) the use of Zener diodes. These design elements can eliminate the chance an EMP surge from power lines or long antennas damaging your equipment. Another useful strategy is to use grounding wires for each separate instrument which is coupled into a system so that EMP has more paths to take in grounding itself.

A new device which may soon be on the market holds promise in allowing electronic equipment to be EMP hardened. Called the "Ovonic threshold device", it has been created by Energy Conversion Devices of Troy, MI. The Ovonic threshold device is a solid-state switch capable of quickly opening a path to ground when a circuit receives a massive surge of EMP. Use of this or a similar device would assure survival of equipment during a massive surge of electricity.

Some electrical equipment is innately EMP-resistant. This includes large electric motors, vacuum tube equipment, electrical generators, transformers, relays, and the like. These might even survive a massive surge of EMP and would likely to survive if a few of the above precautions were taking in their design and deployment.

At the other end of the scale of EMP resistance are some really sensitive electrical parts. These include IC circuits, microwave transistors, and Field Effect Transistors (FET's). If you have electrical equipment with such components, it must be very well protected if it is to survive EMP.

One "survival system" for such sensitive equipment is the Faraday box.

A Faraday box is simply a metal box designed to divert and soak up the EMP. If the object placed in the box is insulated from the inside surface of the box, it will not be affected by the EMP travelling around the outside metal surface of the box. The Faraday box simple and cheap and often provides more protection to electrical components than "hardening" through circuit designs which can't be (or haven't been) adequately tested.

Many containers are suitable for make-shift Faraday boxes: cake boxes, ammunition containers, metal filing cabinets, etc., etc., can all be used. Despite what you may have read or heard, these boxes do NOT have to be airtight due to the long wave length of EMP; boxes can be made of wire screen or other porous metal.

The only two requirements for protection with a Faraday box are:
(1) the equipment inside the box does NOT touch the metal container (plastic, wadded paper, or cardboard can all be used to insulate it from the metal) and
(2) the metal shield is continuous without any gaps between pieces or extra-large holes in it.

Grounding a Faraday box is NOT necessary and in some cases actually may be less than ideal. While EMP and lightning aren't the "same animal", a good example of how lack of grounding is a plus can be seen with some types of lightning strikes. Take, for example, a lightning strike on a flying airplane. The strike doesn't fry the plane's occupants because the metal shell of the plane is a Faraday box of sorts. Even though the plane, high over the earth, isn't grounded it will sustain little damage.

In this case, much the same is true of small Faraday cages and EMP. Consequently, storage of equipment in Faraday boxes on wooden shelves or the like does NOT require that everything be grounded. (One note: theoretically non-grounded boxes might hold a slight charge of electricity; take some time and care before handling ungrounded boxes following a nuclear attack.)

The thickness of the metal shield around the Faraday box isn't of much concern, either. This makes it possible to build protection "on the cheap" by simply using the cardboard packing box that equipment comes in along with aluminum foil. Just wrap the box with the aluminum foil (other metal foil or metal screen will also work); tape the foil in place and you're done. Provided it is kept dry, the cardboard will insulate the gear inside it from the foil; placing the foil-wrapped box inside a larger cardboard box is also wise to be sure the foil isn't accidentally ripped anywhere. The result is an "instant" Faraday box with your equipment safely stored inside, ready for use following a nuclear war.

Copper or aluminium foil can help you insulate a whole room from EMP as well. Just paper the wall, ceiling and floor with metal foil. Ideally the floor is then covered with a false floor of wood or with heavy carpeting to insulate everything and everyone inside from the shield (and EMP). The only catch to this is that care must be taken NOT to allow electrical wiring connections to pierce the foil shield (i.e., no AC powered equipment or radio antennas can come into the room from outside). Care must also be taken that the door is covered with foil AND electrically connected to the shield with a wire and screws or some similar set up.

Many government civil defence shelters are now said to have gotten the Faraday box, "foil" treatment. These shelters are covered inside with metal foil and have metal screens which cover all air vents and are connected to the metal foil. Some of these shelters probably make use of new optical fibre systems—protected by plastic pipe—to "connect" communications gear inside the room to the "outside world" without creating a conduit for EMP energy to enter the shelter.

Another "myth" that seems to have grown up with information on EMP is that nearly all cars and trucks would be "knocked out" by EMP. This seems logical, but is one of those cases where "real world" experiments contradict theoretical answers and I'm afraid this is the case with cars and EMP. According to sources working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, cars have proven to be resistant to EMP in actual tests using nuclear weapons as well as during more recent tests (with newer cars) with the US Military's EMP simulators.

One reason for the ability of a car to resist EMP lies in the fact that its metal body is "insulated" by its rubber tires from the ground. This creates a Faraday cage of sorts. (Drawing on the analogy of EMP being similar to lightning, it is interesting to note that cases of lightning striking and damaging cars is almost non-existent; this apparently carries over to EMP effects on vehicles as well.)

Although Faraday boxes are generally made so that what is inside doesn't touch the box's outer metal shield (and this is especially important for the do-it-yourself since it is easy to inadvertently ground the Faraday box—say by putting the box on metal shelving sitting on a concrete floor), in the case of the car the "grounded" wiring is grounded only to the battery. In practice, the entire system is not grounded in the traditional electrical wiring sense of actually making contact to the earth at some point in its circuitry. Rather the car is sitting on insulators made of rubber.

It is important to note that cars are NOT 100 percent EMP proof; some cars will most certainly be affected, especially those with fibreglass bodies or located near large stretches of metal. (I suspect, too, that recent cars with a high percentage of IC circuitry might also be more susceptible to EMP effects.)

The bottom line is that all vehicles probably won't be knocked out by EMP. But the prudent survivalist should make a few contingency plans "just in case" his car (and other electrical equipment) does not survive the effects of EMP. Discovering that you have one of the few cars knocked out would not be a good way to start the onset of terrorist attack or nuclear war.

Most susceptible to EMP damage would be cars with a lot of IC circuits or other "computers" to control essential changes in the engine. The very prudent may wish to buy spare electronic ignition parts and keep them a car truck (perhaps inside a Faraday box). But it seems probable that many vehicles WILL be working following the start of a nuclear war even if no precautions have been taken with them.

One area of concern are explosives connected to electrical discharge wiring or designed to be set off by other electric devices. These might be set off by an EMP surge. While most citizens don't have access to such equipment, claymore mines and other explosives would be very dangerous to be around at the start of a nuclear box if they weren't carefully stored away in a Faraday box. Ammunition, mines, grenades and the like in large quantities might be prone to damage or explosion by EMP, but in general aren't all that sensitive to EMP.

A major area of concern when it comes to EMP is nuclear reactors located in the US. Unfortunately, a little-known Federal dictum prohibits the NRC from requiring power plants to withstand the effects of a nuclear war. This means that, in the event of a nuclear war, many nuclear reactors' control systems might will be damaged by an EMP surge. In such a case, the core-cooling controls might become inoperable and a core melt down and breaching of the containment vessel by radioactive materials into the surrounding area might well result. (If you were needing a reason not to live down wind from a nuclear reactor, this is it.)

Provided you're not next door to a nuclear power plant, most of the ill effects of EMP can be overcome. EMP, like nuclear blasts and fallout, can be survived if you have the know how and take a few precautions before hand.

And that would be worth a lot, wouldn't it?

Laughter Is The Best Medicine

Video: JK Wedding Entrance Dance

ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2008) — Laughter is the best medicine. We’ve heard the expression time and again. For decades, researchers have explored how humor helps patients relieve stress and heal. Melissa B. Wanzer, EdD, professor of communication studies at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY, has taken it one step further, with her research on how humor helps medical professionals cope with their difficult jobs. She also looked at how humor affects the elderly and how it can increase communication in the workplace and in the classroom.

She wondered, how do health care providers care for terminally ill people and manage to come back to work each day? So she asked them, in large-scale studies. Their answer? Humor. Wanzer has found humor to be beneficial in other areas as well.

“If employees view their managers as humor-oriented, they also view them as more effective,” notes Wanzer. “Employees also reported higher job satisfaction when they worked for someone who was more humor-oriented and used humor effectively and appropriately.” Wanzer and her colleagues found that humor is an effective way to cope with on-the-job stress – again, when used appropriately.

Wanzer also recently collaborated on research that found aging adults who used humor more frequently reported greater coping efficacy, which led to greater life satisfaction. This was the third study she conducted, with three different populations, where the conclusion was the same.

But what if you don’t consider yourself to be particularly funny? Wanzer says that while you can’t change your personality, you can find ways to integrate humor into your day-to-day life and change your communication patterns.

“Self-disparaging humor, making fun of oneself, is a very effective form of humor communication, as long as it is not done excessively,” says Wanzer, who adds that telling jokes is just a small portion of humor communication.

“I also tell people to use what is around them; ‘props can be humorous too, so long as they are used appropriately and are not perceived as distracting.”

Wanzer teaches a course in “Constructive Uses of Humor,” at Canisius College, which always fills to capacity. Students are required to prepare and perform a stand-up routine in front of the class. But the class is not all fun and games. Students read through journal articles and interpret factual studies on humor. One such case involves Southwest Airlines’ strategic effort to integrate humor into the workplace, in order to create a positive environment for employees and customers.

Wanzer’s research also shows that students report learning more from teachers who use humor effectively.

“Regardless of the content, humor seems to be beneficial and productive,” says Wanzer about the importance of the constructive uses of humor. “It helps to get the point across in about in almost any situation.”

Wanzer’s findings have been published in multiple journals, including Communication Quarterly, Communication Research Reports, Communication Education, Health Communication and Journal of Health Communication.

Feds approve statins for people without high cholesterol

If you didn’t think the cholesterol conspiracy was a load of hooey created by drug manufacturers, maybe this will change your mind.

Crestor — that dangerous cholesterol-lowering drug — has now been approved for people who DON’T have high cholesterol.

You read that right — a cholesterol drug… for people without cholesterol problems!

If the circus clowns who run the FDA do what’s expected and rubber-stamp the decision, AstraZeneca will be able to market Crestor to healthy Americans with high levels of a protein linked to inflammation.

I suppose I should be gratified since I’ve been saying for decades that inflammation, and not “high” cholesterol, is the real problem when it comes to heart disease. And one good indicator of inflammation levels is something called C-reactive protein, or CRP for short.

The higher the CRP creeps, the greater the inflammation… and the greater your risk for heart disease. The mainstream had no interest in exploring this link — until some studies found that statins may lower CRP levels along with cholesterol.

Now that they have a drug to sell, they’re suddenly interested. But you don’t need these meds for cholesterol or CRP, and here’s why:

First, forget cholesterol altogether — I rarely tested for it when I was in practice. If it’s somewhere between 200 and 300 and you’re on a healthy low-carb diet, you’re doing fine.

Second, you can easily reduce your CRP levels and lower your risk for inflammation without meds. You just need some vitamin C — the exact dose will depend on your individual needs, but between 2 and 6 grams per day should do the trick for most people who are eating right.

Whatever you do, don’t turn to statins. These meds have been linked to debilitating muscle pain and weakness as well as liver and kidney damage. Statin users also have an increased risk for diabetes.

In fact, the AstraZeneca-sponsored JUPITER study that so impressed the FDA panel even found that Crestor patients had a 27 percent higher risk of diabetes than patients who took a placebo.

The Douglass Report

Illinois EPA Testing for Pharmaceuticals in Water

Muckraker… I think not!!  More like Patriot…

Once again, I stumbled upon something. Always seems to happen that way for me. It seems in 2008 (funny, that's just when Obama took office, isn't it?) the Illinois EPA started receiving complaints of Pharmaceuticals in the drinking water in the Chicago area. It seems Governor Blagojevich requested that the EPA monitor and test for PPCPs (Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products) and access the affects on the public health. Does that sound like fear mongering? OMGosh! All you people are flushing your pills down the drain and you're damaging the environment! You're going to kill us all! You're shampoos, the insect repellent that you wash off your bodies are aborting your babies! We are going to have to come up with environment friendly EVERYTHING! Do you think maybe this could be a new industry? Hire the Green Czar!

Here's the Report page: http://www.epa.state.il.us/water/pharmaceuticals-in-drinking-water.pdf

It states in the paper: "Since there are no established standards or guidelines for the chemicals analyzed for this project, it was necessary to develop Screening Levels for these chemicals. In consultation with IDPH toxicologists and other health professionals, the Agency chose to develop the Screening Levels for the PPCPs using a conservative risk assessment approach. This approach drew heavily on the procedures used in the recently finalized Australian Guidelines for Water Recycling (2008) to develop Drinking Water Guidelines (DWGs) to be applied to recycled waste waters in Australia."
First, why do we have to go to a European country for standards? Second, don't we have a large enough scientific community to establish our own standards and aren't there some standards already in place? And actually, I was able to find on the Internet how much caffeine it takes to abort a fetus.....200mg daily. So I don't know what they mean by there aren't any standards. But when you read further down, you understand why they did this. They wanted a lower Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI), which they could only get by slanting it with European data. It's all in who you listen to. They wanted that .002 parts per million number, not the 200 parts per million number.

But, even though they skewed the data this badly, they still got data in the safe zone. Now, why is this still of concern? Because all they have to do is dump more stuff in the water and raise the levels a bit and they can call it dangerous levels and push for more regulation. Or they can say that we are "dangerously" close to being at a level where it will be a problem.

Did anyone notice that this report never saw the light of day? Or is it me? I don't live in Illinois.
This is the sampling page: http://www.epa.state.il.us/water/pharm-data-summary.pdf

I discovered that ug/L means parts per million. Think of it as 1 drop in a billion other drops. So if the sample reads .05 ug/L it means .05 of one drop of that drug in a billion other drops of clean water.

Now, how is this significant? The left is always screaming about how we affect the environment...mankind is killing each other by the way we affect the earth. We are dumping things down the drain, our pills when we don't need them anymore, our shampoos are not earth friendly, we wash off our insect repellent and it goes into our water supply, etc. It's all destroying our earth. They don't take into consideration that God made this earth to be renewable. Have you ever made a filter system? You can research it online.
Here's the site I found: http://www.ehow.com/how_4880648_homemade-water-filters.html

The earth is designed to filter water. It says right on the site you need sand, gravel, and charcoal. Wow, that's found in the earth. So when the water flows through the earth, it filters out the chemicals that we flush down the drain. What a concept. Do you know how charcoal gets into the ground? From forests burning down. That could occur naturally from lightening strikes. You tree huggers got it wrong. God made the earth to be self-healing, as long as we're fairly responsible and don't go out of our to TRY to destroy it. We can go and live our lives without the government regulating the heck out of us.

Does that mean we can dump chemicals directly into a river....no, I didn't say that. Is that being responsible? No. But Illinois wants to regulate you and me by monitoring our households and seeing if we are flushing our pills and beauty supplies down the drain...or possibly making the businesses make "environmentally friendly" beauty supplies for everyone. I can see the writing on the wall. Why else would they look at the impact of PPCP's in the water supply? I'm sure it wasn't just for our health. This was after Obama got in office, and it was his good buddy Blagojevich. Do you think maybe ole Blago had plans of helping out Van Jones, the Green Czar?

Their conclusion? They are starting a pilot program to safely collect everyone's pharmaceuticals and safely dispose of them. Let me ask this question, residents of Illinois: Do you want the state of Illinois knowing what medications you are on? If so, you can safely turn in your pharmaceuticals with household hazardous waste to predetermined collection sites. Here's the areas... http://www.epa.state.il.us/land/hazardous-waste/household-haz-waste...

Funny how it's only in Naperville, Chicago, Rockford and Lake County. I guess the rest of Illinois is out of luck. You'll have to flush your pharmaceuticals like the rest of the nation for now.

Lori Ann Smith - http://loriann12.blogspot.com
Does this make me a muckracker?

Posted:  True Health is True Wealth

Crying babies may face risk of brain damage

IANS     Friday 23rd April, 2010

According to study held by child experts, long period of crying can damage developing brains, leading to learning difficulties later in life.
'A baby who is left crying for long enough will eventually stop, but not because he has learned to go to sleep happily alone, but because he is exhausted and has despaired of getting help,' dailymail.co.uk quoted an expert as saying.

Leach, author of the 1977 book Your Baby And Child: From Birth To Age Five said, 'It is not an opinion but a fact that it's potentially damaging to leave babies to cry. Now we know that, why risk it?'
'Long periods of crying produced so much cortisol that it could damage a baby's brain.

'That doesn't mean that a baby should never cry, or that parents should worry when she does. All babies cry, some more than others. It's not the crying that is bad for babies - but crying that gets no response.' she added.

Studies have suggested that up to 50 per cent of parents have problems with their child's sleeping patterns, often leading to marital problems.

Source:  BigNewsNetwork.com - http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=626824

FDA to set rules for salt in food

Posted on 20. Apr, 2010 by The One in Health

The health police cometh and cometh and cometh. With health care on the fast track to being completely federalized, the Obama Administration has made it clear they want a massive regulation campaign to change how Americans eat and drink. Today, they made their most sweeping move yet.

The Food and Drug Administration is planning an unprecedented effort to gradually reduce the salt consumed each day by Americans, saying that less sodium in everything from soup to nuts would prevent thousands of deaths from hypertension and heart disease. The initiative, to be launched this year, would eventually lead to the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products.

The government intends to work with the food industry and health experts to reduce sodium gradually over a period of years to adjust the American palate to a less salty diet, according to FDA sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the initiative had not been formally announced.

The government hasn’t regulated salt previously because it hasn’t regarded it as a particularly potent health threat. But with a few bogus studies in hand claiming that salt intake is becoming a serious health problem, the FDA has determined that more regulation is the only solution. They have yet to figure out how any of this will work. But regardless, pretzels and potato chips are likely to become less tasty very soon.

The FDA has become more and more activist lately. Recently it announced plans to force food manufacturers to slap nutrition facts on the front of food packages in an attempt to fight obesity.

Source:  FDA to set rules for salt in food

Posted:  True Health Is True Wealth

The 76 Dangers of Sugar

Death by sugar may not be an overstatement—evidence is mounting that sugar is THE MAJOR FACTOR causing obesity and chronic disease.

Is sugar a sweet old friend that is secretly plotting your demise?

There is a vast sea of research suggesting that it is. Science has now shown us, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that sugar in your food, in all its myriad of forms, is taking a devastating toll on your health.

The single largest source of calories for Americans comes from sugar—specifically high fructose corn syrup. Just take a look at the sugar consumption trends of the past 300 years:[1]

• In 1700, the average person consumed about 4 pounds of sugar per year.
• In 1800, the average person consumed about 18 pounds of sugar per year.
• In 1900, individual consumption had risen to 90 pounds of sugar per year.
• In 2009, more than 50 percent of all Americans consume one-half pound of sugar PER DAY—translating to a whopping 180 pounds of sugar per year!

Sugar is loaded into your soft drinks, fruit juices, sports drinks, and hidden in almost all processed foods—from bologna to pretzels to Worcestershire sauce to cheese spread. And now most infant formula has the sugar equivalent of one can of Coca-Cola, so babies are being metabolically poisoned from day one if taking formula.

No wonder there is an obesity epidemic in this country.

Today, 32 percent of Americans are obese and an additional one-third are overweight. Compare that to 1890, when a survey of white males in their fifties revealed an obesity rate of just 3.4 percent. In 1975, the obesity rate in America had reached 15 percent, and since then it has doubled.

Carrying excess weight increases your risk for deadly conditions such as heart disease, kidney disease and diabetes.

In 1893, there were fewer than three cases of diabetes per 100,000 people in the United States. Today, diabetes strikes almost 8,000 out of every 100,000 people.[1]

You don’t have to be a physician or a scientist to notice America’s expanding waistline. All you have to do is stroll through a shopping mall or a schoolyard, or perhaps glance in the mirror.

Sugars 101 -- Basics of How to Avoid Confusion on this Important Topic

It is easy to become confused by the various sugars and sweeteners. So here is a basic overview:

• Dextrose, fructose and glucose are all monosaccharides, known as simple sugars. The primary difference between them is how your body metabolizes them. Glucose and dextrose are essentially the same sugar. However, food manufacturers usually use the term “dextrose” in their ingredient list.
• The simple sugars can combine to form more complex sugars, like the disaccharide sucrose (table sugar), which is half glucose and half fructose.
• High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose.
• Ethanol (drinking alcohol) is not a sugar, although beer and wine contain residual sugars and starches, in addition to alcohol.
• Sugar alcohols like xylitol, glycerol, sorbitol, maltitol, mannitol, and erythritol are neither sugars nor alcohols but are becoming increasingly popular as sweeteners. They are incompletely absorbed from your small intestine, for the most part, so they provide fewer calories than sugar but often cause problems with bloating, diarrhea and flatulence.
• Sucralose (Splenda) is NOT a sugar, despite its sugar-like name and deceptive marketing slogan, “made from sugar.” It’s a chlorinated artificial sweetener in line with aspartame and saccharin, with detrimental health effects to match.
• Agave syrup, falsely advertised as “natural,” is typically HIGHLY processed and is usually 80 percent fructose. The end product does not even remotely resemble the original agave plant.
• Honey is about 53 percent fructose[2], but is completely natural in its raw form and has many health benefits when used in moderation, including as many antioxidants as spinach.
• Stevia is a highly sweet herb derived from the leaf of the South American stevia plant, which is completely safe (in its natural form). Lo han (or luohanguo) is another natural sweetener, but derived from a fruit.

All Sugars are Not Equal

Glucose is the form of energy you were designed to run on. Every cell in your body, every bacterium—and in fact, every living thing on the Earth—uses glucose for energy.

But as a country, sucrose is no longer the sugar of choice. It’s now fructose.

If your diet was like that of people a century ago, you’d consume about 15 grams per day—a far cry from the 73 grams per day the typical person gets from sweetened drinks. In vegetables and fruits, it’s mixed in with vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and beneficial phytonutrients, all which moderate the negative metabolic effects. Amazingly, 25 percent of people actually consume more than 130 grams of fructose per day.

Making matters worse, all of the fiber has been removed from processed foods, so there is essentially no nutritive value at all. And the very products most people rely on to lose weight—the low-fat diet foods—are often the ones highest in fructose.

It isn’t that fructose itself is bad—it is the MASSIVE DOSES you’re exposed to that make it dangerous.

There are two overall reasons fructose is so damaging:

1. Your body metabolizes fructose in a much different way than glucose. The entire burden of metabolizing fructose falls on your liver.
2. People are consuming fructose in enormous quantities, which has made the negative effects much more profound.

The explosion of soda consumption is the major cause of this.

Today, 55 percent of sweeteners used in food and beverage manufacturing are made from corn, and the number one source of calories in America is soda, in the form of high fructose corn syrup.

Food and beverage manufacturers began switching their sweeteners from sucrose to corn syrup in the 1970s when they discovered that HFCS was not only far cheaper to make, it’s about 20 percent sweeter than conventional table sugar that has sucrose.

HFCS contains the same two sugars as sucrose but is more metabolically risky to you, due to its chemical form.

The fructose and the glucose are not bound together in HFCS, as they are in table sugar, so your body doesn’t have to break it down. Therefore, the fructose is absorbed immediately, going straight to your liver.

Too Much Fructose Creates a Metabolic Disaster in Your Body

Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, has been a pioneer in decoding sugar metabolism. His work has highlighted some major differences in how different sugars are broken down and used by the human body.

I highly recommend watching Lustig’s lecture in its entirety if you want to learn how fructose is ruining your health biochemically.

As I mentioned earlier, after eating fructose, most of the metabolic burden rests on your liver. This is NOT the case with glucose, of which your liver breaks down only 20 percent. Nearly every cell in your body utilizes glucose, so it’s normally “burned up” immediately after consumption.

So where does all of this fructose go, once you consume it?

Onto your thighs. It is turned into FAT (VLDL and triglycerides), which means more fat deposits throughout your body.

Eating Fructose is Far Worse than Eating Fat

However, the physiological problems of fructose metabolism extend well beyond a couple of pant sizes:

• Fructose elevates uric acid, which decreases nitric oxide, raises angiotensin, and causes your smooth muscle cells to contract, thereby raising your blood pressure and potentially damaging your kidneys.[1]
  
  Increased uric acid also leads to chronic, low-level inflammation, which has far-reaching consequences for your health. For example, chronically inflamed blood vessels lead to heart attacks and strokes; also, a good deal of evidence exists that some cancers are caused by chronic inflammation. (See the next section for more about uric acid.)
• Fructose tricks your body into gaining weight by fooling your metabolism—it turns off your body’s appetite-control system. Fructose does not appropriately stimulate insulin, which in turn does not suppress ghrelin (the “hunger hormone”) and doesn’t stimulate leptin (the “satiety hormone”), which together result in your eating more and developing insulin resistance.[3] [4]
• Fructose rapidly leads to weight gain and abdominal obesity (“beer belly”), decreased HDL, increased LDL, elevated triglycerides, elevated blood sugar, and high blood pressure—i.e., classic metabolic syndrome.
• Fructose metabolism is very similar to ethanol metabolism, which has a multitude of toxic effects, including NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease). It’s alcohol without the buzz.

These changes are not seen when humans or animals eat starch (or glucose), suggesting that fructose is a “bad carbohydrate” when consumed in excess of 25 grams per day. It is probably the one factor responsible for the partial success of many “low-carb” diets.

One of the more recent findings that surprised researchers is that glucose actually accelerates fructose absorption, making the potential health risks from HFCS even more profound.[1]

You can now see why fructose is the number one contributing factor to the current obesity epidemic.

Is Uric Acid the New Cholesterol?

By now you are probably aware of the childhood obesity epidemic in America—but did you know about childhood hypertension?

Until recently, children were rarely diagnosed with high blood pressure, and when they were, it was usually due to a tumor or a vascular kidney disease.

In 2004, a study showed hypertension among children is four times higher than predicted: 4.5 percent of American children have high blood pressure. Among overweight children, the rate is 10 percent. It is thought that obesity is to blame for about 50 percent of hypertension cases in adolescents today.[1]

Even more startling is that 90 percent of adolescents who have high blood pressure have elevated uric acid levels.

This has led researchers to ask, what does uric acid have to do with obesity and high blood pressure?

In his groundbreaking book, The Sugar Fix: The High-Fructose Fallout That is Making You Fat and Sick, Dr. Robert J. Johnson makes a compelling argument for a previously unrecognized connection between excess sugar consumption and high uric acid levels.

There are more than 3,500 articles to date showing a strong relationship between uric acid and obesity, heart disease, hypertension, stroke, kidney disease, and other conditions. In fact, a number of studies have confirmed that people with elevated serum uric acid are at risk for high blood pressure, even if they otherwise appear to be perfectly healthy.

Uric acid levels among Americans have risen significantly since the early half of the 20^th Century. In the 1920s, average uric acid levels were about 3.5 ml/dl. By 1980, average uric acid levels had climbed into the range of 6.0 to 6.5 ml/dl and are probably much higher now.

How Does Your Body Produce Uric Acid?

It’s a byproduct of cellular breakdown. As cells die off, DNA and RNA degrade into chemicals called purines. Purines are further broken down into uric acid.

Fructose increases uric acid through a complex process that causes cells to burn up their ATP rapidly, leading to “cell shock” and increased cell death. After eating excessive amounts of fructose, cells become starved of energy and enter a state of shock, just as if they have lost their blood supply. Massive cellular die-off leads to increased uric acid levels.

And cells that are depleted of energy become inflamed and more susceptible to damage from oxidative stress. Fat cells actually become “sickly,” bloating up with excessive amounts of fat.

There is a simple, inexpensive blood test for determining your uric acid level, which I recommend you have done as part of your routine health checkups. Your level should be between 3.0 and 5.5 mg/dl, optimally.

There is little doubt in my mind that your uric acid level is a more potent predictor of cardiovascular and overall health than your total cholesterol level is. Yet virtually no one is screening for this.

Now that you know the truth you don’t have to be left out in the cold, as this is a simple and relatively inexpensive test that you can get at any doctor’s office. Odds are very good your doctor is clueless about the significance of elevated uric acid levels, so it will not likely be productive to engage in a discussion with him unless he is truly an open-minded truth seeker.

Merely get your uric acid level, and if it is over 5 then eliminate as much fructose as you can (also eliminate all beer), and retest your level in a few weeks.

Sugar Sensitization Makes the Problem Even WORSE!

There is yet another problem with sugar—a self-perpetuating one.

According to Dr. Johnson¹, sugar activates its own pathways in your body—those metabolic pathways become “upregulated.” In other words, the more sugar you eat, the more effective your body is in absorbing it; and the more you absorb, the more damage you’ll do.

You become “sensitized” to sugar as time goes by, and more sensitive to its toxic effects as well.

The flip side is, when people are given even a brief sugar holiday, sugar sensitization rapidly decreases and those metabolic pathways become “downregulated.” Research tells us that even two weeks without consuming sugar will cause your body to be less reactive to it.

Try it for yourself! Take a two-week sugar sabbatical and see how different you feel.

Are Fruits Good or Bad for You?

Keep in mind that fruits also contain fructose, although an ameliorating factor is that whole fruits also contain vitamins and other antioxidants that reduce the hazardous effects of fructose.

Juices, on the other hand, are nearly as detrimental as soda, because a glass of juice is loaded with fructose, and a lot of the antioxidants are lost.

It is important to remember that fructose alone isn’t evil as fruits are certainly beneficial. But when you consume high levels of fructose it will absolutely devastate your biochemistry and physiology. Remember the AVERAGE fructose dose is 70 grams per day which exceeds the recommend limit by 300 percent.

So please BE CAREFUL with your fruit consumption. You simply MUST understand that because HFCS is so darn cheap, it is added to virtually every processed food. Even if you consumed no soda or fruit, it is very easy to exceed 25 grams of hidden fructose in your diet.

If you are a raw food advocate, have a pristine diet, and exercise very well, then you could be the exception that could exceed this limit and stay healthy.

Dr. Johnson has a handy chart, included below, which you can use to estimate how much fructose you’re getting in your diet. Remember, you are also likely getting additional fructose if you consume any packaged foods at all, since it is hidden in nearly all of them.

Fruit Serving Size Grams of Fructose Limes 1 medium 0 Lemons 1 medium 0.6 Cranberries 1 cup 0.7 Passion fruit 1 medium 0.9 Prune 1 medium 1.2 Apricot 1 medium 1.3 Guava 2 medium 2.2 Date (Deglet Noor style) 1 medium 2.6 Cantaloupe 1/8 of med. melon 2.8 Raspberries 1 cup 3.0 Clementine 1 medium 3.4 Kiwifruit 1 medium 3.4 Blackberries 1 cup 3.5 Star fruit 1 medium 3.6 Cherries, sweet 10 3.8 Strawberries 1 cup 3.8 Cherries, sour 1 cup 4.0 Pineapple 1 slice (3.5" x .75") 4.0 Grapefruit, pink or red 1/2 medium 4.3

Fruit Serving Size Grams of Fructose Boysenberries 1 cup 4.6 Tangerine/mandarin orange 1 medium 4.8 Nectarine 1 medium 5.4 Peach 1 medium 5.9 Orange (navel) 1 medium 6.1 Papaya 1/2 medium 6.3 Honeydew 1/8 of med. melon 6.7 Banana 1 medium 7.1 Blueberries 1 cup 7.4 Date (Medjool) 1 medium 7.7 Apple (composite) 1 medium 9.5 Persimmon 1 medium 10.6 Watermelon 1/16 med. melon 11.3 Pear 1 medium 11.8 Raisins 1/4 cup 12.3 Grapes, seedless (green or red) 1 cup 12.4 Mango 1/2 medium 16.2 Apricots, dried 1 cup 16.4 Figs, dried 1 cup 23.0

In addition to limiting your intake of fructose, you should eliminate all sweetened beverages and fruit juices (including all artificial sweeteners) and drink only pure water and raw milk.

You can buy pure glucose (dextrose) as a sweetener for about $1 a pound. It is only 70% as sweet as sucrose, so you’ll end up using a bit more of it for the same amount of sweetness, making it slightly more expensive than sucrose—but still well worth it for your health as it has ZERO grams of fructose.

Remember that glucose can be used directly by every cell in your body and as such is far safer than the metabolic poison fructose.

Beer is also a good beverage to AVOID since it increases uric acid levels, just like fructose does, resulting in many of the same toxic effects.

All alcoholic beverages cause you to produce excess uric acid (and block your kidneys from excreting it), but beer seems to have a more pronounced effect on uric acid levels because it’s a rich source of guanosine, the type of purine that is most readily absorbed by the body.¹

76 Additional Ways Sugar Can Ruin Your Health

In addition to throwing off your body's homeostasis and wreaking havoc on your metabolic processes, excess sugar has a number of other significant consequences.

Nancy Appleton, PhD, author of the book Lick the Sugar Habit[5], contributed an extensive list of the many ways sugar can ruin your health from a vast number of medical journals and other scientific publications.

1. Sugar can suppress your immune system and impair your defenses against infectious disease.[6] [7]
2. Sugar upsets the mineral relationships in your body: causes chromium and copper deficiencies and interferes with absorption of calcium and magnesium.[8] [9] [10] [11]
3. Sugar can cause a rapid rise of adrenaline, hyperactivity, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and crankiness in children.[12] [13]
4. Sugar can produce a significant rise in total cholesterol, triglycerides and bad cholesterol and a decrease in good cholesterol.[14][15] [16] [17]
5. Sugar causes a loss of tissue elasticity and function.[18]
6. Sugar feeds cancer cells and has been connected with the development of cancer of the breast, ovaries, prostate, rectum, pancreas, biliary tract, lung, gallbladder and stomach.[19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25]
7. Sugar can increase fasting levels of glucose and can cause reactive hypoglycemia.[26] [27]
8. Sugar can weaken eyesight.[28] 1
9. Sugar can cause many problems with the gastrointestinal tract including: an acidic digestive tract, indigestion, malabsorption in patients with functional bowel disease, increased risk of Crohn's disease, and ulcerative colitis.[29] [30] [31] [32] [33]
10. Sugar can cause premature aging.[34] In fact, the single most important factor that accelerates aging is insulin, which is triggered by sugar. 1
11. Sugar can lead to alcoholism.[35]
12. Sugar can cause your saliva to become acidic, tooth decay, and periodontal disease.[36] [37] [38]
13. Sugar contributes to obesity. [39] 1
14. Sugar can cause autoimmune diseases such as: arthritis, asthma, and multiple sclerosis.[40] [41] [42]
15. Sugar greatly assists the uncontrolled growth of Candida Albicans (yeast infections) [43]
16. Sugar can cause gallstones.[44]
17. Sugar can cause appendicitis.[45]
18. Sugar can cause hemorrhoids.[46]
19. Sugar can cause varicose veins.[47]
20. Sugar can elevate glucose and insulin responses in oral contraceptive users.[48]
21. Sugar can contribute to osteoporosis.[49]
22. Sugar can cause a decrease in your insulin sensitivity thereby causing an abnormally high insulin levels and eventually diabetes.[50] [51] [52]
23. Sugar can lower your Vitamin E levels.[53]
24. Sugar can increase your systolic blood pressure.[54]
25. Sugar can cause drowsiness and decreased activity in children.[55]
26. High sugar intake increases advanced glycation end products (AGEs),which are sugar molecules that attach to and damage proteins in your body. AGEs speed up the aging of cells, which may contribute to a variety of chronic and fatal diseases. [56] 1
27. Sugar can interfere with your absorption of protein.[57]
28. Sugar causes food allergies.[58]
29. Sugar can cause toxemia during pregnancy.[59]
30. Sugar can contribute to eczema in children.[60]
31. Sugar can cause atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease.[61] [62]
32. Sugar can impair the structure of your DNA.[63]
33. Sugar can change the structure of protein and cause a permanent alteration of the way the proteins act in your body.[64] [65]
34. Sugar can make your skin age by changing the structure of collagen.[66]
35. Sugar can cause cataracts and nearsightedness.[67] [68]
36. Sugar can cause emphysema.[69]
37. High sugar intake can impair the physiological homeostasis of many systems in your body.[70]
38. Sugar lowers the ability of enzymes to function.[71]
39. Sugar intake is higher in people with Parkinson's disease.[72]
40. Sugar can increase the size of your liver by making your liver cells divide, and it can increase the amount of fat in your liver, leading to fatty liver disease.[73] [74]
41. Sugar can increase kidney size and produce pathological changes in the kidney such as the formation of kidney stones.[75] [76]Fructose is helping to drive up rates of kidney disease. 1
42. Sugar can damage your pancreas.[77]
43. Sugar can increase your body's fluid retention.[78]
44. Sugar is enemy #1 of your bowel movement.[79]
45. Sugar can compromise the lining of your capillaries.[80]
46. Sugar can make your tendons more brittle.[81]
47. Sugar can cause headaches, including migraines.[82]
48. Sugar can reduce the learning capacity, adversely affect your children's grades and cause learning disorders.[83] [84]
49. Sugar can cause an increase in delta, alpha, and theta brain waves, which can alter your ability to think clearly.[85]
50. Sugar can cause depression.[86]
51. Sugar can increase your risk of gout.[87]
52. Sugar can increase your risk of Alzheimer's disease.[88] MRI studies show that adults 60 and older who have high uric acid are four to five times more likely to have vascular dementia, the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer’s.1
53. Sugar can cause hormonal imbalances such as: increasing estrogen in men, exacerbating PMS, and decreasing growth hormone.[89] [90] [91] [92]
54. Sugar can lead to dizziness.[93]
55. Diets high in sugar will increase free radicals and oxidative stress.[94]
56. A high sucrose diet of subjects with peripheral vascular disease significantly increases platelet adhesion.[95]
57. High sugar consumption by pregnant adolescents can lead to a substantial decrease in gestation duration and is associated with a twofold-increased risk for delivering a small-for-gestational-age (SGA) infant.[96] [97]
58. Sugar is an addictive substance.[98]
59. Sugar can be intoxicating, similar to alcohol.[99]
60. Sugar given to premature babies can affect the amount of carbon dioxide they produce.[100]
61. Decrease in sugar intake can increase emotional stability.[101]
62. Your body changes sugar into 2 to 5 times more fat in the bloodstream than it does starch.[102]
63. The rapid absorption of sugar promotes excessive food intake in obese subjects.[103]
64. Sugar can worsen the symptoms of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).[104]
65. Sugar adversely affects urinary electrolyte composition.[105]
66. Sugar can impair the function of your adrenal glands.[106]
67. Sugar has the potential of inducing abnormal metabolic processes in normal, healthy individuals, thereby promoting chronic degenerative diseases.[107]
68. Intravenous feedings (IVs) of sugar water can cut off oxygen to your brain.[108]
69. Sugar increases your risk of polio.[109]
70. High sugar intake can cause epileptic seizures.[110]
71. Sugar causes high blood pressure in obese people.[111]
72. In intensive care units, limiting sugar saves lives.[112]
73. Sugar may induce cell death.[113]
74. In juvenile rehabilitation centers, when children were put on low sugar diets, there was a 44 percent drop in antisocial behavior.[114]
75. Sugar dehydrates newborns.[115]
76. Sugar can cause gum disease.[116]

It should now be crystal clear just how damaging sugar is. You simply cannot achieve your highest degree of health and vitality if you are consuming a significant amount of it.

Fortunately, your body has an amazing ability to heal itself when given the basic nutrition it needs, and your liver has an incredible ability to regenerate. If you start making changes today, your health WILL begin to improve, returning you to the state of vitality that nature intended.

Source: Dr. Mercola

Related: Agave: A Triumph of Marketing over Truth