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September 2020
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12:48 ,
Rapeseed has the potential to replace soy as the best plant-based source of protein for humans. In a current study, nutrition scientists found that rapeseed protein consumption has comparable beneficial effects on human metabolism as soy protein. The glucose metabolism and satiety were even better. Another advantage: The proteins can be obtained from the by-products of rapeseed oil production.

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12:48 ,
Scientists have made a leap forward in our understanding of how COVID-19 infections trigger deadly levels of lung inflammation. Their discovery of a pathway that sets the lungs ablaze with inflammation has launched a search for new therapeutics that could block this process before it can take off and turn fatal.

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12:48 ,
Researchers studying interferons, immune response proteins released naturally by human cells when viruses are detected, have uncovered new details on the mechanisms underlying cell defenses. They describe the intricate, time-dependent regulatory mechanisms that human cells use to control the duration and strength of antiviral responses triggered by interferon. Based on these findings, researchers are now able to design time-dependent administrations of interferon to minimize inhibitory factors and boost therapeutic responses.

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12:25 , , , ,

Food labels contain a wealth of information: calories, serving size, and the amounts of fat, sugar, vitamins, and fiber contained in a food, among other things. But do consumers know how to effectively use this information? A recent study showed that some consumers are struggling, especially when it comes to understanding whole grains.

Recent study highlights consumer confusion

For the study, published in Public Health Nutrition, researchers conducted two experiments to examine consumer understanding of whole grains on food labels. The research, which focused on food labels on bread, cereal, and crackers, was done online and involved more than 1,000 adults.

In the first experiment, researchers displayed pairs of products with different amounts of whole grains (based on the ingredients list and fiber content), sugar, and salt on mocked-up Nutrition Facts panels. One of the products contained a good amount of whole grains but made no claims on the front of the package. The other product had less overall whole grains, but sold itself with terms like “multigrain” or “wheat” on the front of the package. Results showed that 29% to 47% of study participants incorrectly identified the less healthy product as the better option.

The second experiment used actual food labels and asked the study participants to identify which products had 100% whole grain, mostly whole grain, or little to no whole grain. About half of the study participants (43% to 51%) overstated the amount of whole grains in the products that were mostly refined grains. For another product, composed mainly of whole grains, 17% of the consumers understated the whole grain content.

The study concluded that consumers have difficulty identifying the healthfulness and the whole-grain content of some packaged foods, and that they rely on whole-grain labeling on the front of the package rather than considering information from the Nutrition Facts label and the ingredients list.

Why should we eat whole grains?

Whole grains refer to the entire grain kernel, including the bran, germ, and endosperm. The process of refining grains removes most of the bran and germ, leaving the endosperm (white flour). Each component of the whole grain contributes different nutrients, including vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other health-promoting compounds.

Whole grains offer a complete package of health benefits, unlike refined grains, which are stripped of valuable nutrients in the refining process. Studies show that they decrease our risk for several chronic diseases including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and death from any cause.

Whole grains are also a rich source of vitamins and minerals. Compared to enriched white flour, 100% whole wheat flour contains: 96% more vitamin E, 82% more vitamin B6, 80% more selenium, 78% more magnesium, 72% more chromium, 58% more copper, 52% more zinc, and 37% more folate.

Hulled barley, bulgur, whole-grain couscous, oats, rye, spelt, triticale, and whole wheat are all whole grains. Gluten-free whole grains include amaranth, brown rice, buckwheat, corn, millet, quinoa, teff, and wild rice.

Tips for selecting whole grain products

Don’t rely on front-of-the-package marketing. Just because the package shows a photo of a beautiful wheat field does not necessarily mean its contents are made with a whole grain. Even packages that say “multigrain,” “wheat,” “double fiber,” “cracked wheat,” “7 grain,” “stone ground,” “enriched,” “fortified,” or “made with whole grains” may be mostly enriched white flour.

Do not assume that darker is better. Products that are darker in color are not necessarily whole grains. Ingredients such as molasses or caramel coloring may have been used to impart color.

Check the ingredients list. The relative amount of whole grain in the food can be gauged by the placement of the grain in the ingredients list. The whole grain should be the first ingredient — or the second ingredient, after water. For foods with multiple whole-grain ingredients, they should appear near the beginning of the ingredients list. Choose foods that list “whole” or “whole grain” before the grain’s name, such as whole rye flour, whole wheat flour, or whole buckwheat.

Know what the labels really mean

If the label says… The product contains…
100% whole grain No refined flour
Made with whole grains May contain a little or a lot of whole grains
Whole grain As little as 51% whole grain flour
Good source of whole grain 15% to 25% whole grain
Multigrain A mixture of grains, possibly all or mostly refined grains

Look at the Nutrition Facts label

The amount of fiber listed on the food label can provide a helpful clue to a food’s whole grain content. When selecting a product, choose breads that contain at least 3 grams of fiber per serving, cereals that have at least 5 grams of fiber per serving, and crackers that contain at least 3 grams of fiber per serving.

But don’t focus solely on whole grains. When trying to improve your diet, use food labels to guide you toward products with less sodium, saturated fat, and added sugar as well.

The post Whole grains or no grains? Food labels can be misleading appeared first on Harvard Health Blog.



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09:48 ,
In a study recently published in BMC Public Health, Arizona State University researchers found that heavy users of screens -- defined as those who use screens an average of 17.5 hours per day -- reported the least healthful dietary patterns and the poorest health-related characteristics compared with moderate and light users, who averaged roughly 11.3 and 7 hours of screen use per day, respectively.

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09:48 ,
Neuronal communication is so fast, and at such a small scale, that it is exceedingly difficult to explain precisely how it occurs. An observation enabled by a custom imaging system, has led to a clear understanding of how neurons communicate with each other by modulating the 'tone' of their signal, which previously had eluded the field.

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09:48 ,
Researchers shed new light on how Zika virus hijacks our own cellular machinery to break down an essential protein for neurological development, getting it to 'eat itself'. By triggering this process known as autophagy, Zika virus is able to degrade an important protein, a process that may contribute to the development of neurological or brain deficiencies and congenital birth defects in the newborns of infected pregnant women.

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00:22 , ,

Children’s Health Defense (CHD), founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., created “The Jab” video above, which highlights the gold rush that occurred for pharmaceutical companies when the World Health Organization declared swine flu a pandemic in 2009. While Big Pharma got richer, an experimental vaccine was hastily rushed to market, and thousands suffered adverse effects as a result.

Now, in the midst of another controversial pandemic, we’re facing an eerily similar playbook — with pharmaceutical companies eager to cash in on the first COVID-19 vaccine, begging the question, “Are we are being played — again?”1

Pandemic Playbook: First, ‘The Trap’

Pandemics have been coming and going around the globe for centuries, but in recent history they’ve been used as points of manipulation that have profited corporations, particularly pharmaceutical companies. In 2005, you may remember, the bird flu epidemic was predicted to kill from 2 million to 150 million people,2 but turned out to be a whole lot of hot air, and prompted me to write the book “The Great Bird Flu Hoax.”

At the time, Nature Immunology published an editorial stating that the fear of bird flu had prompted government officials to prioritize developing plans to deal with pandemic influenza, and the WHO had named bird flu as the No. 1 health concern.

“This heightened concern exists despite any evidence suggesting sustained human-to-human transmission of the potentially pandemic H5N1 strain of avian influenza virus,” according to the article.3 In the years that followed, WHO executed agreements — so called “sleeping contracts” — with European and African nations in the name of protecting people from a future global pandemic.

The contracts stated that countries would buy vaccines in the event of a pandemic, but this would only be necessary if WHO declared a Phase 6 influenza pandemic.4 Both GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Baxter were named in contracts with the U.K. parliament, for instance, which stated the pharmaceutical companies would supply a pandemic influenza vaccine to the U.K. and were valued at £155.4 million (more than $206 million) over four years.5

“Unfortunately,” CHD noted, “the government officials who signed the contracts never suspected that GSK makes multimillion-dollar donations to the WHO in return for control over decisions that result in GSK windfalls.”6

WHO Changes Definition of Pandemic

It was June 11, 2009, when WHO declared H1N1 swine flu to be a Phase 6 global influenza pandemic, even though it had only caused 144 deaths worldwide. That declaration put the sleeping contracts into an active state, to the tune of $18 billion directed to the production of H1N1 vaccines, including GSK’s Pandemrix.

Prior to the pandemic’s declaration, WHO had defined a pandemic at the top of their Pandemic Preparedness website as follows:7

“An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.”

The 144-person death toll certainly didn’t seem to fit the description of an “enormous” number of deaths, but, conveniently, it didn’t matter because WHO changed their definition of a pandemic. According to CHD in “The Jab”:8

“Suspiciously, just 39 days before declaring the pandemic, the W.H.O. deleted the pandemic definition from their website. When confronted, they told the media that their definition ‘painted a rather bleak picture and could be very scary.’

In the new definition, the W.H.O. no longer required that anyone die before they declare a pandemic. GSK’s Pandemrix jab was an experimental vaccine that was never tested for safety or efficacy. It was given straight to hundreds of millions of Africans and Europeans. This wasn’t the time for red tape and formalities. By any definition — rather, by the new definition, we were in a global pandemic.”

Pandemic Expert Panel Fraught With Conflicts of Interest

Lest anyone suggest that WHO, which received funding from GSK, wasn’t entirely unbiased in their decision to declare swine flu a pandemic, it should be noted that the opinion of an Emergency Committee from WHO’s International Health Regulations Review Committee was sought.

The guidance of many of these leading experts benefited the pharmaceutical industry, but their identities were kept secret in order to “protect them from outside influences.”9 In 2010, however, a joint investigation by the BMJ and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism revealed troubling conflicts of interest between key panel members and the pharmaceutical industry. According to the BMJ:10

“The investigation by the BMJ/The Bureau reveals a system struggling to manage the inherent conflict between the pharmaceutical industry, WHO, and the global public health system, which all draw on the same pool of scientific experts.

Our investigation has identified key scientists involved in WHO pandemic planning who had declarable interests, some of whom are or have been funded by pharmaceutical firms that stood to gain from the guidance they were drafting.

Yet these interests have never been publicly disclosed by WHO and, despite repeated requests from the BMJ/The Bureau, WHO has failed to provide any details about whether such conflicts were declared by the relevant experts and what, if anything, was done about them.”

H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Caused Narcolepsy

As is the case with all vaccines, unexpected injuries can occur, but in the case of the ASO3-adjuvanted swine flu vaccine Pandemrix, GSK continued to promote the vaccine even as cases of adverse events rose. Pandemrix was released in Europe during the swine flu pandemic of 2009 to 2010. Its approval process was accelerated, with most safety and efficacy tests bypassed.

At the time, the WHO tried to assure the public that this was safe, but at the same time they admitted, “Further testing of safety and effectiveness will need to take place after administration of the vaccine has begun.”11

Years later, Pandemrix (used in Europe but not in the U.S. during 2009-2010) was causally linked to childhood narcolepsy,12 a chronic neurologic condition in which your brain loses its ability to regulate sleep-wake cycles normally.

As a result, this causes you to suddenly fall into a deep sleep at any point during the day, which is debilitating and seriously affects quality of life. Many cases of narcolepsy also involve cataplexy, which is the sudden loss of voluntary muscle control triggered by strong emotions or laughter. According to “The Jab”:13

“GSK’s adjuvanted Pandemrix vaccine caused both [narcolepsy and cataplexy], devastating at least 1,300 children across Europe — for life. In the media, GSK’s AS03 adjuvant, added to stimulate a powerful immune response, shouldered the blame for amplifying these heinous reactions.

Documents obtained by plaintiffs in a series of European lawsuits revealed that GSK knew about the mounting adverse events associated with Pandemrix in the winter of 2009 — including a 5.4-fold increase in death. By December 2009, an injured person filed a report with GSK for every 12,500 doses of Pandemrix administered. Yet, they continued promoting their vaccine in order to move inventory.”

Later, in 2019, researchers described a “novel association between Pandemrix-associated narcolepsy and the non-coding RNA gene GDNF-AS1”14 — a gene thought to regulate the production of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor or GDNF, a protein that plays an important role in neuronal survival.

According to the researchers, “Changes in regulation of GDNF have been associated with neurodegenerative diseases. This finding may increase the understanding of disease mechanisms underlying narcolepsy.”15

Antiviral Drugs Also Fraudulently Stockpiled for Pandemics

Pandemrix is only one example of a pandemic medication gone wrong. Antiviral drugs like Tamiflu are another, yet are still recommended by government agencies like the U.S. CDC,16 despite long-standing studies questioning their effectiveness and safety.

At one point, WHO even classified Tamiflu as an "essential" medicine and recommended that it be used “as soon as possible” after a flu diagnosis.17 WHO’s definition of “essential” is reserved for drugs "selected with due regard to public health relevance, evidence on efficacy and safety, and comparative cost-effectiveness."18

That status was downgraded in 2017, when the WHO moved Tamiflu from a “core” essential medicine to a “complementary” drug, which is used for those that are less cost effective.19

In a BMJ editorial, Mark Ebell, professor of epidemiology at the University of Georgia, called the move “far too late” and described a multisystem failure that allowed Tamiflu to become a blockbuster medication,20 once again in the name of potential pandemics:21

“Concerned about a possible outbreak of avian influenza, as well as the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, the UK government stockpiled oseltamivir at a cost of over £600m (€680m; $770m) from 2006 to 2014. Similarly, the US government has spent over $1.5bn stockpiling the drug, based on recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).”

In 2019, a whistleblower lawsuit was filed against Tamiflu’s maker, Roche, alleging Roche duped the U.S. government into stockpiling Tamiflu while mispresenting its effectiveness. According to the suit, Roche knew Tamiflu was ineffective at fighting influenza pandemics but went ahead and “masterfully marketed this drug to fill Roche’s coffers at taxpayer expense.”22

COVID-19 Deja-Vu

The unsettling question now, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, is whether another experimental vaccine will make it to market, padding the drug companies’ pockets further while putting lives at risk. Asking, “Will they get away with it this time?” “The Jab” notes:23

“Relying on the same attenuated definition of ‘pandemic,’ on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic when its partner, the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, received 125 million-dollar commitments from the Gates Foundation and Mastercard just one day prior.

On July 31, 2020, GSK and Sanofi scored 2.1 billion US taxpayer dollars to partner on an experimental Covid-19 vaccine. Sanofi will provide the vaccine and GSK will provide — you guessed it — hundreds of millions of doses of their AS03 adjuvant from the 2009 narcolepsy epidemic.”

The earliest results from COVID-19 vaccine studies are starting to roll in, and they’re far from reassuring. Initially, public health officials had stated that a vaccine could be ready in an unprecedented 12 to 18 months. Now, there’s talk of accelerating vaccine delivery even further, with a target date of fall 2020.24

However, as noted by Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), based on the historical failures of past coronavirus vaccines, a fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccine could become one of the biggest public health disasters in history.

And, no one involved is accountable or will face any repercussions, just as GSK was not held accountable for the narcolepsy cases caused by Pandemrix. Instead, they will all continue to profit.



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00:22 , ,

Earlier this year, I reported that carcinogenic N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) had been found in certain blood pressure, heartburn and diabetes medications. As of February 2020, drugs recalled due to contamination with this poison included:1

  • Valsartan, losartan and irbesartan (high blood pressure medications)
  • Zantac2 and Axid (heartburn medications)
  • Metformin (diabetes medication)

In the case of valsartan, the three companies whose drugs were recalled in 2018 had all purchased the active ingredient from a Chinese company called Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical Co. It’s one of China’s largest manufacturers of generics.3

Since 2018, the recall has been expanded dozens of times to also include losartan and irbesartan, made by more than 10 different companies with distribution in some 30 countries.4

As reported5 by Bloomberg in December 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration checks less than 1% of imported drugs for impurities (or potency for that matter). Clearly, the regulatory system, which is meant to safeguard patients, is broken, and trust in drug manufacturers is often misplaced.

Disturbingly, Bloomberg’s report6 suggests the NDMA contamination at Huahai may have been intentional, at least in the sense that profitability was prioritized over thorough quality testing and perfecting of novel manufacturing methods.

What Is NDMA?

NDMA is a water-soluble chemical known to cause cancer in animals. In humans, it’s classified7 as a probable carcinogen and causes serious liver damage and liver failure.8

According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s technical fact sheet,9 NDMA, which can form in both industrial and natural chemical processes, is a member of N-ni-trosamines, a family of potent carcinogens.

“Potential industrial sources include byproducts from tanneries, pesticide manufacturing plants, rubber and tire manufacturers, alkylamine manufacture and use sites, fish processing facilities, foundries and dye manufacturers,” the EPA notes. However, we now know the chemical can also be produced during the manufacturing of drugs.

Historically, there are several cases10 in which NDMA was used as a poison. In 1978, a German teacher's wife died after he put NDMA in her jam and a Nebraska man was sentenced to death that same year for spiking lemonade with it, killing two people.

In 2013, a Chinese medical student died as a result of an April Fool's prank when NDMA was put into the water cooler, and in 2018, a Canadian graduate student poisoned a post-doctoral fellow by injecting it into an apple pie. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of patients around the world have been taking drugs contaminated with this poison, oftentimes daily, for years on end.

Can FDA Ensure Drug Safety?

Bloomberg’s report11 reviews the history of how carcinogens like NDMA have crept into the generic drug supply, and raises serious questions about the FDA’s ability to ensure drug safety.

The article features the story of Karen Brackman, who after taking generic valsartan for two years suddenly found herself with a diagnosis of a rare and aggressive liver cancer, despite having no family history of cancer, and no specific risk factors for it.

As reported by Bloomberg,12 some of the contaminated valsartan pills contained as much as 17 micrograms of NDMA per pill, an amount estimated by European health regulators to give 1 in 3,390 people cancer. Brackman suspects she’s one of the unlucky ones.

While generics are a boon to patients in that they’re far less expensive while still providing the same benefits, there’s more room for error as they also receive far less scrutiny by regulators, and manufacturers are trusted to regulate themselves.

Most Active Ingredients Are Manufactured in China and India

An estimated 80% of all active drug ingredients are manufactured in China and India, and overseas plants are rarely inspected by U.S. authorities. At present, the U.S. has just one FDA inspector’s office in China. In the case of valsartan, even when a plant is inspected and found wanting, it can take years before problems are addressed — if ever.

“Huahai, the first manufacturer found to have NDMA in its valsartan, is also the one whose product had the highest concentration,” Bloomberg reports.13

”When an FDA inspector visited in May 2017, he was alarmed by what he saw: aging, rusty machinery; customer complaints dismissed without reason; testing anomalies that were never looked into.

He reported that the company was ignoring signs its products were contaminated. Senior FDA officials didn’t reprimand Huahai; they expected the company to resolve the problem on its own. Huahai didn’t …

It wasn’t until a year later that another company … found an impurity in Huahai’s valsartan and identified it as NDMA. That was when the FDA demanded drugmakers begin looking for NDMA in their valsartan. They found it again and again.”

As David Gortler, a drug safety consultant and former FDA medical officer, told Bloomberg, “Valsartan is just the one we caught. Who knows how many more [tainted drugs] are out there?” Well, we now know the NDMA contamination affects many other drugs as well, including metformin, used by more than 78.6 million Americans as of 2017.14

Huahai’s Mistake

Bloomberg goes on to recount some of the historical details of Huahei, from its inception in 1989 to its current status as one of the largest generic’s companies in China, and the first Chinese company to gain FDA approval to export finished drugs to the U.S. — a generic HIV medication.

When Novartis’ patent on Diovan (the brand name for its valsartan drug) expired in 2011, Huahai became one of the companies to manufacture valsartan for generic drug companies. Valsartan, being a simple compound to make and used daily by millions, looked like it could be just what Huahai needed to grow and improve its bottom line.

Now, as explained by Bloomberg, if a company like Huahai wants to create its own version of a generic drug and then export it to the U.S., they must first get FDA approval. However, if they’re just manufacturing and supplying the active ingredient to a U.S. company that then produces the finished product, then FDA approval is not required. All they have to do is inform the FDA if there are any changes to the manufacturing process.

In the case of Huahai’s valsartan, the company did make a change to its manufacturing process, but downplayed its significance. In November 2011, Huahai stopped using the solvent used by Novartis in the manufacturing of the brand name drug, and started using another called dimethylformamide (DMF).

This turns out to have been a massive mistake, as side reactions ended up producing NDMA, which could not be removed from the drug. “The chemists at Huahai either didn’t realize that or didn’t consider it a potential hazard,” Bloomberg writes, adding that, in 2018, after the recall began, vice chairman of Huahai, Jun Du, told an FDA inspector that “The purpose of the change was to save money,” thus increasing their profits.

The cost-savings were so substantial, it allowed Huahai to dominate the global market share for valsartan. Making matters worse, since Huahai’s patent was public, other generic companies copied the new, toxic, process. According to Bloomberg,15 this is “one reason so much of the world’s valsartan supply is now contaminated.”

Incompetence or Intentional Poisoning?

It’s hard to justify a defense of ignorance, though, seeing how the 2017 FDA inspector’s report noted multiple problems at the plant, including suspicious contaminants showing up in quality tests.

Du claimed the tests showed “ghost peaks … from time to time for undetermined reasons.” In another instance, he referred to the residual spike showing in testing as “noise.” Huahai never investigated to determine what the contaminants might be, or how they got there. Instead, they simply omitted the incriminating tests from official reports.

The FDA inspector recommended the agency issue a warning letter, which would have meant Huahai would have to pass another inspection before continuing its manufacturing. But the FDA didn’t send a warning letter. Instead, they urged Huahai to resolve the issues on their own — which they didn’t.

Disturbingly, a lax FDA approach to inspections that reveal faked quality testing is not unusual. Bloomberg spoke to Michael de la Torre, who runs a database of FDA inspections. According to Torre, in the five years up to 2019, the FDA issued warning letters in response to faked data just 25% of the time.

Bloomberg also recounts a number of quality problems discovered at Indian drug manufacturing plants. Clearly, FDA is failing in its mission to regulate the generics industry overseas.

The industry is expected to regulate itself, and profit wins over quality concerns most of the time when no one is around to hold the companies accountable. A company is only as ethical and conscientious as the people running it.

Quality problems are really not uncommon. The New Haven, Connecticut-based online pharmacy Valisure LLC tests every drug it orders, and reports rejecting more than 10% of all batches it receives — in some cases due to inaccurate amounts of active ingredient, in others due to contaminants or other inconsistencies in quality.16

Kevin Schug, analytical chemistry professor at the University of Texas, told Bloomberg17 Huahai “certainly should have caught” the NMDA contamination, and “should have modified the procedure to correct it.” Former FDA medical officer Gortler agreed, saying, “Any well-trained analytical chemist would know to check. If it’s not intentional, it’s incompetence. At some point, those are the same.”

Valisure CEO David Light told Bloomberg that while people in the industry are well aware of the problems, the overwhelming consensus is that it’s not “their” problem. “There’s no liability at any one point,” he said. “The only element who cares in this whole global supply chain is patients.”

The FDA didn’t send a warning letter18 to Huahai until November 2018, stating the obvious: The company should have anticipated the possibility that changing the process to use DMF solvent might cause problems, and when testing revealed anomalies, they should have identified the impurity.

Brackman filed a lawsuit against Huahai in April 2019. About 140 others have also sued Huahai and other drugmakers involved in the valsartan recall, and lawyers are reviewing several hundred additional cases, Bloomberg reports.

Bottom Line

This devastating and pervasive toxic exposure results largely from people’s reliance on using drugs as symptomatic bandages that in no way, shape or form treat the cause of the disease. They trust their physicians to help them but sadly they have been captured by the drug industry and are nearly universally clueless on how to identify and address the underlying cause of most diseases.

That is why it is crucial to understand that YOU are responsible for your own health and need to use physicians as your consultants, and not implicitly trust them. If you provide your body with what it needs, it typically tends to self-correct and get better so you can avoid these dangerous medications which, rarely, if ever, resolve the foundational cause.

Fortunately, this COVID-19 crisis has shown us the two most important physical strategies to optimize your health: vitamin D and metabolic flexibility. The ability to eliminate insulin resistance is a strategy that addresses the majority of illnesses that you will ever encounter in your lifetime.

This is why time-restricted eating, eliminating industrially processed seed oils like soy, corn and canola oils, eating a cyclical ketogenic diet, exercising and sleeping well can improve, if not eliminate, most conditions that you would need to take medications for. As you can see, drugs can harm you just because they were made with shortcuts to increase company profits.

When you follow these health principles you will decrease, if not eliminate, your need for these dangerous medications. You will also enjoy a high degree of health and freedom from the pain, disability and suffering associated with these conditions.



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22:22 , ,

In a September 2020 interview with Axios on HBO, Melinda Gates said "It may be time for a reckoning" with social media's role in spreading disinformation. According to Axios:1

"Bill and Melinda Gates … [have] seen firsthand the impact of disinformation, as they've become targets of conspiracy theories amplified and spread via social media … [Melinda] Gates … said society may need to start holding social media companies to account for their role in helping such disinformation spread."

It's ironic, to say the least, considering the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funds and influences mainstream media companies, which in turn write whatever the Gates desire, be it truthful or not, without disclosing their conflict of interest.

Through its grants to the Leo Burnett Company, an ad agency owned by Publicis, the Gates Foundation is also financially linked to NewsGuard and HealthGuard, as both of these "fact-checking" sites are funded by Publicis. As such, Gates already has the power to pull strings and censor content they don't like.

Gates Foundation Funds Scientific Disinformation

The Gates Foundation also has a history of funding disreputable and flawed to the point of being fraudulent science. What they call "disinformation" and "conspiracy theories" are to a large extent merely information exposing the Gates Foundation's own disinformation campaigns.

Case in point: The Gates Foundation funds the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis to the tune of millions of dollars per year. The MRC Centre is the leading body advising world governments and the World Health Organization about infectious disease outbreaks.

Neil Ferguson, a professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London and co-founder of the MRC Centre, has produced a string of pandemic predictions that have turned out to be spectacularly incorrect:2,3

• In 2001, Ferguson's team produced a model for the spread of foot and mouth disease in British livestock, concluding that even in cases where there was no evidence of infection, animals had to be culled to curtail the outbreak.  

The projection led to the slaughter of more than 6 million cattle, sheep and pigs in the U.K. that year, costing the national economy an estimated £10 billion. As reported by Spectator:4

"It has been claimed by experts such as Michael Thrusfield, professor of veterinary epidemiology at Edinburgh University, that Ferguson's modelling on foot and mouth was 'severely flawed' and made a 'serious error' by 'ignoring the species composition of farms,' and the fact that the disease spread faster between different species."

• In 2002, Ferguson predicted that by 2080, beef tainted with mad cow disease could kill up to 50,000 people, with a worst-case scenario killing 150,000.5 As of 2015, there had only been 177 human deaths attributable to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the U.K., the human version of mad cow disease.6

• In 2005, Ferguson forecasted that 200 million people would die from bird flu. Meanwhile, in the real world, just 282 people died from bird flu, worldwide, between 2003 and 2009.7

• In 2009, Ferguson predicted the swine flu would have a case fatality rate of 0.3% to 1.5%, with the most likely fatality rate being right around 0.4%. Based on this model, the U.K.'s projected death toll was 65,000. Once the pandemic ended, it turned out to have a death rate of just 0.026%, killing just 457 Britons.8

• In 2020, Ferguson's Imperial College model for COVID-19, relied on by governments around the world, led to the most draconian pandemic response measures in modern history. It predicted9 the U.K. would be looking at a death toll of more than 500,000, and the U.S. some 2.2 million, if no action was taken.

Based on the experiences of certain countries that chose not to lock down or mandate draconian disease prevention measures, such as Sweden, we can now see that authoritarian pandemic responses have had little if any beneficial impact. 

According to Ferguson, his woefully incorrect prediction was based on "undocumented, 13-year-old computer code that was intended to be used for a feared influenza pandemic," the National Review reported.10

Analyses11,12 of the problematic bugs in the code have been published by a software engineer on LockdownSceptics.org. According to the author, the Imperial College has made a number of false statements and claims about this code.

In May 2020, Ferguson — nicknamed "Professor Lockdown" — resigned as government adviser to the U.K. after being caught breaking the very lockdown and social distancing rules he so strongly advocated for, to meet up with his married lover.13

Science for Hire

Ferguson's predictions have been so far off the mark, fellow academics have started referring to him as "The Master of Disaster."14 Jan Schnitzer, a vascular biology expert and former scientific director of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center in San Diego is quoted15 saying Ferguson "dances on the edge of being a publicity-seeking charlatan."

You'd think that with this kind of abysmal track record, funding would have dried up long before COVID-19 hit. But no. This is precisely the kind of convenient disinformation and gross overestimation of risk that Gates needs and relies on to drive his own vaccine and tech agendas forward.   

Gates also has close links to Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, so it's hard to imagine Fauci has not been given a few talking points here and there to help shepherd the masses.

Fauci was a member of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Grand Challenges scientific board16 (described as a "family of initiatives fostering innovation to solve key global health and development problems"17) from 2003 until 2010, at which time he joined the Leadership Council of the Gates Foundation's Decade of Vaccines Collaboration.18

In 2012, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of which Fauci has been the director since 1984, also began forging close ties with GAVI, The Vaccine Alliance.19 The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation founded GAVI in 1999 and has permanent seats on its board of directors.20

Gates' War on Life

In a September 2020 article,21 environmental activist Vandana Shiva reviews Gates' global agenda and "war on life," highlighting the March 2015 TED Talk22 he gave in which he showed an image of a coronavirus. This, he said, was what "the greatest catastrophe of our time would look like," Shiva writes, adding:

"When the coronavirus pandemic swept over the earth like a tsunami five years later, he revived the war language, describing the pandemic as 'a world war' … In fact, the pandemic is not a war. The pandemic is a consequence of war. A war against life ...

The health emergency of the coronavirus is inseparable from the health emergency of extinction, the health emergency of biodiversity loss … [T]hese emergencies are rooted in an economic model based on the illusion of limitless growth and limitless greed, which violate planetary boundaries, and destroy the integrity of ecosystems and individual species

According to the International Labour Organization,23 '1.6 billion informal economy workers (representing the most vulnerable in the labor market), out of a worldwide total of 2 billion and a global workforce of 3.3 billion, have suffered massive damage to their capacity to earn a living. This is due to lockdown measures and/or because they work in the hardest-hit sectors.'

According to the World Food Programme,24 a quarter of a billion additional people will be pushed to hunger and 300,000 could die every day ... Killing cannot be a prescription for saving lives.

Health is about life and living systems. There is no 'life' in the paradigm of health that Bill Gates and his ilk are promoting and imposing on the entire world. Gates has created global alliances to impose top-down analysis and prescriptions for health problems.

He gives money to define the problems, and then he uses his influence and money to impose the solutions. And in the process, he gets richer. His 'funding' results in an erasure of democracy and biodiversity, of nature and culture. His ‘philanthropy’ is not just philanthrocapitalism. It is philanthroimperialism.

The coronavirus pandemic and lockdown have revealed even more clearly how we are being reduced to objects to be controlled, with our bodies and minds as the new colonies to be invaded … The extended coronavirus lockdown has been a lab experiment for a future without humanity."

Cryptocurrency System Based on Human Body Activity

Shiva goes on to review a patent granted to Microsoft the last week of March 2020, for a cryptocurrency system based on human body activity. Everything from brain activity and body fluid flows to organ activity and various muscle movements is to be used to mine for cryptocurrency in this system.

Coincidentally, the number on this patent is 060606. Remove the zeros and you end up with the ill-fated number "666," which also happens to show up in the monstrously unconstitutional U.S. surveillance bill H.R. 6666.

"The patent is an intellectual property claim over our bodies and minds," Shiva writes.25 "In colonialism, colonizers assign themselves the right to take the land and resources of indigenous people, extinguish their cultures and sovereignty, and in extreme cases exterminate them.

Patent WO 060606 is a declaration by Microsoft that our bodies and minds are its new colonies. We are mines of 'raw material' — the data extracted from our bodies.

Rather than sovereign, spiritual, conscious, intelligent beings making decisions and choices with wisdom and ethical values about the impacts of our actions on the natural and social world of which we are a part, and to which we are inextricably related, we are 'users.' A 'user' is a consumer without choice in the digital empire."

Ultimately, Gates vision, Shiva says, includes the colonization of our children's minds and bodies "before they even have the opportunity to understand what freedom and sovereignty look and feel like." To this end, Gates is working on reinventing education.

"The dystopia is one where children never return to schools, do not have a chance to play, do not have friends. It is a world without society, without relationships, without love and friendship," she writes.

Indeed, the COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing rules have repeatedly been referred to as "the new normal." If the technocrats get their way, there will essentially be three kinds of people in the world: The uber-rich top echelon to whom rules don't apply, digital slaves, and disposables — people who have no value in this new digital empire. If this doesn't sound like the life we want to live, we must, as Shiva proposes, resist. And we must start now.

"We can seed another future, deepen our democracies, reclaim our commons, regenerate the earth as living members of a One Earth Family, rich in our diversity and freedom, one in our unity and interconnectedness. It is a healthier future. It is one we must fight for. It is one we must claim," Shiva writes.

Are We in a Deadly Dilemma?

We now face what, for some, is a choice between two evils: Living with SARS-CoV-2, or continue hiding from it. I say "for some," because others have accepted the data showing that COVID-19, in terms of lethality, is no worse than influenza, poses an exceptionally low risk for people under the age of 40 and virtually no risk at all to young adults and children.

The WHO has published data showing the overall infection mortality rate COVID-19 is about 0.6%,26 and according to CDC data27 released August 26, 2020, only 6% of the total COVID-19-related deaths in the U.S. had COVID-19 listed as the sole cause of death on the death certificate.

A September 2, 2020 study28 found the overall noninstitutionalized infection fatality ratio was a mere 0.26%. Among those under the age of 40, the infection fatality ratio is 0.01%, while those over 60 have an infection fatality ratio of 1.71%.

The estimated infection fatality rate for seasonal influenza is 0.8%,29 so this shows the only people for whom SARS-CoV-2 infection is more dangerous than influenza is those over the age of 60. Everyone else has a lower risk of dying from COVID-19 than they have of dying from the flu.

White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx also confirmed a lower than typically reported mortality rate when she, in mid-August 2020, stated that it "becomes more and more difficult" to get people to comply with mask rules "when people start to realize that 99% of us are going to be fine."30

In her August 16, 2020, Doctor for Disaster Preparedness31 lecture, Dr. Lee Merritt points out that based on deaths per capita, the death rate for COVID-19, worldwide, is a minuscule 0.009% (709,000 people have died from or with COVID-19 around the world, and the global population is 7.8 billion). So, the average person's chance of surviving this disease is 99.991%.

Live Life or Hide Until You Die

Under normal circumstances, these data would convince just about everyone that COVID-19 is not a significant threat. Certainly, not sufficient to meekly relinquish our most basic human rights. Unfortunately, months of hardcore fear-mongering and censorship, largely spearheaded by Gates and the WHO, which Gates is the largest funder of, has led to a situation where people fear COVID-19 more than just about everything else.

It is with that mindset that some people find themselves having to make a choice to either live with the threat of COVID-19, or continue hiding from it, which means ceasing to live indefinitely. As noted in an "open letter to world leaders" published on Secret-Retreats.com, the path of hiding:32

"… has but one outcome, to condemn entire populations to misery, poverty, hunger, economic ruin and physical death. There is no hope in this path. COVID is here to stay. We will probably never have an effective vaccine (viruses by their very nature constantly mutate) and so there is no hope of a safe exit from this strategy …

The endgame of this strategy of closing a country, is the total destruction of that country's economy, immense damage to the health and welfare of society, and plunging that country's future into darkness."

Meanwhile, the other path, the path of accepting the risks associated with life, COVID-19 included:

"… offers a path where there is hope for the future. Where life can go on as normal for the vast majority. It is a path where the rewards will far outweigh the cost … [It] has become clear that for the vast majority of people COVID presents no real risk of harm or even symptomatic illness.

But is it possible to live without risk? Clearly not. A life without risk is impossible. Is it possible to escape death? No. It is the very condition of living; life is terminal for us all. And death comes to us in 1000s of forms, not simply COVID. We cannot hide from death. How many people have died through hiding in fear from a perceived threat from COVID?

How many people are dying daily as a direct result of COVID policies through limited access to hospitals, health screening not happening, cancer treatments not happening in a timely manner, economic ruin driving people to make poor life choices and turning to alcohol, drugs or suicide as the solution to the problems dealt to them by COVID policies? …

What do we gain from these lockdowns, border closure policies? Between a certain death and a hypothetical risk, isn't it better to choose the risk? The risk of living life. Why do you, our world leaders, continue to choose to keep us all locked within this eel trap of your own making?

Why don't you make what is clearly, and backed by the science … the only sensible choice, of learning to live with COVID and allowing us to get back to living LIFE? …

Let's dare to live with risk, as humans have done successfully since the dawn of time. We are at risk of jeopardizing the vast majority in the name of possibly protecting the few people who are at risk of serious illness or death from COVID.

And it is only 'possibly protecting' as even with these policies in place the risk of infection is still there and always will be. COVID is here now, and it is going nowhere, it is time we learned to LIVE with it."

Bill and Melinda Gates' fight against "disinformation" is really a fight against facts showing that the technocratic takeover is not an inevitable outcome of a global pandemic, but rather the result of a long-term well-planned effort.

If you haven't taken steps to extricate yourself from their digital grasp as of yet, now's the time to do it. For tips and guidance, see "Harvard Professor Exposes Surveillance Capitalism."



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EcoHealth Alliance, a corporate-funded nonprofit organization that seeks to uncover novel viruses in the environment, has been working in China for decades, trapping bats and looking for previously unknown coronaviruses that could lead to a global pandemic.1

This may come as a surprise to many, but even more surprising is the fact that the research was carried out via a grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).2

While the grant was initially supposed to continue through 2024, it was cut off in April 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic gained steam, and U.S. intelligence agencies started to look into whether the coronavirus that started it all escaped from a biological laboratory in Wuhan, China.3

EcoHealth Alliance collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology for years, collecting coronavirus samples from bats and investigating whether they could jump to humans,4 and the NIH told the nonprofit that the project “no longer fit with NIH goals and priorities.”5

In August 2020, however, the NIH pivoted, granting a new $7.5 million grant to EcoHealth Alliance — part of an $82 million award being split among 11 research teams looking into the origins of viruses and how they infect people. The controversial move means that EcoHealth Alliance’s work will continue, this time targeting Southeast Asia instead of China.6

EcoHealth Alliance’s Controversial Gain-of-Function Research

Gain-of-function (GOF) research refers to studies that have the potential to enhance the ability of pathogens to cause disease, including enhancing either their pathogenicity or transmissibility.7 Such research is by its very nature controversial, since there are clear risks should the information be misused or the pathogens escape (or are maliciously released).

Further, Jonathan Latham, Ph.D., a molecular biologist and virologist and Allison Wilson, Ph.D., a geneticist, believe gain-of-function research performed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology played "an essential causative role in the pandemic."8 Peter Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance president, however, said that the funding cut to their China bat research project would pose a threat to the U.S. public health.

"Once this pandemic is over, we know of hundreds of other coronaviruses that we've found evidence of in China that are waiting to emerge," Daszak said in an interview with NPR. "We are now going to be unable to know about the risk of that, which puts us completely at risk of the next pandemic."9

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is part of the NIH, has also long backed dangerous GOF coronavirus research, including that conducted by EcoHealth Alliance. According to Newsweek:10

"Just last year [2019], the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases [NIAID], the organization led by Dr. Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.

In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.

Many scientists have criticized gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release."

Daszak to Lead COVID-19 Task Force

Outrageously, Daszak has also been appointed to lead a task force examining whether COVID-19 may have leaked from a lab, as part of the Lancet Covid-19 Commission, which is looking into a variety of issues surrounding the pandemic and offering practical solutions.11 Part of the commission’s goal is to investigate the origins of COVID-19 and avert future zoonotic pandemics.

While Daszak said he would head the investigation with an open mind, critics such as Filippa Lentzos, an expert on biological threats at King’s College London, wrote on Twitter, “Goodness. I can't imagine a lead investigator with more vested interests!”12,13

Not only has Daszak been widely criticized for spreading misinformation surrounding the origins of COVID-19 previously, but his longtime collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been identified as the most probable source of a laboratory leak, is a glaring conflict of interest. If it’s found that COVID-19 did, in fact, leak from a lab, the work of Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance could come under fire, and future funding could be put in jeopardy.

As reported in GM Watch, “… if more scientists fail to speak out against his appointment as the Lancet Commission’s lead investigator, it will reflect the success of a censorship strategy that has not just allowed Daszak to evade serious scrutiny but to be put in charge of investigating himself and his associates.”14

Hundreds of Scientists Called for End of GOF Research in 2014

In 2014, a series of accidents at laboratories led to more than 300 scientists to launch a petition calling for an end to gain-of-function research.15 The U.S. issued a temporary pause as a result16 but, according to Ronnie Cummins, co-founder of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and Alexis Baden-Mayer, OCA’s political director:

“Exemptions to this ‘pause,’ eventually reviewed by a secret government panel, were nonetheless allowed to go forward. The ban was lifted in 2017. Yet between 2014 and 2016, the NIH and Fauci-led NIAID continued funding gain-of-function research overseas at the Wuhan lab, via Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance.

Not surprisingly both Fauci and Daszak have been staunch defenders of the official Chinese government story that the virus that causes COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) ‘naturally’ evolved from bats and/or other host species to infect humans.”

In the NPR interview, Daszak said he really doesn’t understand the rationale behind the funding cut from NIH,17 as they were only researching how coronaviruses may spread from bats to people. But as Cummins and Baden-Mayer explained in my interview with them (linked above):

“Daszak and his collaborators at the Wuhan Institute of Virology18 weren’t just studying how coronavirus spread from bats to humans, they were actually making coronavirus capable of spreading from bats to humans. They were the first to create19 a bat coronavirus capable of directly infecting humans (rather than first needing to evolve in an intermediate animal host).

EcoHealth Alliance has since funded additional gain-of-function research that Daszak has championed — without acknowledging his connection.”

Bat Virus Made Capable of Infecting Human Airway Cells

In 2015, the University of North Carolina collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, performing gain-of-function research in which bat viruses were manipulated to create a chimeric virus capable of binding to human upper airway cells. That particular virus was called SHC014-MA15.20

EcoHealth Alliance had funded the research with a U.S. grant,21 but this wasn’t mentioned by Nature, which quoted Daszak as saying the findings “move this virus from a candidate emerging pathogen to a clear and present danger.”22 Cummins and Baden-Mayer pointed out the irony of this statement:

“Daszak’s statement is odd, as it seems obvious that it was the research itself that made the virus a clear and present danger, and that couldn’t be what he meant.

… Even the creators of the coronavirus-SARS chimaera questioned the wisdom of tinkering with viruses to make them more dangerous to humans. As Nature reported, in their paper the study authors conceded that funders may think twice about allowing such experiments in the future.”23

In my previously linked article, they added:

“‘Scientific review panels may deem similar studies building chimeric viruses based on circulating strains too risky to pursue,’ they write, adding that discussion is needed as to ‘whether these types of chimeric virus studies warrant further investigation versus the inherent risks involved.’”

NIH Conditions for Restoring Prior Grant Go Unmet

EcoHealth Alliance’s new grant is distinct from the previous grant that funded the Chinese bat research. The new grant is intended to fund the creation of the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases, or CREID, a network of centers focusing on different geographical regions.

EcoHealth Alliance will be conducting research on coronaviruses and other pathogens that may emerge from bats, rodents and primates in Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia.24 As for their earlier grant, the NIH notified EcoHealth Alliance that they may restore its funding for the Chinese research if they meet certain conditions, including the following:25

  • Obtain a sample of the SARS-COV-2 virus that the Wuhan lab used to determine its genetic sequence
  • Have independent scientists examine the Wuhan lab to determine if it had possession of SARS-COV-2 prior to December 2019
  • Determine the whereabouts of a Wuhan lab scientist whose photo was mysteriously removed from its website

According to NPR, “The scientist has been the focus of internet conspiracy theories suggesting she was in fact ‘patient zero’ for the coronavirus. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has previously said that the scientist in question was a graduate student who had finished her master's degree and moved on to other work.”26

EcoHealth Alliance has not met the conditions for the funding to be restored, with Daszak calling them “preposterous” and telling NPR, "I'm not trained as a private detective. It's not really my job to do that."27 The conditions do seem unusual, particularly for a U.S. government agency to be requesting of a nonprofit organization — unless, perhaps, they believe the organization knows something they don’t.

NIH Investigation Reveals Rampant Undisclosed Ties to China

The U.S. NIH is investigating 189 scientists from 87 institutions for undisclosed ties to foreign institutions, with 54 being fired or forced to resign as a result.28

Among them, 93% received undisclosed support from China, and many had active NIH grants while accepting foreign grants that were not disclosed. About 75% of those being investigated had received active NIH grants, and close to half had at least two of them. In all, 285 active grants totaling $164 million were counted among those being investigated.

Such ties are rampant, and 133, or 70%, of the researchers being investigated did not disclose to the NIH that they had received foreign grants. More than half (54%) also did not disclose their participation in a foreign talent program, while 9% hid ties to a foreign company and 4% did not disclose a foreign patent.29,30

The investigation is part of larger efforts to limit threats to the U.S. economy and national security, as cutting-edge technologies and other information at the forefront of new industries that is being supported by federally funded research could be flowing into the wrong hands.

A broader investigation is also ongoing, with NIH highlighting 399 scientists “of possible concern,” 121 of which the Federal Bureau of Investigation is also investigating.

According to Dr. Michael Lauer, NIH’s deputy director for extramural research, after the NIH looked into the scientists “of possible concern,” 63% of the investigations came back positive, revealing the true scope of the underhanded dealings.31

Meanwhile, Fauci, who also supported GOF research on bird flu viruses 10 years ago,32 continues to support EcoHealth Alliance and their research into novel diseases, noting in a statement about the latest grants, “The CREID network will enable early warnings of emerging diseases wherever they occur, which will be critical to rapid responses.”33

In reality, should further GOF research be allowed to continue, it’s possible that it could “seed” another pandemic.34 Admittedly, it’s quite a coincidence that the very viruses undergoing gain-of-function research turned out to be the ones causing pandemics.



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A study of patients hospitalized due to COVID-19 suggests that the disease might deteriorate men's testosterone levels. The study found that as men's testosterone level at baseline decreases, the probability for them to be in the intensive care unit (ICU) significantly increases.

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According to a new U.S. poll, COVID-19 may not influence parents' beliefs about the flu vaccine, with just one third believing it's more important for children to get vaccinated this year, while one in three parents don't plan to vaccinate children against the flu.

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Millions of people turn to their mobile devices when seeking medical advice. They're able to share their symptoms and receive potential diagnoses through chatbot-based symptom-checker (CSC) apps. But how do these apps compare to a trip to the doctor's office? Not well, according to a new study.

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Your thyroid, a tiny, butterfly-shaped gland located in front of your windpipe (trachea) and below your voice box (larynx) can have a profound impact on your health and well-being. Throughout life, your thyroid is constantly producing hormones that influence your metabolism. These hormones affect your mood, energy, body temperature, weight, heart, and more.

A brief overview of hypothyroidism

Your thyroid produces two kinds of thyroid hormones: T4, or thyroxine, and T3, or triiodothyronine. These hormones influence every cell, tissue, and organ in your body, from your muscles, bones, and skin to your digestive tract, brain, and heart, by controlling how fast and efficiently cells convert nutrients into energy — a chemical activity known as metabolism.

The thyroid gland is under the influence of the pituitary gland. No larger than a pea and located at the base of the brain, the pituitary gland controls your thyroid’s production of thyroid hormone by releasing thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH).

TSH levels in your bloodstream rise or fall depending on whether there is enough thyroid hormone made to meet your body’s needs. Higher levels of TSH prompt the thyroid to produce more thyroid hormone, while lower levels signal the thyroid to produce less.

Hypothyroidism occurs when the thyroid fails to produce enough thyroid hormone to meet the body’s needs, thereby slowing metabolism. In someone with overt hypothyroidism, thyroid hormone levels are below normal and TSH levels are well above the normal range.

What is mild hypothyroidism?

Subclinical, or mild, hypothyroidism doesn’t meet the standard definition of hypothyroidism. In mild hypothyroidism, you may or may not have symptoms and your levels of T4 and T3 are normal, but your TSH levels are slightly elevated. Mild hypothyroidism is diagnosed by a blood test.

More than 10 million adults in the US have hypothyroidism, the vast majority of which is subclinical.

What are the risks of leaving mild hypothyroidism untreated?

Whether or not to treat mild hypothyroidism is a subject that has been studied and debated for years. What worries doctors most about mild hypothyroidism is the potential link between untreated mild hypothyroidism and coronary artery disease. Results of research on whether subclinical thyroid disease causes heart problems have been conflicting. The condition has been associated with heart and blood vessel abnormalities, and studies indicate that treating mild hypothyroidism can improve various markers of heart structure and function.

However, a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association may give doctors pause. The researchers studied people with mild hypothyroidism who had also had a heart attack. They treated one group of these patients for their mild hypothyroidism, and left the condition untreated in the other group. The study showed that those treated for mild hypothyroidism did not have better heart function than those who were not treated.

What are the downsides of treating mild hypothyroidism?

When mild hypothyroidism is treated, levothyroxine (T4) is the treatment of choice.

A 2017 trial published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that treating people ages 65 and older for mild hypothyroidism doesn’t have much of a benefit. The authors found no real differences in symptoms between participants who received levothyroxine and those who got a placebo. The authors say many older adults revert to normal thyroid function on their own, without treatment. A follow-up study recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine analyzed data from patients enrolled in the 2017 NEJM study, and determined that even those with the greatest number of symptoms did not benefit.

In addition to the possibility that the treatment may not offer any benefit, there are other reasons for caution. Overtreatment — prescribing thyroid medication to someone with subclinical disease who may not need treatment, or giving excessive thyroid medication — comes with serious risks, particularly thyrotoxicosis, the presence of too much thyroid hormone in the body. This happens frequently; estimates suggest 20% or more of those treated with thyroid hormone experience thyrotoxicosis. Long-term complications of even mild thyrotoxicosis can include heart problems and bone loss.

Considering the risks and benefits of treatment

If you are weighing the pros and cons of treatment for hypothyroidism, discuss the following questions with your doctor:

  • How might I benefit from treatment? Could it treat my symptoms? Prevent heart disease? Help me conceive?
  • What are the risks of treatment?
  • How will we know if treatment is working, and how long will it take to determine this?
  • For how long will I need to continue treatment?

The post Treating mild hypothyroidism: Benefits still uncertain appeared first on Harvard Health Blog.



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13:48 ,
Researchers confirm that about 14% of all cases of cerebral palsy, a disabling brain disorder for which there are no cures, may be linked to a patient's genes and suggest that many of those genes control how brain circuits become wired during early development. The results led to recommended changes in the treatment of at least three patients, highlighting the importance of understanding the role genes play in the disorder.

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11:48 ,
Every region has its place in the brain. However, it has been unclear why brain regions are located where they are. Now, scientists have defined two main axes along which brain regions are genetically organized, stretching from posterior to anterior and inferior to superior in the brain. These axes are mainly shaped by genes and evolution.

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