Health & Fitness

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Giving Thanks Does Your Body Good

Focusing on gratitude has become a growing trend in recent years,¹ and for good reason. There’s a lot of stress, illness and unhappiness in the world, and gratitude is an effective remedy for all of these — and it’s free. For example, research shows that gratitude:^2,^3,^4,⁵

Alters your brain in a number of beneficial ways — Examples include triggering release of mood-regulating neurotransmitters⁶ such as dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine and oxytocin; inhibiting the stress hormone cortisol; and stimulating your hypothalamus (a brain area involved in the regulation of stress) and your ventral tegmental area (part of your brain’s reward circuitry that produces pleasurable feelings)⁷

Increases happiness and life satisfaction^8,⁹

Lowers stress and emotional distress

Improves emotional resiliency¹⁰

Reduces symptoms of depression^11,¹²

Reduces pain

Lowers inflammation by inhibiting inflammatory cytokines

Lowers blood sugar

Improves immune function¹³

Lowers blood pressure

Improves heart health,¹⁴ reducing the likelihood of sudden death in patients with congestive heart failure and coronary artery disease

Lowers risk for heart disease^15,¹⁶

Improves general health by encouraging self-care^17,¹⁸

Improves sleep¹⁹

Improves interpersonal relationships²⁰

Boosts productivity²¹

Reduces materialism²² and increases generosity,²³ both of which can increase happiness and life satisfaction

Gratitude Defined

As explained by Harvard Medical School:²⁴

“Gratitude is a thankful appreciation for what an individual receives, whether tangible or intangible. With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives.

In the process, people usually recognize that the source of that goodness lies at least partially outside themselves. As a result, gratitude also helps people connect to something larger than themselves as individuals — whether to other people, nature, or a higher power.”

According to one study,²⁵ gratitude is “uniquely important to psychological well-being.” In teenagers, gratitude has been found to correlate with “positive affect, global and domain specific life satisfaction, optimism, social support and prosocial behavior.”²⁶ It’s even been suggested that gratitude practice and cultivation can be used as a psychotherapeutic intervention with positive effect.²⁷

Finding What Works

As psychologist Laurie Santos, who teaches the science of happiness at Yale, told NPR,²⁸ "It's one of the practices that really wins out from the field of positive psychology, because it takes very little time, and the benefits are so powerful."

As noted by Harvard,²⁹ there are many ways to feel and express gratitude, and all are equally valid. You can think back to positive memories, for example, applying gratitude for past blessings.

Feeling and expressing gratitude in the present helps remind you to not take good fortune for granted. Applied to the future, it becomes an expression of hope and optimism that everything will work out for the best, even if you cannot see the road ahead.

For best results, the key is to find a method that feels meaningful to you. For some, writing a gratitude list first thing in the morning might do the trick. For others, quietly contemplating what you’re grateful for — past, present or future — at the end of each day works better.

One particularly potent strategy is to write a letter of gratitude to someone whom you’ve not properly thanked for their kindness, and to hand deliver the letter to them. In one study,^30,³¹ doing this resulted in an immediate and significant increase in happiness score that lasted for an entire month.

When Gratitude Is a Struggle

Depending on circumstances, gratitude can sometimes be a struggle. Researchers say the best way to overcome this hurdle (which can trigger even more pessimism or guilt) is to find one tiny little thing to be grateful for, and to focus on that one thing.

Maybe you’ve lost your job and your car was repossessed but — thankfully — there’s a bus stop within easy walking distance. Over time, you’ll find it becomes easier to identify additional things to be thankful for.³²

Another way to flex your gratitude muscle when life events leave you uninspired is to identify and express gratitude for seemingly “useless” or insignificant things. It could be a certain smell in the air, the color of a flower, your child’s freckles or the curvature of a stone. Over time, you’ll find that doing this will help home your ability to identify “good” things in your life.

Materialism and Entitlement — Two Common Blocks to Gratitude

According to Robert Emmons, one of the leading scientific experts on gratitude,³³ materialism and entitlement are two common stumbling blocks to gratitude, so if you cannot find anything to be thankful for, consider whether you might have fallen into one of these traps. As explained in a newsletter by Greater Good Science Center:³⁴

“Seen through the lens of buying and selling, relationships as well as things are viewed as disposable, and gratitude cannot survive this … Research has proven that gratitude is essential for happiness, but modern times have regressed gratitude into a mere feeling instead of retaining its historic value, a virtue that leads to action …

[G]ratitude is an action of returning a favor and is not just a sentiment. By the same token, ingratitude is the failure to both acknowledge receiving a favor and refusing to return or repay the favor … If we fail to choose [gratitude], by default we choose ingratitude …

Provision, whether supernatural or natural, becomes so commonplace that it is easily accepted for granted. We believe the universe owes us a living. We do not want to be beholden. Losing sight of protection, favors, benefits and blessings renders a person spiritually and morally bankrupt …

People who are ungrateful tend to be characterized by an excessive sense of self-importance, arrogance, vanity and an unquenchable need for admiration and approval.

Narcissists reject the ties that bind people into relationships of reciprocity. They expect special favors and feel no need to pay back or pay forward … Without empathy, they cannot appreciate an altruistic gift because they cannot identify with the mental state of the gift-giver.”

If entitlement is the hallmark of narcissism, then humility is the antidote and the answer when you struggle with gratitude. As noted by Emmons, “The humble person says that life is a gift to be grateful for, not a right to be claimed. Humility ushers in a grateful response to life.”³⁵

So, gratitude isn’t a response to receiving “your due,” but rather the recognition that life owes you nothing, yet provided you with everything you have anyway — a place to live, family, friends, work, your eyesight, your breath, indeed your very life. When you start seeing everything as a gift, opposed to things you’ve deserved (for better or worse), your sense of gratitude will begin to swell.

How to Build and Strengthen Gratitude

While keeping a daily gratitude journal is highly recommended, there are many other ways to practice gratitude. I’ve compiled suggestions from various experts below. The key is to stay consistent. Find a way to incorporate your chosen method into each week, and stick with it.

Write thank-you notes³⁶ — When thanking someone, be specific and acknowledge the effort and/or cost involved.

Say grace at each meal — Adopting the ritual of saying grace at each meal is a great way to flex your gratitude muscle on a daily basis,³⁷ and will also foster a deeper connection to your food.

While this can be a perfect opportunity to honor a spiritual connection with the divine, you don’t have to turn it into a religious speech if you don’t want to. You could simply say, “I am grateful for this food, and appreciate all the time and hard work that went into its production, transportation and preparation.”

Change your perception — Disappointment can be a major source of stress, which is known to have far-reaching effects on your health and longevity. In fact, centenarians overwhelmingly cite stress as the most important thing to avoid if you want to live a long and healthy life. Since stress is virtually unavoidable, the key is to develop and strengthen your ability to manage your stress so that it doesn’t wear you down over time.

Rather than dwelling on negative events, most centenarians figured out how to let things go, and you can do that too. It takes practice, though. It’s a skill that must be honed daily, or however often you’re triggered.

A foundational principle to let go of negativity is the realization that the way you feel has little to do with the event itself, and everything to do with your perception of it. Wisdom of the ancients dictate that events are neither good nor bad in and of themselves. It is your belief about the event that upsets you, not the fact that it happened.

As noted by Ryan Holiday, author of “The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance and the Art of Living,”³⁸ “The Stoics are saying, ‘This happened to me,’ is not the same as, ‘This happened to me and that’s bad.’ They’re saying if you stop at the first part, you will be much more resilient and much more able to make some good out of anything that happens.” And, once you can see the good, you’re more apt to feel gratitude.

Be mindful of your nonverbal actions — Smiling and hugging are both ways of expressing gratitude, encouragement, excitement, empathy and support. These physical actions also help strengthen your inner experience of positive emotions of all kinds.

Give praise — Research³⁹ shows using “other-praising” phrases are far more effective than “self-beneficial” phrases. For example, praising a partner saying, “thank you for going out of your way to do this,” is more powerful than a compliment framed in terms of how you benefited, such as “it makes me happy when you do that.”

The former resulted in the partner feeling happier and more loving toward the person giving the praise. Also, be mindful of your delivery — say it like you mean it. Establishing eye contact is another tactic that helps you show your sincerity.

Prayer and/or mindfulness meditation — Expressing thanks during prayer or meditation is another way to cultivate gratitude. Practicing "mindfulness" means that you're actively paying attention to the moment you're in right now. A mantra is sometimes used to help maintain focus, but you can also focus on something that you're grateful for, such as a pleasant smell, a cool breeze or a lovely memory.

Create a nightly gratitude ritual — One suggestion is to create a gratitude jar,⁴⁰ into which the entire family can add notes of gratitude on a daily basis. Any jar or container will do. Simply write a quick note on a small slip of paper and put it into the jar. Some make an annual (or biannual or even monthly) event out of going through the whole jar, reading each slip out loud.

Spend money on activities instead of things — According to research,⁴¹ spending money on experiences not only generates more gratitude than material consumption, it also motivates greater generosity.

As noted by co-author Amit Kumar, postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Chicago, “People feel fortunate, and because it’s a diffuse, untargeted type of gratitude, they’re motivated to give back to people in general.”⁴²

Embrace the idea of having “enough” — According to many who have embraced a more minimalist lifestyle, the key to happiness is learning to appreciate and be grateful for having “enough.”

Financial hardship and work stress are two significant contributors to depression and anxiety. The answer is to buy less and appreciate more. Instead of trying to keep up with the Joneses, practice being grateful for the things you already have, and release yourself from the iron grip of advertising, which tells you there’s lack in your life.

Many who have adopted the minimalist lifestyle claim they’ve been able to reduce the amount of time they have to work to pay their bills, freeing up time for volunteer work, creative pursuits and taking care of their personal health, thereby dramatically raising their happiness and life satisfaction. The key here is deciding what “enough” is. Consumption itself is not the problem; unchecked and unnecessary shopping is.

Many times, accumulation of material goods is a symptom that you may be trying to fill a void in your life, yet that void can never be filled by material things. More often than not, the void is silently asking for more love, personal connection, or experiences that bring purpose and passionate engagement. So, make an effort to identify your real, authentic emotional and spiritual needs, and then focus on fulfilling them in ways that does not involve shopping.

Tapping — The Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is a helpful tool for a number of emotional challenges, including lack of gratitude. EFT is a form of psychological acupressure based on the energy meridians used in acupuncture that can quickly restore inner balance and healing, and helps rid your mind of negative thoughts and emotions. In the video below, EFT practitioner Julie Schiffman demonstrates how to tap for gratitude.

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A clue to a cure for Alzheimer’s disease

Are you worried about Alzheimer’s disease? Does one of your parents or siblings have the disease? If so, your risks are between two and four times that of the general public. What about people without a family history of the disease? Unfortunately, everyone is at risk for it. By age 85, half of you reading this article today will have developed Alzheimer’s disease, with or without a family history.

Sounds pretty scary, doesn’t it?

I’m writing today to give you some good news. A new study from the lab of Harvard researcher Yakeel Quiroz, PhD, has suggested a new target for drugs that might have the potential to slow down or even stop Alzheimer’s disease in its tracks.

A family with early-onset disease — and one exception

Dr. Quiroz, her longtime colleague Dr. Francisco Lopera, and first author Dr. Joseph Arboleda-Velasquez have been studying a large family in Colombia, South America, some of whom have a mutation in the presenilin 1 gene that causes early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Over 1,000 people in this family are affected by the mutation. Among these family members, early symptoms of Alzheimer’s, such as memory loss and word-finding difficulties, almost always develop around age 44, and dementia follows at around age 49. Sometimes individuals may develop these symptoms or dementia one, two, or even three years later. But not 10 or 20 years later — and certainly not 30 years later. Yet one individual — a woman in her 70s with this genetic mutation — is only now starting to show symptoms.

The study, reported in the November 2019 issue of Nature Medicine, is a case report and extensive analysis of this one woman.

The APOE gene can modify your risk of Alzheimer’s

Many people have read or heard about variations in the APOE gene as a risk factor for Alzheimer’s. Interestingly, in their inquiry into why this woman with a mutation for early-onset Alzheimer’s had not yet developed dementia, the researchers found that she had an additional mutation in her APOE gene.

APOE has been linked to ordinary, late-onset Alzheimer’s disease and comes in three common forms. Most people, about 70% to 75%, have APOE3. About 15% to 20% of people have an APOE4 gene, and about 5% to 10% of people have an APOE2 gene.

If you have one APOE4 gene, your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease is three to four times more likely than if you only have APOE3 genes.
If you have one APOE2 gene, your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease is somewhat less than if you only have APOE3 genes.

This woman’s mutation of her APOE gene is an unusual variant called APOE3Christchurch (APOE3ch), named after the New Zealand city where it was first discovered. Even more unusual is the fact that she had two versions of this mutation, meaning that both her father and her mother gave it to her. The researchers wondered if this APOE3ch mutation could be the cause of her resistance to Alzheimer’s disease.

Resistance to tau

Another piece of the puzzle relates to an abnormal protein called tau. Tau is associated with the destruction of brain cells in Alzheimer’s disease. Tau is thought to accumulate in the brain after amyloid protein — the pathologic hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease — forms plaques. Although her brain was full of abnormal amyloid plaques — even more so than most people with full-blown Alzheimer’s dementia — she had relatively little tau.

Now the question was, could the APOE3ch mutation be related to the small amounts of tau protein? Although the answer is far from settled, the researchers did uncover some clues through laboratory experiments. Their findings suggest that the APOE3ch mutation may reduce the uptake of tau in brain cells. In addition, they were able to produce similar beneficial results using a special protein they created in the laboratory to try to mimic the effects of the APOE3ch mutation.

Where we are now

In brief, these Harvard researchers have a viable hypothesis to explain why this woman has been highly resistant to developing Alzheimer’s disease dementia. Moreover, their work suggests a possible path to a treatment that could be beneficial for all forms of Alzheimer’s disease.

We are still years away from a human treatment. The next step will be to try to treat laboratory models of Alzheimer’s disease in rodents, and then clinical trials in people with the disease after that. But in my view, this paper has provided the scientific community with a clue that may lead us to an eventual cure for Alzheimer’s disease.

The post A clue to a cure for Alzheimer’s disease appeared first on Harvard Health Blog.

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How Google Is Stealing Your Personal Health Data

Google, by far one of the greatest monopolies that ever existed, and poses a unique threat to anyone concerned about health, supplements, food and your ability to obtain truthful information about these and other issues.

This year, we’ve seen an unprecedented push to implement censorship across all online platforms, making obtaining and sharing crucial information about holistic health increasingly difficult.

As detailed in “Stark Evidence Showing How Google Censors Health News,” Google’s June 2019 update, which took effect June 3, effectively removed Mercola.com and hundreds of other natural health sites from Google search results. Google is also building a specific search tool for medical and health-related searches.¹

And, while not the sole threat to privacy, Google is definitely one of the greatest. Over time, Google has positioned itself in such a way that it’s become deeply embedded in your day-to-day life, including your health.

In recent years, the internet and medicine have become increasingly intertwined, giving rise to “virtual medicine” and self-diagnosing — a trend that largely favors drugs and costly, invasive treatments — and Google has its proverbial fingers in multiple slices of this pie.

Health Data Mining Poses Unique Privacy Risks

For example, in 2016, Google partnered with WebMD, launching an app allowing users to ask medical questions.² The following year, Google partnered with the National Alliance on Mental Illness, launching a depression self-assessment quiz which turned out to be little more than stealth marketing for antidepressants.^3,⁴

Google and various tech startups have also been investigating the possibility of assessing mental health problems using a combination of electronic medical records and tracking your internet and social media use.

In 2018, Google researchers announced they’d created an artificial intelligence-equipped retinal scanner that can appraise your risk for a heart attack.⁵

According to a recent Financial Times report,⁶ Google, Amazon and Microsoft collect data entered into health and diagnostic sites, which is then shared with hundreds of third parties — and this data is not anonymized, meaning it’s tied to specifically to you, without your knowledge or consent.

What this means is DoubleClick, Google’s ad service, will know which prescriptions you’ve searched for on Drugs.com, thus providing you with personalized drug ads. Meanwhile, Facebook receives information about what you’ve searched for in WebMD’s symptom checker.

“There is a whole system that will seek to take advantage of you because you’re in a compromised state,” Tim Lebert, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University told Financial Times.⁷ “I find that morally repugnant.”

While some find these kinds of technological advancements enticing, others see a future lined with red warning flags. As noted by Wolfie Christl, a technologist and researcher interviewed by Financial Times:⁸

“These findings are quite remarkable, and very concerning. From my perspective, this kind of data are clearly sensitive, has special protections

The following graphic, created by Financial Times, illustrates the flow of data from BabyCenter.com, a site that focuses on pregnancy, children’s health and parenting, to third parties, and the types of advertising these third parties then generate.

Tech Companies Are Accessing Your Medical Records

As described in the featured Wall Street Journal video,⁹ a number of tech companies, including Amazon, Apple and the startup Xealth, are diving into people’s personal electronic medical records to expand their businesses.

Xealth has developed an application that is embedded in your electronic health records. Doctors who use the Xealth application — which aims to serve most health care sectors and is being rapidly adopted as a preferred “digital formulary”¹⁰ — give the company vast access to market products to their patients. The app includes lists of products and services a doctor believes might be beneficial for certain categories of patients.

When seeing a patient, the doctor will select the products and services he or she wants the patient to get, generating an electronic shopping list that is then sent to the patient. The shopping links direct the patient to purchase these items from Xealth’s third-party shopping sites, such as Amazon.

As noted in the video, “Some privacy experts worry that certain Xealth vendors can see when a patient purchased a product through Xealth, and therefore through their electronic health record.” In the video, Jennifer Miller, assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine says:

”In theory, it could boost adherence to physician recommendations, which is a huge challenge in the U.S. health care system. On the other side, there are real worries about what type of information Amazon in particular is getting access to.

So, from what I understand, when a patient clicks on that Xealth app and is taken to Amazon, the data are coded as Xealth data, which means Amazon likely knows that you purchased these products through your electronic health records.”

Amazon Is Mining Health Records

Amazon, in turn, has developed software, called Amazon Comprehend Medical, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to mine people’s electronic health records. This software has been sold to hospitals, pharmacies, researchers and various other health care providers.

The software reveals medical and health trends that might otherwise go unnoticed. As one example, given in the video, a researcher can use this software to mine tens of thousands of health records to identify candidates for a specific research study.

While this can certainly be helpful, it can also be quite risky, due to potential inaccuracies. Doctors may enter inaccurate data for a patient, for example, data that, were it accurate, would render that patient a poor test subject.

Apple is also getting in on the action through its health app. It facilitates access to electronic medical records by importing all your records directly from your health care provider. The app is meant to be “helpful” by allowing you to pull up your medical records on your iPhone and present them to any doctor, anywhere in the world.

What Does This Mean for Your Privacy

While tech companies like Amazon and Apple claim your data are encrypted (to protect it from hacking) and that they cannot view your records directly, data breaches have become so common that such “guarantees” are next to worthless.

As noted in the video by Dudley Adams, a data use expert at the University of California, San Francisco, “No encryption is perfect. All it takes is time for that encryption to be broken.” One very real concern about having your medical records hacked into is that your information may be sold to insurance companies and your employer, which they can then use against you, either by raising your rates or denying employment.

After all, sick people cost insurance companies and employers more money, so both have a vested interest in avoiding chronically ill individuals. So, were your medical records to get out, you could potentially become uninsurable or unemployable.

Google Collects Health Data on Millions of Americans

Getting back to Google, a whistleblower recently revealed the company amassed health data from millions of Americans in 21 states through its Project Nightingale,^11,¹² and patients have not been informed of this data mining. As reported by The Guardian:¹³

“A whistleblower who works in Project Nightingale … has expressed anger to the Guardian that patients are being kept in the dark about the massive deal.

The anonymous whistleblower has posted a video on the social media platform Daily Motion that contains a document dump of hundreds of images of confidential files relating to Project Nightingale.

The secret scheme … involves the transfer to Google of healthcare data held by Ascension, the second-largest healthcare provider in the U.S. The data is being transferred with full personal details including name and medical history and can be accessed by Google staff. Unlike other similar efforts it has not been made anonymous though a process of removing personal information known as de-identification …

Among the documents are the notes of a private meeting held by Ascension operatives involved in Project Nightingale. In it, they raise serious concerns about the way patients’ personal health information will be used by Google to build new artificial intelligence and other tools.”

The anonymous whistleblower told The Guardian:

“Most Americans would feel uncomfortable if they knew their data was being haphazardly transferred to Google without proper safeguards and security in place. This is a totally new way of doing things. Do you want your most personal information transferred to Google? I think a lot of people would say no.”

On a side note, the video the whistleblower uploaded to Daily Motion has since been taken down, with a note saying the “video has been removed due to a breach of the Terms of Use.”

According to Google and Ascension, the data being shared will be used to build a search tool with machine-learning algorithms that will spit out diagnostic recommendations and suggestions for medications that health professionals can then use to guide them in their treatment.

Google claims only a limited number of individuals will have access to the data, but just how trustworthy is Google these days? Something tells me that since the data includes full personal details, they’ll have no problem figuring out a way to eventually make full use of it.

Google Acquires Fitbit

In November 2019, the company also acquired Fitbit for $2.1 billion, giving Google access to the health data of Fitbit’s 25.4 million active users¹⁴ as well. While Google says it won’t sell or use Fitbit data for Google ads, some users have already ditched their devices for fear of privacy breaches.¹⁵ As reported by The Atlantic on November 14, 2019:¹⁶

“Immediately, users voiced concern about Google combining fitness data with the sizeable cache of information it keeps on its users. Google assured detractors that it would follow all relevant privacy laws, but the regulatory-compliance discussion only distracted from the strange future coming into view.

As Google pushes further into health care, it is amassing a trove of data about our shopping habits, the prescriptions we use, and where we live, and few regulations are governing how it uses these data.”

How HIPAA Laws Actually Allow This Data Mining

The HIPAA Security Rule is supposed to protect your medical records, preventing access by third parties — including spouses — unless you specifically give your permission for records to be shared. So, just how is it that Google and other tech companies can mine them at will?

As it turns out, the Google-Ascension partnership that gives Google access to medical data is covered by a “business associate agreement” or BAA. HIPAA allows hospitals and medical providers to share your information with third parties that support clinical activities, and according to Google’s interpretation of the privacy laws and HIPAA regulations, the company is not in breach of these laws because it’s a “business associate.”

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights has opened an investigation into the legality of this arrangement.¹⁷ As reported by The Atlantic:¹⁸

“If HHS determines that Google and its handling of private information make it something more akin to a health care provider itself (because of its access to sensitive information from multiple sources who aren’t prompted for consent), it may find Google and Ascension in violation of the law and refer the matter to the Department of Justice for potential criminal prosecution.

But whether or not the deal goes through, its very existence points to a larger limitation of health-privacy laws, which were drafted long before tech giants started pouring billions into revolutionizing health care.”

Patients Bear the Risk While Third Parties Benefit

BAA agreements only allow for the disclosure of protected health information to entities that help the medical institution to perform its health care functions. The third party is not permitted to use the data for its own purposes or in any independent way.

I personally find it hard to believe that Google would not find a way to profit from this personal health data, considering its web-like business structure that ties into countless other for-profit parties. Even if they don’t, there does not appear to be any distinct advantages to patients whose records are being shared. As reported by STAT News:¹⁹

“Jennifer Miller, a Yale medical school professor who studies patient privacy issues, said the way health information is being shared, whether legal or not, is far from ideal. Patients — whose data are shared without their knowledge or specific consent — end up with all the risks, she said, while the benefits, financial or otherwise, go to Google, Ascension, and potentially future patients.”

As reported by Health IT Security²⁰ in March 2019, Democratic senator of Nevada, Catherine Cortez Masto, has also introduced a data privacy bill “that would require companies not covered by HIPAA to obtain explicit consent from patients before sharing health and genetic data.”

“The bill covers the collecting and storing of sensitive data, such as biometrics, genetics, or location data,” Health IT Security writes.²¹ “The consent form must outline how that data will be used.

And the bill will also let consumers request, dispute the accuracy of their records, and transfer or delete their data “without retribution” around price or services offered.

Further, organizations would need to apply three standards to all data collection, processing, storage, and disclosure. First, collection must be for a legitimate business or operation purpose, without subjecting individuals to unreasonable risks to their privacy.

Further, the data may not be used to discriminate against individuals for protected characteristics, such as religious beliefs. Lastly, companies may not engage in deceptive data practices.”

Google Partnership Spurs Class-Action Lawsuit

The fact that patients don’t want Google to access their medical records is evidenced by a class-action lawsuit filed in the summer of 2019 against the University of Chicago Medical Center which, like Ascension, allowed Google access to identifiable patient data through a partnership with the University of Chicago. As reported by WTTW News June 28, 2019:²²

“All three institutions are named as defendants in the suit, which was filed … by Matt Dinerstein, who received treatment at the medical center during two hospital stays in 2015.

The collaboration between Google and the University of Chicago was launched in 2017 to study electronic health records and develop new machine-learning techniques to create predictive models that could prevent unplanned hospital readmissions, avoid costly complications and save lives …

The tech giant has similar partnerships with Stanford University and the University of California-San Francisco. But that partnership violated federal law protecting patient privacy, according to the lawsuit, by allowing Google to access electronic health records of ‘nearly every patient’ at the medical center from 2009 to 2016.

The suit also claims Google will use the patient data to develop commercial health care technologies … The lawsuit claims the university breached its contracts with patients by ‘failing to keep their medical information private and confidential.’ It also alleges UChicago violated an Illinois law that prohibits companies from engaging in deceptive practices with clients.”

Like Ascension, the University of Chicago claims no confidentiality breaches have been made, since Google is a business associate. However, the lawsuit claims HIPAA was still violated because medical records were shared that “included sufficient information for Google to re-identify patients.”

The lawsuit also points out that Google does indeed have a commercial interest in all of this information, and can use it by combining it with its AI and advanced machine learning.

According to the plaintiffs, Google’s acquisition of DeepMind “has allowed for Google to find connections between electronic health records and Google users’ data.” The news report also points out that:²³

“In 2015, Google and DeepMind obtained patient information from the Royal Free NHS Trust Foundation to conduct a study, which a data protection watchdog organization said ‘failed to comply with data protection law.’”

Health-Tracking Shoes and Other Privacy Abominations

Google is also investing in other wearable technologies aimed at tracking users’ health data, including:²⁴

Shoes designed to monitor your weight, movement and falls
“Smart” contact lenses for people with age-related farsightedness and those who have undergone cataract surgery²⁵ (a glucose-sensing contact lens for diabetics was canceled in 2018 after four years of development²⁶)
A smartwatch to provide information for clinical research²⁷
An all-in-one insulin patch pump for Type 2 diabetics that is prefilled and connected to the internet²⁸

Google also has big plans for expanding the use of AI in health care. According to CB Insights,²⁹ “The company is applying AI to disease detection, new data infrastructure, and potentially insurance.”

As mentioned earlier, insurance companies can jack up premiums based on your health. So, what could possibly go wrong by having Google’s AI wired into the insurance market?

Google has also partnered with drugmaker Sanofi, which “will leverage Google’s cloud and AI technologies and integrate them into its biological innovations and scientific data which in turn will accelerate the medicine discovery process,” according to a Yahoo! Finance report.³⁰

According to Yahoo! Finance, “the collaboration will aid in the identification of various type of treatments suitable for patients. Additionally, Google’s AI tools are likely to be utilized by Sanofi in improving marketing and supply efforts and in forecasting sales.”

In plain English, this partnership will help Sanofi sell more drugs, which can hardly be said to be for the patients’ best interest, but rather that of Sanofi and Google. As mentioned earlier, Verily, Google’s health care division, is also collaborating with Sanofi, Novartis, Otsuka and Pfizer to help them identify suitable patients for clinical drug trials.³¹

To boost drug sales even further, Verily is working with Walgreens to deploy a “medication adherence” project, in which patients are equipped with devices to ensure they’re taking their medication as prescribed.³²

Amazon also plays a part in the drug adherence scheme with its recent buyout of Pillpack, an online pharmacy that offers prepackaged pill boxes with all the different medications you’re taking.

According to Yahoo! Finance, Amazon is also planning to develop at-home medical testing devices, and is rolling out the option to make medical-related purchases from Amazon using your health savings account. All of these things generate health-related data points that can then be used for other purposes, be it personalized marketing or insurance premium decisions.

Have You Had Enough of Google’s Privacy Intrusions Yet?

Add to all of this data mining the fact that Google is actively manipulating search results and making decisions about what you’re allowed to see and what you’re not based on its own and third party interests — a topic detailed in a November 15, 2019 Wall Street Journal investigation.³³ The dangers ahead should be self-evident.

Now more than ever we must work together to share health information with others by word-of-mouth, by text and email. We have built in simple sharing tools at the top of each article so you can easily email or text interesting articles to your friends and family.

My information is here because all of you support and share it, and we can do this without Big Tech’s support. It’s time to boycott and share! Here are a few other suggestions:

Become a subscriber to my newsletter and encourage your friends and family to do the same. This is the easiest and safest way to make sure you’ll stay up to date on important health and environmental issues.

If you have any friends or relatives that are seriously interested in their health, please share important articles with them and encourage them to subscribe to our newsletter.

Consider dumping any Android phone the next time you get a phone. Android is a Google operating system and will seek to gather as much data as they can about you for their benefit. iPhone, while not perfect, appears to have better privacy protections.

Use the internal Mercola.com search engine when searching for articles on my site.

Boycott Google by avoiding any and all Google products:

Stop using Google search engines and recognize that even engines that honor privacy like Start Page, still use Google as their back end and provide censored results. Alternatives include DuckDuckGo³⁴ and Qwant³⁵
Uninstall Google Chrome and use Brave or Opera browser instead, available for all computers and mobile devices.³⁶ From a security perspective, Opera is far superior to Chrome and offers a free VPN service (virtual private network) to further preserve your privacy
If you have a Gmail account, try a non-Google email service such as ProtonMail,³⁷ an encrypted email service based in Switzerland
Stop using Google docs. Digital Trends has published an article suggesting a number of alternatives³⁸
If you’re a high school student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts

Sign the “Don’t be evil” petition created by Citizens Against Monopoly

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This Revolutionary System Can Help Stop Global Warming

“Unsustainable land use and greenhouse gas emissions are delivering a one-two punch to natural ecosystems that are key to the fight against global climate change.

And without sweeping emissions cuts and transformations to food production and land management, the world stands no chance of staving off catastrophic planetary warming,” HuffPost reported, citing the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.¹

Agave plants (the best known of which are blue agave, used to produce tequila), along with nitrogen-fixing, companion trees such as mesquite, huizache, desert ironwood, wattle and varieties of acacia that readily grow alongside agave, are among the most common and prolific, yet routinely denigrated or ignored plants in the world. As India climate scientist Promode Kant points out:

“Agave is to the drier parts of the world what bamboo is to its wetter zones. Capturing atmospheric CO2 in vegetation is severely limited by the availability of land and water. The best choice would be species that can utilize lands unfit for food production and yet make the dynamics of carbon sequestration faster.

As much as 40% of the land on earth is arid and semi-arid, largely in the tropics but also in the cool temperate zones up north. And on almost half of these lands, with a minimum annual rainfall of about 250 mm and soils that are slightly refractory, the very valuable species of agave grows reasonably well.”²

Agave plants and nitrogen-fixing trees densely intercropped and cultivated together have the capacity to draw down massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere and produce more above ground and below ground biomass (and animal fodder) on a continuous year-to-year basis than any other desert and semi-desert species.

Ideal for arid and hot climates, agaves and their companion trees, once established, require little or no irrigation to survive and thrive, and are basically impervious to rising global temperatures and drought. Agaves alone can draw down and store above ground the dry weight equivalent of 30 to 60 tons of CO2 per hectare (12 to 24 tons per acre) per year. One hectare equals 10,000 square meters or 2.47 acres.

Now, a new, agave-based agroforestry and livestock feeding model developed in Guanajuato, Mexico, promises to revitalize campesino/small farmer livestock production while storing massive amounts of atmospheric carbon above and below ground.

Scaled up on millions of currently degraded and overgrazed rangelands, these agave/agroforestry systems have the potential to not only improve soil and pasture health, but to help mitigate and potentially reverse global warming, aka climate change.

Climate Emergency

As international scientists, activists and our own everyday experience tell us, we are facing a Climate Emergency. A “profit at any cost,” fossil fuel-supercharged economy, coupled with industrial agriculture and factory farms, destructive land use and mindless consumption have pumped a dangerous load of CO2 and greenhouse gas pollution into the sky, bringing on global warming and violent climate change.

Degenerative food, farming, livestock and land use practices have decarbonized and killed off much of the biological life and natural carbon-sequestering capacity of our soils, forests and ecosystems.

This degradation and desertification of global landscapes has oxidized and released billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and eliminated much of the above ground carbon biomass once stored in our forests and landscapes.

This global degeneration has depleted so much of the carbon and biological life in our soils, trees and plants that these natural systems can no longer draw down and sequester (through natural photosynthesis) enough of the excess CO2 and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to maintain the necessary balance between CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the carbon stored in our soils, trees and plants.

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) estimates that arid and semi-arid lands make up 41.3% of the earth's land surface, including 15% of Latin America (most of Mexico), 66% of Africa, 40% of Asia and 24% of Europe.

Farmers and herders in these areas face tremendous challenges because of increasing droughts, erratic rainfall, degraded soils, overgrazed pastures and water scarcity. Many areas are in danger of degenerating even further into desert, unable to sustain any crops or livestock whatsoever.

Most of the world’s drylands are located in the economically underdeveloped regions of the Global South, although there are millions of acres of drylands in the U.S., Australia and Southern Europe as well. Farming, ranching and ecosystem conservation are becoming increasingly problematic in these drylands, especially given the fact that the majority of the farms and ranches in these areas do not have irrigation wells or year-round access to surface water.

Crop and livestock production levels are deteriorating, trees and perennials have typically been removed or seasonally burned, and pastures and rangelands have been overgrazed. Poverty, unemployment and malnutrition in these degraded landscapes are rampant, giving rise to violence, organized crime and forced migration

The good news, however, coming out of Mexico, applicable to many other regions, is that if farmers and ranchers can stop overgrazing pastures and rangelands and eliminate slash and burn practices, and instead reforest, revegetate, rehydrate and recarbonize depleted soils, integrating traditional and indigenous water catchment, agroforestry, livestock and land management practices with agave-based agroforestry, we may well be able to green the drylands and store and sequester massive amounts of carbon.

Via Organica, the ‘Organic Way’

After decades as a food, farm, anti-GMO and climate campaigner for the Organic Consumers Association in the U.S., I now spend a good part of my time managing an organic and regenerative farm and training center, Via Organica, in the high-desert drylands of North Central Mexico.

Our semi-arid, temporal (seasonal rainfall) ecosystem and climate in the state of Guanajuato is similar to what you find in many parts of Mexico, and in fact in 40% of the world. In our valley, we typically get 20 inches or 500 millimeters of precipitation in the “rainy season” (July to October), greening the landscape, followed by eight months with little or no rain whatsoever.

At Rancho Via Organica, we’ve been trying to regenerate our high-desert (6,300 feet elevation) environment, developing farming, livestock and landscape management practices that produce healthy organic food and seeds, sequester carbon in the soil, preserve our monte or natural densely-vegetated areas, slow down and infiltrate rainwater (including runoff coming down the mountains and hillsides) to recharge our water table, and reforest and revegetate our still somewhat degraded corn fields and pasturelands.

Looking across our mountain valley, the most prominent flora are cactus and agave plants (some of which are quite large) along with hundreds of thorny, typically undersized, mesquite, huizache and acacia shrubs/trees.

In order to grow our vegetables and cover crops, maintain our olive, mulberry, citrus and pomegranate trees, and provide water and forage for our animals, we — like most small farmers and ranchers in Mexico — irrigate with only the rainfall that we can collect and store in cisterns, ponds and soils.

Eighty-six percent of Mexican farmers and herders have no source of water other than seasonal rainfall, and therefore have to struggle to maintain their milpas (corn, beans and squash) and raise their animals under increasingly adverse climate conditions.

Greening the Drylands: A New Agroforestry Model

Recently Juan Frias, a retired college professor and scientist, came up to me after attending a workshop at our farm. As we discussed regenerative agriculture practices and climate change, Juan told me about a new system of drylands agroforestry and livestock management (sheep and goats), based upon agave plants and mesquite trees in the nearby community of San Luis de la Paz. They call their agroforestry system Modelo Zamarripa.³

By densely planting, pruning and intercropping high-biomass, high-forage producing, fast-growing species of agaves (1,600 to 2,000 per hectare) amongst preexisting deep-rooted, nitrogen-fixing tree species such as mesquite, or among planted tree seedlings, these farmers are transforming their landscape and their livelihoods.

When the agaves are 3 years old, and for the following five to seven years, farmers can begin pruning the leaves or pencas, chopping them up finely with a machine, and then fermenting the agave in closed containers for 30 days, ideally combining the agave leaves with 20% or more of mesquite pods by volume to give them a higher protein level. In our region mesquite trees start to produce pods that can be harvested in five years.

By Year Seven the mesquite and agaves have grown into a fairly dense forest. In years eight to 10, the root stem or pina (weighing 100 to 200 pounds) of the agave is ready for harvesting to produce a distilled liquor called mescal. Meanwhile the hijuelos or pups put out by the mother agave plants are being continuously transplanted back into the agroforestry system, guaranteeing continuous biomass growth (and carbon storage).

In their agroforestry system, the Zamarripa farmers integrate rotational grazing of sheep and goats across their ranch, supplementing the pasture forage their animals consume with the fermented agave silage. Modelo Zamarippa has proven in practice to be ideal for sheep and goats, and we are now experimenting at Via Organica with feeding agave silage to our pastured pigs and poultry.

The revolutionary innovation of these Guanajuato farmers has been to turn a heretofore indigestible, but massive and accessible source of biomass — the agave leaves — into a valuable animal feed, using the natural process of fermentation to transform the plants’ indigestible saponin and lectin compounds into digestible carbohydrates and fiber.

To do this they have developed a relatively simple machine, hooked up to a tractor, that can finely chop up the tough leaves of the agave. After chopping the agave, the next step is to anaerobically ferment the biomass in a closed container (we use 5-gallon buckets with lids).

The fermented end-product, after 30 days, provides a nutritious but very inexpensive silage or animal fodder (in comparison to alfalfa, hay or cornstalks) that costs less than 1 Mexican peso (or approximately 5 cents USD) per kilo (2.2 pounds) to produce.

According to Frias, lambs readily convert 10 kilos of this silage into 1 kilo of body weight. At less than 5 cents per kilo (2 cents per pound) agave silage could potentially make the difference between survival and bankruptcy for millions of the world’s small farmers and herders.

Agaves and Carbon Storage and Sequestration

The Zamarripa system of drylands afforestation and silvopasture draws down and stores in the plants large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere. Agronomists have observed that certain varieties of agave can produce up to 43 tons per hectare of dry weight biomass per year, on a continuous basis.⁴

These high biomass varieties of agave will likely thrive in many of the world’s arid ecosystems, wherever any type of agave and nitrogen-fixing trees are already growing.

Nitrogen-fixing trees such as mesquite can be found in most arid and semi-arid regions of the world. Mesquite grows readily not only in Texas and the Southwestern U.S., Mexico, Central America, Argentina, Chile and other Latin American nations, but also “thrives in arid and semi-arid regions of North America, Africa, the Middle East, Tunisia, Algeria, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Myanmar (Burma), Russia, Hawaii, West Indies, Puerto Rico and Australia.”⁵

At Via Organica, outside San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato,⁶ we are utilizing moveable, solar-fenced paddocks for our grazing sheep and goats in order to protect our mesquite tree seedlings, to prevent overgrazing or undergrazing, to eliminate dead grasses and invasive species, and to concentrate animal feces and urine across the landscape in a controlled manner.

At the same time that we are rotating and moving our livestock on a daily basis, we are transplanting, pruning, finely chopping and fermenting the heavy biomass leaves or pencas of agave salmiana plants. Some individual agave pencas or leaves can weigh (wet) as much as 20 kilos or 44 pounds.

The bountiful harvest of this regenerative, high-biomass, high carbon-sequestering system will eventually include not only extremely low-cost, nutritious animal silage, but also high-quality organic lamb, mutton, cheese, milk, aquamiel (agave sap), pulque (a mildly alcoholic beverage) and distilled agave liquor (mescal), all produced organically and biodynamically with no synthetic chemicals or pesticides whatsoever, at affordable prices, with excess agave biomass and fiber available for textiles, compost, biochar and construction materials.

Massive Potential Carbon Drawdown

From a climate crisis perspective, the Modelo Zamarripa is a potential game-changer. Forty-three tons of above-ground dry weight biomass production on a continuing basis per hectare per year ranks among the highest rates of drawing down and storing atmospheric carbon in plants in the world, apart from healthy forests.

Imagine the carbon sequestration potential if rural farmers and pastoralists can establish agave-based agroforestry systems over the next decade on just 10% of the worlds 5 billion degraded acres (500 million acres), areas unsuited for crop production, but areas where agave plants and suitable native nitrogen-fixing companion tress (such as acacia varieties in Africa) are already growing.

Conservatively estimating an above-ground biomass carbon storage rate of 10 tons of carbon per acre per year on these 500 million acres, (counting both agave and companion trees, aboveground and below ground biomass) we would then be able to cumulatively sequester 5 billion tons of carbon (18 billion gigatons of CO2e) from the atmosphere every year.

Five billion tons of additional carbon sequestered in the Earth’s soils and biota equals nearly 50% of all human greenhouse gas emissions in 2018.

More Background on Agaves

To better understand the potential of this agroforestry/holistic grazing system, a little more background information on agave plants, and nitrogen-fixing or trees such as mesquite, huizache or other fodder and food producing trees such as inga or moringa may be useful.

Various varieties of agave plants (along with their cactus relatives and companion nitrogen-fixing trees) are found growing on approximately 20% of the earth’s lands, essentially on the half of the world’s drylands where there is a minimum annual rainfall of approximately 10 inches or 250 mm, where the temperature never drops below 14 degrees Fahrenheit.

Kant has described the tremendous biomass production and carbon-storage potential of agaves in dry areas:

“Agave can … be used for carbon sequestration projects under CDM [the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Climate Protocol] even though by itself it does not constitute a tree crop and cannot provide the minimum required tree crown cover to create a forest as required under CDM rules.

But if the minimum required crown cover is created by planting an adequate number of suitable tree species in agave plantations then the carbon sequestered in the agave plants will also be eligible for measurement as above ground dry biomass and provide handsome carbon credits …

It causes no threat to food security and places no demand for the scarce water and since it can be harvested annually after a short initial gestation period of establishment, and yields many products that have existing markets, it is also well suited for eradication of poverty …”⁷

Agaves, of which there are 200 or more varieties growing across the world, can thrive even in dry, degraded lands unsuitable for crop production because of their Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) photosynthetic pathway (cacti and other related desert plants also have a CAM pathway) that essentially enables these plants to draw down moisture from the air and store it in their thick tough leaves during the nighttime, while the opening in their leaves (the stomata) close up during daylight hours, drastically reducing evaporation.

Meanwhile, its relatively shallow mycorrhizal fungi-powered roots below the soil surface spread out horizontally, taking in available moisture and nutrients from the topsoil, especially during the rainy season.

In addition, its propagation of baby plants or pups, (up to 50 among some varieties) that grow out of its horizontal roots makes the plant a self-reproducing perennial, able to sustain high biomass growth, and carbon-storage and sequestration on a long-term basis.

Even as a maturing agave plant is pruned beginning in Year Three (to produce fermented silage) and the entire mature agave plant (the pina) is harvested at the end of its life span, in order to make mescal, in our case after eight to 10 years, it leaves behind a family of pups that are carrying out photosynthesis and producing biomass (leaves and stem) at an equal or greater rate than the parent plant.

In other words, a very high level of above-ground carbon storage and below-ground sequestration can be maintained year after year — all with no irrigation and no synthetic fertilizers or chemicals required, if intercropped in conjunction with nitrogen-fixing tree such as mesquite, huizache, inga, moringa or other dryland species such as the acacias that grow in arid or semi-arid areas.

Agaves and a number of their tree companions have been used as sources of food, beverage and fiber by indigenous societies for hundreds, in fact thousands of years. However, until recently farmers had not been able to figure out how to utilize the massive biomass of the agave plant leaves which, unless they are fermented, are basically indigestible and even harmful to livestock.

In fact, this is why, besides the thorns and thick skins of the leaves, animals typically will not, unless starving, eat them. But once their massive leaves (which contain significant amounts of sugar) are chopped up and fermented in closed containers, livestock, after a short period of adjustment, will gobble up this sweet, nutritious forage like candy.

Developing a native species/agroforestry/livestock system on 5 million to 10 million acres of land unsuitable for food crops in a large country like Mexico (which has 357 million acres of cropland and pastureland, much of which is degraded) could literally sequester 37% to 74% of the country’s net current fossil fuel emissions (current net emissions are 492m tons of CO2e).

And, of course, wherever these agave/agroforestry/holistic grazing systems are deployed, farmers and ranchers will also be restoring the fertility and moisture holding capacity of millions of acres of pasturelands and rangelands, thereby promoting rural food self-sufficiency and prosperity.

Scaling up best regenerative practices on the world’s billions of acres of croplands, pasturelands and forest lands — especially those degraded lands no longer suitable for crops or grazing — can play a major role, along with moving away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, in stopping and reversing climate change.

For more information on the global Regeneration Movement go to Regeneration International. Please sign up for our free newsletter and, if you can afford it, make a tax-deductible donation to help us spread the message of Regenerative Agriculture and Agave Power across the world. “Our house is on fire,” as teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg reminds us, but there is still time to turn things around.

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Superbugs Kill Someone Every 15 Minutes

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention¹ published their first Antibiotic Resistance Threats Report in 2013. The intention was to sound the alarm to the dangers of antibiotic resistance that experts had been warning about for decades.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are also called superbugs. The resistance occurs as bacteria adapt to chemicals and drugs in the environment. This may make standards of treatment for bacterial infections less effective, and in the case of superbugs, ineffective.

The term “superbug” was initially coined by the media, but Dr. Stephen Calderwood, who serves as president for the Infectious Diseases Society of America says,² “It resonates because it's scary. But In fairness, there is no real definition.”

The medical term is multidrug-resistant bacteria, referring to bacteria unaffected by two or more types of antibiotics. Brian Coombes, Ph.D., head of the department of biochemistry and biomedical science at McMaster University in Ontario speaks to the widespread impact antibiotic resistance has on public health, saying:³

"Superbugs should be a concern to everyone. Antibiotics are the foundation on which all modern medicine rests. Cancer chemotherapy, organ transplants, surgeries, and childbirth all rely on antibiotics to prevent infections. If you can't treat those, then we lose the medical advances we have made in the last 50 years."

More Dying From Superbugs Than Earlier Estimates

In their first report, the CDC estimated there were 2 million antibiotic-resistant infections reported in 2013, accounting for 23,000 deaths.⁴ The recently released report includes data not available in 2013, including electronic health records.

Writers of the 2019 report calculate the 2013 data missed nearly half of the cases and deaths.⁵ According to the new estimates 3 million each year are infected and 35,000 die. Put another way, on average, every 11 seconds someone in the U.S. is infected with an antibiotic-resistant bacterium, and someone dies every 15 minutes.

Other researchers believe even this estimate is too low and the true number of infections is likely much higher.⁶ Dr. Jason Burnham is an infectious disease specialist at Washington University. He and two colleagues surveyed data from 2010, expanding the definition of antibiotic resistant deaths.

The lower limit of their estimate of people who died in 2010 as the result of an antibiotic resistant bacterial infection is 153,113. The team believes their estimate indicates a need for better surveillance and reporting to address this crucial issue and establish a more accurate estimate of the burden of the infection, which may open more avenues for research funding.

As indicated in the CDC report, hospitals have improved tracking methods and slowed the spread of resistant germs by nearly 30% since 2013.⁷ Additionally, they identified a secondary infection linked to antibiotic use, Clostridioides difficile (C. diff).

This infection triggers deadly diarrhea after antibiotics upset the natural balance of bacteria in the digestive system. If deaths from C. diff are added to the CDC 2019 totals, more than 3 million infections and 48,000 deaths may be attributed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. These numbers are likely still a conservative estimate of the damage that could be attributed to multidrug-resistant bacteria.

Antibiotic Resistance Is an Evolving Challenge

According to The Washington Post, the CDC identified five germs representing the most urgent threat. The first three are well-known. They include carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), C. diff and drug-resistant gonorrhea. Each of these are resistant to nearly all antibiotics physicians have used to treat them, and statistics show they kill up to 50% of those who become septic.

Further, these bacteria have the ability to transfer their resistance to related bacteria. This may potentially increase the number and species of bacteria that are antibiotic-resistant. Two new pathogens were added to the list. The first is a yeast called Candida auris, which the CDC⁸ refers to as an “emerging fungus that presents a serious global health threat.”

The second is carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter bacteria, which the CDC reports is resistant to nearly all antibiotics. The new report added a classification of pathogens to watch, in which they placed 18 germs with the potential to spread further resistance.

The comparison in the 2013 and 2019 data drives home what experts have warned for decades — bacteria continue to evolve and mutate, developing the ability to fight off different types of antibiotics. As more antibiotics are used in agriculture and health care, they become less effective.

Developing Superbugs Spurred by Antibiotic Overuse

The CDC report links misuse of antibiotics to the impressive rise in resistant infections. In another study⁹ by the CDC, researchers stated at least 30% of antibiotics prescribed in the U.S. are unnecessary. Antibiotics used in physician offices and emergency rooms were analyzed, and the data revealed most of the unnecessary antibiotics were used for respiratory conditions triggered by viruses.

Put another way, 30% of the antibiotics prescribed in the U.S. equals 47 million prescriptions each year, placing patients at risk for allergic reaction or C. diff infections. In some cases, antibiotics are prescribed proactively, as in the case of erythromycin eye ointment in newborns to prevent ophthalmia neonatorum from gonorrhea and chlamydia.¹⁰

The antibiotic is not used universally throughout the U.S. or Europe to prophylactically treat infant pink eye since mothers who receive prenatal care are screened for gonorrhea and chlamydia and treated before the birth of their child. The issue with treatment of all babies is that 25% of all gonorrhea is now resistant to erythromycin.

Despite the fact the American Academy of Pediatrics no longer recommends the universal use of eye ointment, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force extended the 2011 recommendations citing a lack of prenatal care for many in the U.S. Dr. David Hyun from the Antibiotic Resistance Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts commented on the rising number of antibiotic resistant bacteria:¹¹

“The fact that we’re seeing some of the greatest increases among resistant infections that are acquired outside of the hospital — combined with data we already have showing that approximately 1 in 3 outpatient prescriptions are completely unnecessary — underscores the need for improved antibiotic use in doctor’s offices and other non-hospital settings.”

Although overly prescribed antibiotics play a significant role in the development of superbugs, there are other large agrochemical contributors as well. A major source of human consumption of antibiotics comes from agricultural use. One CDC report¹² showed livestock antibiotics have played a role in the development of resistant bacteria.

In 2013, estimates of antibiotic use on livestock accounted for 80% of all antibiotic use in the U.S.¹³ In a report in 2018,¹⁴ the FDA noted a 28% reduction in the sales and distribution of antibiotics earmarked for livestock since the FDA first compiled evidence in 2009.

Pesticide use also contributes to the development of multidrug-resistant bacteria, as I discussed in “Pesticides Compound Antibiotic Resistance.” The bottom line is, bacteria are affected by any chemical they contact and develop resistance up to 100,000 times faster after exposure to certain herbicides, like glyphosate or dicamba.

Hospital-Acquired Infections May Decline With Copper Beds

Hospital beds are another source of infection. Whether you have a planned or unplanned hospital admission, it should never be taken lightly. Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that if the person who occupied the bed before you was prescribed antibiotics, you had a greater potential for contracting C. diff.

More than 100,000 pairs of hospitalized individuals were compared from 2010 to 2015. When the previous occupants of a bed received antibiotics, the patient who used the bed after them had a 22% greater risk of developing C. diff. However, the authors of one study show that switching to copper bed frames may reduce that number significantly.¹⁵

In the new study, published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, it’s reported that copper beds in an intensive care unit had 95% fewer bacteria than traditional hospital beds. According to one of the scientists from the Medical University of South Carolina:¹⁶

“Hospital-acquired infections sicken approximately 2 million Americans annually, and kill nearly 100,000 — numbers roughly equivalent to the number of deaths if a wide-bodied jet crashed every day. Despite the best efforts by environmental services workers, they are neither cleaned often enough, nor well enough.”

Hospital beds are a source of nosocomial infection, or infections originating from a hospital source. Candida auris, one of the two new pathogens identified in the CDC report, are an intractable threat faced by hospitals, and have been found on hospital beds.

The findings from the study with copper beds indicate they may help infection control efforts and reduce the number of hospital-acquired infections. After the death of one man at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York from Candida auris, the hospital had to use special equipment to clean the room. The hospital president commented:

"Everything was positive — the walls, the bed, the doors, the curtains, the phones, the sink, the whiteboard, the poles, the pump. The mattress, the bed rails, the canister holes, the window shades, the ceiling, everything in the room was positive."

Know This Treatment if Infection Leads to Sepsis

The CDC recommends using basic precautions to halt the spread of pathogens, including washing your hands when needed and using a good handwashing technique. Dr. Helen Boucher, chief of infectious diseases at Tufts Medical Center, commented on the need to prepare for multidrug-resistant bacteria:¹⁷

“We want to have diagnostic tools and medical treatments for problems we know we’re going to have. But we also need to prepare for the kind of resistance that we could never predict. We know from history that bacteria and Mother Nature are smarter than we are.”

One medical treatment you must be aware of is a combination therapy of vitamin C, thiamine and steroids to improve your potential for survival from sepsis — a last-ditch effort by your immune system to fight an infection. Every year 1 million people suffer from sepsis and nearly half will die.

Dr. Paul Marik, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in East Virginia, made the discovery while treating a patient with sepsis. Despite the treatment being harmless (it doesn’t make the patient any worse than they are) and a demonstrated reduction in mortality rates in his hospital from 40% to 8.5%, many practitioners continue to wait on further studies.

It is important to recognize the signs and symptoms of sepsis early, as early treatment also increases the potential for survival. To learn more about sepsis and the treatment that could save the life of someone you know, see my past article, “Vitamin C Lowers Mortality in Severe Sepsis.”

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