Health & Fitness

There is growing evidence to show that meditation can make you healthier and happier. For example, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is sometimes used to treat depression, and brain imaging technology suggests meditation actually changes your brain in a number of beneficial ways.

MRI scans have shown that long-term meditation can alter the structure of your cerebral cortex, the outer layer of your brain. Additionally, brain regions associated with attention and sensory processing have been shown to be thicker in those who meditate.

Previous studies have linked meditation to benefits such as improved attention, memory, processing speed, creativity and more. Recent research also suggests that meditation helps counteract age-related loss of brain volume.

In short, meditation can be viewed as a form of brain exercise that strengthens it and keeps it "younger" longer. Other studies reveal the benefits of meditation are not limited to your brain; it also has anti-inflammatory effects and affects gene expression — all of which can boost overall physical health and longevity.

Long-Term Meditation Tied to Reduced Loss of Brain Volume

One of the most recent studies^1,2 in this field looked at 50 long-term meditators and 50 control subjects between the ages of 24 and 77. Among the controls, advancing age correlated with a loss of brain volume, as expected.

Those who meditated, however, were found to suffer less age-related brain atrophy. As reported by GMA News:³

"People who reported meditating for an average of 20 years had higher brain volumes than the average person ...

[T]he study's senior author told Reuters Health that the team of researchers expected to see more gray matter in certain regions of the brain among long-term meditators. 'But we see that this effect is really widespread throughout the brain,' said Dr. Florian Kurth ...

[T]he meditators' brains appeared better preserved than average people of the same age. Moreover, the researchers were surprised to find less age-related gray matter loss throughout the brains of meditators."

How Meditation Increases Productivity

Meditation expert Emily Fletcher⁴ gives lectures and interviews on the differences between two popular styles of meditation, and how they affect your brain.

She also discusses the similarities between meditation and caffeine. Both have the effect of energizing you and boosting your productivity, but meditation accomplishes this without the adverse effects associated with caffeine.

As explained by Fletcher, caffeine is similar to the chemical adenosine triphosphate (ATP), produced by your brain throughout the day. Adenosine makes you sleepy, and caffeine effectively blocks the adenosine receptors in your brain, thereby disallowing your brain from recognizing how tired it is.

While this may not be harmful in and of itself in the short-term, caffeine also stimulates more neural activity in your brain, which triggers your adrenal glands to release the stress chemical adrenaline.

Eventually (whether you're drinking lots of coffee or not), remaining in a chronic state of "fight or flight" that adrenaline engenders can lead to any number of stress-related disorders.

Meditation, on the other hand, energizes you and makes you more productive without triggering an adrenaline rush. According to Fletcher, meditation provides your body with rest that is two to five times deeper than sleep.

Meditating for 20 minutes also equates to taking a 1.5-hour nap, but you won't have that "sleep hangover" afterward. Instead, you'll feel awake and refreshed and, as she says, "more conscious."

Meditation de-excites your nervous system rather than exciting it further. This makes it more orderly, thereby making it easier for your system to release pent-up stress. It also makes you more productive.

She notes that many are now starting to recognize meditation as a powerful productivity tool. Contrary to popular belief, taking the time to meditate can actually help you gain more time than you put into it, through boosted productivity. In a previous interview,⁵ Fletcher stated:

"… I hear so often people say, Emily, I want to meditate, I've tried to meditate but I can't stop my mind from thinking. You don't understand my brain. It's so crazy. Everyone's mind is crazy. We have like 75,000 thoughts a day, and the only time the brain actually flat lines is when we're dead.

The point of meditation is not to stop your mind from thinking. The point of meditation is to be a stress relieving tool, and the way that we do that in this style is that we de-excite the nervous system which creates order and we give the body very deep rest. The body wants to thank us for that, and it thanks us by dissolving our stress."

Benefits of Meditation Beyond Brain Health

Stress is a well-recognized culprit that can promote ill health across the board, and the ability of meditation to quell stress is an important health benefit. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University recently published a study claiming they've found the biological mechanism by which mindfulness affects physical health.

In a nutshell, meditation impacts your biology and physical health via "stress reduction pathways" in your brain. As explained in a press release:⁶

"When an individual experiences stress, activity in the prefrontal cortex — responsible for conscious thinking and planning — decreases, while activity in the amygdala, hypothalamus and anterior cingulate cortex — regions that quickly activate the body's stress response — increases.

Studies have suggested that mindfulness reverses these patterns during stress; it increases prefrontal activity, which can regulate and turn down the biological stress response.

Excessive activation of the biological stress response increases the risk of diseases impacted by stress (like depression, HIV and heart disease). By reducing individuals' experiences of stress, mindfulness may help regulate the physical stress response and ultimately reduce the risk and severity of stress-related diseases."

Such effects may explain why meditation can help to relieve stress-related diseases such as:

High blood pressure	Sleep disturbances and fatigue
Chronic pain	Gastrointestinal distress and irritable bowel syndrome
Headaches	Skin disorders
Respiratory problems such as emphysema and asthma	Mild depression and premenstrual syndrome (PMS)

Other research, such as that at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine,⁷ has sought to quantify the benefits of the relaxation response by assessing gene expression before and after meditation, and have compared effects of short- and long-term meditation routines.

Among their findings, they discovered that meditation has anti-inflammatory effects. In one study,^8,9 participants who participated in both short and longer-term meditation, saw increases in antioxidant production, telomerase activity and oxidative stress. The researchers noted that benefits appear to be dose-related, with changes even after one session.

Two Styles of Meditation

According to Fletcher, there are two common styles of meditation:

Helpful Tools

Fletcher discusses the value of using a fitness tracker that tracks your sleep, noting that meditation can significantly improve the quality of your sleep. A fitness tracker can help you gauge your progress. I'm a major fan of this type of technology, as it can be very difficult to change a behavior unless you're able to track it your progress.

When I first started using a fitness tracker, I was striving to get eight hours of sleep, but my Jawbone UP typically recorded me at 7.5 to 7.75. I have since increased my sleep time, not just time in bed, but total sleep time to over eight hours per night.

According to Fletcher, meditation may actually boost the quality of your sleep to the point that you don't need to sleep as long, as you can become more fully rested in a shorter amount of time when you're not waking up in the middle of the night.

Slowing your breathing through meditation and/or using the Buteyko breathing technique also increases your partial pressure of carbon dioxide (CO2), which has enormous psychological benefits.

Biofeedback devices such as the emWave2¹¹ can also help personalize your interventions and improve progress toward toning your parasympathetic nervous system. I find that using this breathing technique with the Muse device I describe below really helps me to meditate more effectively.

My Experience With Meditation

I have tried to meditate unsuccessfully off and on for over 25 years. I suspect that many of you have had similar experiences. The biggest challenge is to know if you are doing it correctly. You can watch all the videos you want but, ultimately, you're left to navigate the course to relaxed brain waves unguided. That is where Muse (a subscription guided meditation) plays such an important role, as it provides you real-time feedback on how well you are doing.

If you wanted access to this technology a few years ago, you would have needed a literal closet full of equipment costing over $10 thousand. But now for a tiny fraction of that cost, along with your smartphone or tablet, you can get a personal tutor to guide you on how to meditate.

The audio feedback consists of waves and wind. Your goal is to calm your mind so there is the least amount of sound. You will know you are successful when you start to hear birds. It took me several sessions to hear the birds but once you get the hang of it, it is pretty easy. A great 12-minute session will allow you to collect over 100 birds.

I made a game out of it and sought to get 10,000 birds, which I did after about six months of use. You can start out slow and put your toes in the water by meditating for three minutes once or twice a day.

If you have more time and are motivated, you can even do 20-minute sessions, but for most people, 12-minute sessions once or twice a day is enough. I picked up my Muse last summer and it took me a few months to get the hang of it, but that was largely because I did not have anyone telling me how to do it.

Once I got into the groove, I was really surprised to receive an email from the founder of Muse, asking me questions about my use. He had no idea I run a health website, but merely contacted me because I was in the top 100 users in the world. I later learned after talking to him that I was in the top 10 users based on my amount of time spent in a deep meditative state.

My interest in increasing my sleep to eight hours per night occurred shortly after I got my Muse, and they merged very nicely. Now, I find that if I wake up early and can't go back to sleep, I will meditate for up to an hour as it provides many of the same benefits of sleep. If you are unable to fall back to sleep, this is a great option.

Also, I find my best meditation time is in the morning, right after I awaken, as I can get into the deepest states of relaxation at that time. Applying the Buteyko breathing also really helps to calm the mind and get into deep states of relaxation.

Stress Less, Accomplish More

Emily Fletcher of @zivameditation, is my friend and meditation teacher. She's written a book, "Stress Less, Accomplish More: Meditation for Extraordinary Performance," and I believe this is the thing that will finally get you to stick to meditation.

In these pages, she's put her 12 years of experience training over 20,000 high performers, with the goal of teaching you a type of meditation designed for people with busy minds and busy lives. The book is USA Today best seller and made it to No. 7 out of all books on Amazon. It's changed a lot of lives and, perhaps, it will change yours. Get it >> bit.ly/slamthebook.

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Are healthy habits worth cultivating? A recent study suggests healthy habits may help people tack on years of life and sidestep serious illnesses, such as diabetes and cancer. After all, if you’re going to gain an extra decade of life on this earth, you want to enjoy it!

What did this research focus on?

Researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health looked at data from more than 73,000 women enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) who were followed for 34 years, and more than 38,000 men enrolled in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS) who were followed for 28 years.

In a previous study using the same data, these researchers had found that five low-risk lifestyle habits are critical for a longer life expectancy. The more of these habits people had, the longer they lived. The habits were:

• a healthy diet, which was calculated and rated based on reports of regularly eating healthy foods like vegetables, fruits, nuts, whole grains, healthy fats, and omega-3 fatty acids, and avoiding less healthy or unhealthy foods like red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened beverages, trans fat, and excess sodium
• a healthy physical activity level, measured as at least 30 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous activity, like brisk walking
• a healthy body weight, defined as a normal body mass index (BMI), which is between 18.5 and 24.9
• never smoking, because there is no healthy amount of smoking
• low-risk alcohol intake, measured as between 5 and 15 grams per day for women, and 5 to 30 grams per day for men. Generally, one drink contains about 14 grams of pure alcohol. That’s 12 ounces of regular beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits.

Even if they had only one of these habits, participants lived two years longer than if they had none. And if by age 50 they regularly practiced all five, women lived an extra 14 years and men lived an extra 12. That’s over a decade of extra life!

Are those extra years healthy?

In this new study, researchers wanted to know if those extra years were also healthy years. Participants were asked in follow-up questionnaires if they had developed medical problems like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease (heart disease and strokes), or cancer. The answers were verified by a review of medical records.

The study found that having at least four of the five healthy habits gave people significant protection against developing any of these illnesses: on average about a decade more of life free of these diseases.

Why is that important? These chronic diseases are associated with illness, hospitalizations, and even needing nursing home care. Diabetes, for example, can lead to disabling conditions, including blindness, amputations, and kidney failure requiring dialysis. The top 10 diagnoses resulting in nursing home care include strokes, heart disease, and obesity, according to the National Association of Health Data Organizations. These conditions are strongly associated with diet and lifestyle.

Steps for a longer, healthier life

If you’re approaching middle age, you can take steps to enjoy a longer and healthier life, one with a lower chance of becoming disabled or ending up in a nursing home:

1. Eat mostly plants, most of the time. That means fruits, vegetables, beans and lentils, nuts and seeds, and whole grains. Avoid eating fast or fried foods, sweets and sugary beverages, and red and processed meats (like cold cuts) as much as possible.
2. Move your body every day as much as you can. Walking for 30 minutes a day (15 in the morning, 15 in the evening, maybe?) would give you the benefits these researchers found. But even as little as ten minutes of movement per week has been shown to have health benefits.
3. Do the best you can to get to a healthy weight. And remember, even a little bit of weight loss, just a few pounds, is associated with real, positive health outcomes, like a lower risk of diabetes in people at risk.
4. Quit smoking — or vaping! Though this particular study looked at never having smoked, we know that there are significant health benefits to quitting at any time. It’s never too late to quit and enjoy a healthier life.
5. If you drink any alcohol, keep the recommended limits in mind: one drink per day max for women, two drinks per day max for men.

The post Five healthy habits net more healthy years appeared first on Harvard Health Blog.

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Monsanto, DuPont and BASF sell an herbicide responsible for damage to millions of acres across the U.S. As described in this short video, the damage is substantial and many insurance companies are balking at paying compensation for farmers’ losses.

There are 221 different pesticides found in your produce, according to a report¹ generated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The report released in September 2018 was based on data gathered in 2017.

Samples were taken from five states across America and only 37.5% of the vegetables and a mere 14.2% of the fruits were free of pesticide residues.

Glyphosate and 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) residues were also detected in some of the samples. Concerns over glyphosate's toxicity have been mounting since the International Agency for Research on Cancer's (IARC) 2015² determination that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen.

Since the introduction of genetically modified plants, the problems with pesticide-resistant weeds has grown. Worldwide, at least 48 different weeds³ are resistant to glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Monsanto's broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup. In response, agrichemical companies are producing even more toxic pesticides.

In November 2016, Monsanto announced⁴ it had secured approval from the FDA to use specially formulated dicamba, VaporGrip, on growing crops; in the past it had only been used before planting. The claim was that using VaporGrip Technology “gives you extended application flexibility before, at and after planting.”⁵

Dicamba Drift Destroying Crops As EPA Looks On

It took only one growing season to prove the claim that VaporGrip didn’t drift wasn’t true. In July 2017 a complaint advisory from the EPA was published in which they wrote:⁶

“Despite the conditional approval of new dicamba products with drift reduction agents and further use restrictions set in place prior to the 2017 growing season, some states are reporting high numbers of dicamba complaints.

By early July, we already had reports of hundreds of complaints received by state agencies in Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee (a significant increase from last year). Both physical drift and volatilization of dicamba from the target application site have been reported.”

The immediate response approved by the EPA was a change to the label so that consumers were instructed to use the product differently than when it was first released.⁷ But changing how it was applied didn’t stop the numerous complaints in the coming crop seasons. Every summer since the release of the new dicamba formulation, the phones have been ringing.

NPR reports⁸ the Office of the Indiana State Chemist has been overwhelmed by the complaints from farmers and homeowners reporting damage to crops and gardens. With each test of the damaged plants, the scientists found the same culprit: It was dicamba.

The herbicide is designed to be used on dicamba-tolerant seed and the new delivery system is intended to stop the potential for drift. But, as you likely guessed, the delivery system for this dangerous toxin failed.

For farmers who plant dicamba-tolerant GMO seed, the herbicide kills weeds that are resistant to glyphosate without hurting their crops. For those who don’t use dicamba-tolerant seed, it’s described as a plague.⁹ One farmer reported the drift affected 80 acres of his farm, which cut the harvest in those fields by one-third.

Illinois growers lodged about six times as many complaints in 2019 as they did prior to the widespread adoption of dicamba. Despite the rising number of problems suffered by farmers and homeowners, the EPA extended approval just before the 2019 season. The decision apparently rested on the hope more education and restrictions on the application process would stop the problem.

Sinister Practices May Force Farmers to Buy Bayer Seed

The issue has gotten so heated that farmers see their neighbors as threats and one dispute ended in death. Millions of acres of crops were damaged when the herbicide traveled beyond their application sites. You probably could have predicted a sprayed application would land in another field, but the EPA and FDA could not.

On hot summer days the technology falls short. Instead of sticking to the area, the chemical quickly evaporates and drifts into nearby fields and gardens.¹⁰ Could this be the ultimate plan — releasing an herbicide that requires you to purchase their seed in order to successfully harvest your crop? It seems Monsanto is playing the long game.

The challenge of stopping herbicide from drifting with the wind has created a problem for inspectors: It’s difficult to figure out where it originated. The additional workload means they don’t have time for routine inspections. Leo Reed, an Indiana official, calls this “dicamba fatigue.”¹¹

Another telltale sign of fatigue and overworked has been the marked exodus of Missouri’s pesticide inspectors. There were eight, but seven resigned over the course of one-and-a-half years. According to meeting minutes, contributing factors were overload and burnout.

Peach Farmer Stands Up to Agribusiness; Outs Marketing Ploy

Monsanto claims the crop damage is the result of poor application, weather and other pesticides. But in a lawsuit Bill Bader of Bader Farms in Missouri accused Monsanto (now Bayer, since Bayer bought them out) of creating the circumstances for the drift damage.

Bader’s family-owned business is close to shutting down, even though at one time it was the largest of all peach farms in the state.

In response, Monsanto/Bayer claimed the problems on the Bader Farm were the result of such things as user errors and weather, and not dicamba. Odessa Hines, spokesperson for BASF, also named in the lawsuit, said the company’s¹² “ … products meet all regulatory standards, including rigorous safety and environmental testing. We look forward to defending our product in this case.”

Despite their confidence, on the first day of the trial Internal documents showed the companies knew about the herbicide’s potential to cause damage to surrounding crops. They also prepared for complaints that might have come in before the crop system had even been released.¹³

During opening arguments, Bader’s attorney said the farm's financial situation was “entirely foreseen and foreseeable” based on documentation from Monsanto and BASF. According to the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting:¹⁴

“The lawsuit alleges that the companies released the dicamba-tolerant soybean and cotton seeds and accompanying herbicides knowing that it would likely drift and damage non-tolerant seeds in order to make farmers buy the companies’ systems.”

Bader asked for $20.9 million in damages and punitive damages from Monsanto and BASF, which originally developed dicamba in the 1950s. Bader’s attorney said,¹⁵ “The experiment, we will show, has been a failure.” 

After hearing three weeks of testimony, the jury awarded Bader $15 million in damages on February 14, 2020,¹⁶ and the next day added another $250 million in punitive damages to the award. As reported by Investigate Midwest:

“Bader Farms is among thousands of farms, comprising millions of acres of crops, that have alleged dicamba damage since 2015. ’It sends a strong message,’ said Bev Randles, an attorney for Bader Farms.

‘The Baders were doing this, not just because of themselves or for themselves, but they felt like it was necessary because of what it means to farmers everywhere. This was just wrong.’

The lawsuit is the first of hundreds filed by farmers to go to trial. Bader’s lawsuit was independent of the outcome of a pending class-action lawsuit. Bayer said in a statement that they are disappointed with the verdict, and Bader’s losses were not their fault. Bayer said it will appeal the decision.”

Dicamba Kills More Than Crops

The environmental and financial consequences of using dicamba continue to rise. In 2017, Reuters¹⁷ reported Monsanto was giving cash to farmers to offset the cost of using dicamba. The incentive was designed to entice farmers, who were facing the additional costs of more training, to use the herbicide.

This was only one decision that dealt a major blow to the environment. Dicamba also impacts bees and other pollinators with a cascading effect on vegetation and crops. Paradoxically, NPR reports that one farmer decided the solution was not to stop using dicamba but, rather, for ALL farmers to begin using it.

Once all farmers are planting dicamba-tolerant seed, he said, it will lower crop damage.¹⁸ However, as NPR noted:

“That might reduce the damage to crops, but the resulting free-fire zone for dicamba could be bad news for other vegetation, such as wildflowers and trees. The wider ecological impact of dicamba drift received little attention at first.

Richard Coy, whose family-run company manages 13,000 beehives in Arkansas, Mississippi and Missouri, was one of the few people who noticed it. ‘If I were not a beekeeper, I would pay no attention to the vegetation in the ditches and the fence rows,’ he says. But his bees feed on that vegetation.”

Spraying more herbicides and pesticides damages the same insect species that crops need to propagate. This possibly could have been picked up in testing before the release of the new VaporGrip technology, but Monsanto had expressly forbade independent tests. This was an out-of-the-ordinary decision because, commonly, when a new pesticide is developed, a company commissions tests and shares the chemical with universities.

Regulators and researchers then assess the safety and effectiveness of the chemical. In tests before the release of XtendiMax with VaporGrip, Monsanto forbade university researchers to test for vaporization and drift potential.

Reuters reported Monsanto defended the decision saying it was unnecessary as it was¹⁹ "less volatile than a previous dicamba formula that researchers found could be used safely."

As if damage to the environment, the food supply chain and financial manipulation were not enough, consider the impact herbicides have on antibiotic resistance, “one of the biggest public health challenges of our time.”²⁰

Research evidence²¹ shows the application of dicamba and glyphosate — even below recommended levels — triggers antibiotic resistance up to 100,000 times faster when bacteria are exposed in the environment. In a news release from the University of Canterbury, one of the researchers commented:²²

“The combination of chemicals to which bacteria are exposed in the modern environment should be addressed alongside antibiotic use if we are to preserve antibiotics in the long-term.”

Reduce Your Exposure to Pesticides

You cannot solely depend on others to protect your health. Instead, if falls to each of us to practice preventive strategies to reduce the toxins that assault our bodies. Here are some ideas for reducing your exposure to pesticides and other toxins and start on the right path:

Purchase organic produce and grass fed (American Grass Fed Certified) meat — Animal products like meat, butter, milk and eggs are the most important to buy organic and grass fed, since animal products tend to bioaccumulate toxins from their pesticide-laced feed, concentrating them to far higher concentrations than are typically present in vegetables. Children are especially vulnerable to the effects of environmental chemicals, including pesticides, so try to buy organic for produce that may have an elevated pesticide load, such as strawberries, spinach, nectarines, apples and peaches. If you eat the skin of the produce it's best to try to buy organic.

Wash all produce before eating — Washing all produce before eating helps to reduce your exposure to bacteria and pesticides. Both may also be transferred to melons, oranges and other fruits you peel if the rind is not first washed. While there are commercial preparations, the safest products are white vinegar with a splash of lemon. The acidity helps to kill the bacteria, and friction from a vegetable brush helps to reduce the number of chemicals clinging to the produce. Dry your produce with a paper towel as an extra measure of removing pesticides so they don't dry to the produce. Remove the exterior leaves of leafy vegetables.

Eat whole foods — Remember that processed foods are in fact processed with a variety of chemicals, and should therefore be avoided as much as possible. Children already diagnosed with ADHD, autism or seizure disorders in most cases have reduced symptoms when processed foods are completely eliminated.

Leave your shoes at the door — Walking across lawns and treated gardens deposits pesticides and other toxic chemicals in your carpet and on your flooring. Pets and small children crawling across the floor have the greatest potential for absorbing these chemicals. However, when you eventually take your shoes off at the end of the day, you may also absorb chemicals through the bottoms of your bare feet.

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For years, I've warned that aluminum is a serious neurotoxic hazard involved in rising rates of autism and Alzheimer's disease (AD). I've also warned that vaccines are a significant source of such exposure, and may be one of the worst, since by injecting it, the aluminum bypasses your body's natural filtering and detoxification systems.

My comments above were one of the reasons the self-appointed global arbiter of fake news, NewsGuard, refused to give us "green" status as a site that follows "basic standards of accuracy and accountability." In other words, our reporting of aluminum hazards was deemed "fake news."

Not only were my earlier reports based on published science, but now we have yet another study,¹ published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, strongly linking aluminum exposure to AD. As reported by SciTech Daily:²

"Researchers found significant amounts of aluminum content in brain tissue from donors with familial AD. The study also found a high degree of co-location with the amyloid-beta protein, which leads to early onset of the disease.

'This is the second study confirming significantly high brain accumulation in familial Alzheimer's disease, but it is the first to demonstrate an unequivocal association between the location of aluminum and amyloid-beta in the disease.

It shows that aluminum and amyloid-beta are intimately woven in the neuropathology,' explained lead investigator Christopher Exley, PhD, Birchall Centre, Lennard-Jones Laboratories, Keele University, Staffordshire, UK."

The Association Between Aluminum and Amyloid-Beta

To gain a better understanding of the link between aluminum exposure and beta-amyloid generation, the researchers examined the brain tissue of donors diagnosed with familial Alzheimer's disease who also had a specific gene mutation known to increase levels of amyloid-beta, leading to early onset and more aggressive disease.

Aluminum levels were compared to controls with no neurological disease diagnosis. They found striking differences between these two groups. Donors with the genetic mutation had universally high aluminum content.

While all samples had some level of aluminum, 42% of the samples from those with familial Alzheimer's had "pathologically significant" aluminum levels, and the aluminum was primarily co-located with amyloid beta plaques. As reported by SciTech Daily:³

"The results strongly suggest that genetic predispositions known to increase amyloid-beta in brain tissue also predispose individuals to accumulate and retain aluminum in brain tissue …

'One could envisage increased amyloid-beta in brain tissue as a response to high levels of aluminum content, or that aluminum fosters the accumulation of amyloid-beta,' said Dr. Exley.

'Either way, the new research confirms my resolve that within the normal lifespan of humans, there would not be any AD if there were no aluminum in the brain tissue. No aluminum, no AD.'"

Aluminum Adjuvants Have Never Been Tested for Safety

Exley's conclusion deserves repeating: "No aluminum, no AD." Without aluminum, Alzheimer's doesn't develop. That's not fake news. This research provides conclusive evidence for concern, which means it would be foolish in the extreme to pretend that injecting infants and young children with aluminum-containing vaccines is harmless.

As revealed in my 2015 interview with Dr. Lucija Tomljenovic, featured in "How Vaccine Adjuvants Affect Your Brain," when aluminum was first approved for use in vaccines, some 95 years ago, it was approved based on its efficacy. It was never actually tested for safety.

Even the total allowable limit was based on efficacy data, not safety data. They simply assumed it was safe. As noted by Tomljenovic in that interview:

"A document⁴ from 2002 from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ... discussing the assessment of vaccine ingredients ... and testing specifically in animal models ... stated that the routine toxicity studies in animals with vaccine ingredients have not been conducted because it was assumed that these ingredients are safe.

When I read that I was kind of pulling my hairs out [thinking] 'So, this is your indisputable evidence of safety?' These documents never made it to mainstream media. It's just a lie perpetuated over and over again; that we've been using these things for over nine decades and it's been proven safe. No, it's been ASSUMED safe."

Industry Propaganda and Political Interference

The propaganda responsible for hiding the dangers of aluminum was addressed in a 2014 review article⁵ in the journal Frontiers of Neurology. In it, Exley (who also co-authored the featured Journal of Alzheimer's Disease study above) wrote:⁶

"The aluminum industry is a pillar of the developed and developing world and irrespective of the tyranny of human exposure to aluminum it cannot be challenged without significant consequences for businesses, economies, and governments ...

There has been and there continues to be systematic attempts by the aluminum industry to suppress research on aluminum and human health.

While independent research in this field is prevented the questions concerning human toxicity remain unanswered. Lack of required research does not equate to lack of biological effect or safety … 

Herein, I will make the case that it is inevitable both today and in the future that an individual's exposure to aluminum is impacting upon their health and is already contributing to, if not causing, chronic diseases such as Alzheimer's disease."

Exley points out that one of the most significant factors driving complacency about aluminum exposure is the aluminum industry's insistence that, since it's everywhere and found in virtually everybody,⁷ it must be harmless if not essential — we just haven't figured out how it benefits us yet. However, no beneficial role of aluminum has ever been elucidated, and its presence is in no way evidence of benefit.

Why Aluminum Toxicity Flies Under the Radar

Exley also notes that aluminum is rarely acutely toxic, which adds to the complacency problem. Problems only arise once a certain threshold is reached, and even then, its role in disease is rarely if ever investigated.

Yet another factor that helps hide the influence of aluminum in disease is the fact that it acts on many different pathways and acts as a substitute for essential minerals, so aluminum toxicity doesn't have one specific hallmark.

"The potential for aluminum to interact with and to influence so many biochemical pathways means that the symptoms of its toxicity could be deficiency or sufficiency, agonistic or protagonistic, and any combination of these and other physiology-based events," Exley writes, adding:⁸

"For aluminum to play a significant role in any disease-related event some degree of toxicity threshold must have been achieved. Essentially, the rate of delivery of Al3+(aq) to target ligands must be sufficient to overcome the inherent robustness of systems that are under attack.

In achieving this threshold either aluminum must accumulate over time within a particular compartment or possibly the administration of a single dose of aluminum could achieve such a threshold instantaneously.

The latter is probably more unusual in human being's everyday exposure to aluminum except, for example, where aluminum is administered as an adjuvant in vaccination and allergy immunotherapy."

Importantly, aluminum has the ability to cross the blood-brain-barrier, so any aluminum in the blood can be transported into the brain. "Indeed, aluminum is known to increase the leakiness of epithelial and endothelial barriers and in doing so could concomitantly increase the passage of aluminum from the blood to the brain," Exley writes.⁹

Biological Effects of Aluminum 

Exley also points out aluminum can damage your brain function by:

• Adversely influencing neuronal function and survival
• Potentiating damaging redox activity
• Disrupting intracellular calcium signaling that systematically wears down cellular defenses
• Worsening the adverse effects of other heavy metals
• Influencing gene expression

A 2010 paper¹⁰ also pointed out that aluminum salts "can increase levels of glial activation, inflammatory cytokines and amyloid precursor protein within the brain," and that "Both normal brain aging and to a greater extent, Alzheimer's disease are associated with elevated basal levels of markers for inflammation."

Similarly, a 2018 paper¹¹ in the Journal of Research in Medical Sciences cites research showing aluminum affects:

Axonal transport	Neurotransmitter synthesis
Synaptic transmission	Phosphorylation or de-phosphorylation of proteins
Protein degradation	Gene expression
Peroxidation	Inflammatory responses

When it comes to altering gene expression, aluminum has been shown to do this via many different routes and mechanisms, including by:¹²

Binding to histone-DNA complex	Inducing conformational changes of chromatin
Inducing topological changes of DNA	Decreasing expression of neurofilament
Decreasing expression of tubulin	Altering expression of neurofilament genes
Altering expression of amyloid precursor protein	Altering expression of neuron-specific enolase
Decreasing expression of transferrin receptor	Altering expression of RNA polymerase I
Altering expression of oxidative stress marker genes such as SOD1 and glutathione reductase	Altering expression of beta-APP secretase

Importantly, as noted in the Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, aluminum has been shown to "cause mitochondrial dysfunction and depletion of adenine-triphosphate (ATP),"¹³ which sets the stage for virtually any chronic disease, not just neurodegenerative diseases.

Vaccine Schedule Overexposes Infants to Aluminum

In December 2019, The Highwire reported¹⁴ the findings of a study¹⁵ published in the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology, which found the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's childhood vaccine schedule — when adjusted for bodyweight — exposes children to a level of aluminum that is 15.9 times higher than the recommended "safe" level.

The researchers point out that previous efforts to assess the aluminum burden created by vaccines were based on "whole-body clearance rates estimated from a study involving a single human subject."

What's more, they used an aluminum citrate solution that is not used in vaccines, which may affect the excretion rate. Importantly, infants also have immature renal function, which will inhibit their ability to filter and excrete toxins in the first place.

Other studies¹⁶ have used orally ingested aluminum to assess and defend safety limits for aluminum in vaccines. This is clearly an unwise comparison, as only 0.1% of orally ingested aluminum is absorbed and made bioavailable from the gastrointestinal tract.^17,18

In the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology study,¹⁹ the researchers used several different models in an effort to estimate the expected acute and long-term whole-body accumulation of aluminum in children following one of the three possible vaccine schedules:

1. The CDC's childhood vaccine schedule as of 2019
2. The CDC's vaccine schedule modified to use low dose aluminum DTaP and aluminum-free Hib vaccines
3. Dr. Paul Thomas' "vaccine-friendly plan,"^20,21 which recommends giving only one aluminum-containing vaccine per visit (max two) and delaying certain vaccinations

The CDC's standard schedule resulted in the greatest expected aluminum burden in all model assumptions, while Thomas' schedule resulted in the lowest. According to the authors:²²

"Medically, proper organ, cellular and body aluminum detoxification appears to be of ever-increasing importance: Aluminum has been found in the brains of patients with Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, and autism.

Evidence is growing that a host of chronic illnesses of unknown cause that are difficult to diagnose such as PANDAS/PANS, chronic fatigue syndrome may at least in part be due to vaccine aluminum intolerance.

Aluminum compounds occur naturally in the environment and in food, but very little ingested aluminum is absorbed through the intestines. Total aluminum exposure is affected by the aluminum amount in individual vaccines and the timing of repeated vaccinations in the first two years of life.

Dórea and Marques compared the expected levels of aluminum uptake into the body from intravenous and oral intake and concluded that human infants have higher exposure to aluminum from vaccination than from food, water, and formula.

Our calculations confirm that for the CDC schedule, infants up to six months of life receive most of their metabolically available aluminum from vaccines.

It should be expected that most aluminum retained in the body of infants comes from vaccinations combined with the levels of exposure from other exposures to manifest health risks from total exposure, making the timing and total aluminum content of different vaccine schedules an important consideration."

CDC Vaccine Schedule Exceeds Aluminum Limit for Adults

As noted in the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology study,²³ the "safety" limit for aluminum is not weight dependent. The maximum safe limit is based on an adult, and the same limit is transposed to infants weighing a fraction of that.

Importantly, this study found that when multiple aluminum-containing vaccines are given together, as per the CDC schedule, the total aluminum dose ends up exceeding even the assumed safety limit for an adult.

"Adjusting the safe dose limit based on a child's weight at these ages therefore results in doses that far exceed the estimated safe limit of acute toxicity," the authors warn,²⁴ adding that "on all days of injection the safe limit for a child is exceeded for all three schedules; this points to acute toxicity …

The CDC schedule has the largest violation at 15.9 times the recommended safe level. This occurs at 2 months, when four recommended vaccinations containing aluminum are simultaneously administered.

In addition, modeling the time to clear aluminum from the body using Priest's equation estimates that for this schedule a child will be over the safe level of aluminum in the body for 149 days from birth to 7 months, constituting about 70 % of days in this period. This points to chronic toxicity …

The modified CDC schedule assumes the same vaccinations at the same times as the CDC schedule, but like the Vaccine Friendly Plan it assumes a lower dose aluminum DTap vaccine, and also combines the ActHib (containing no Al) with low aluminum DTap or PVC13 so that the aluminum adjuvant in the aluminum containing vaccine (ACV) activates an immune response for the ActHib vaccine.

This drops the maximum level of exposure to about 60 % of the original CDC plan with (from 15.9 to 9.3) and drops days above the estimated safe limit in the first 7 months from 70 % of days to 26 % and in the first 2 years from 24 % of days to 8 %.

The Vaccine Friendly Plan schedule skips some vaccinations in the first two years (like HepB) and avoids giving more than two vaccinations containing aluminum together.

The VFP thus further limits maximum exposure to approximately 25 % of the original CDC schedule (from 15.9 to 4.2) and drops days above the estimate limit in the first seven months from 70 % of days to 5 % and in the first two years from 24 % of days to 2 %."

Aluminum Is a Proven Neurotoxin

The health hazards of aluminum are also addressed in a 2017 scientific review²⁵ published in the German journal, Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, which also reviews the threshold values associated with various types of exposure.

"Aluminum's neurotoxic effects in humans and its embryotoxic effects in animal models have been proven," the paper states, adding that while the acute toxicity of ingested aluminum is low, long-term exposure and buildup is associated with neurotoxic effects, resulting in disorientation, memory impairment and dementia. As noted in this paper:²⁶

"In addition to inducing oxidative stress and binding to negatively charged membrane structures in neurons, aluminum is able to modify hippocampal calcium signal pathways that are crucial to neuronal plasticity and, hence, to memory. Cholinergic neurons are particularly susceptible to aluminum neurotoxicity, which affect synthesis of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine."

Aluminum as a risk factor for neurological disorders is also detailed in a 2018 paper²⁷ in the Journal of Research in Medical Sciences. Here, the authors again note that "it is widely accepted that [aluminum] is a recognized neurotoxin, which could cause neurodegeneration." They also point out that aluminum "affects more than 200 important biological reactions and causes negative effects on [the] central nervous system."

Aluminum Detected in Organs a Year After Vaccination

A 2013 study²⁸ shed important light on the vaccine adjuvant alum, a "nanocrystalline compound" that has been shown to spontaneously form "micron/submicron-sized agglomerates." According to this paper:

"Alum is occasionally detected within monocyte-lineage cells long after immunization in presumably susceptible individuals with systemic/neurologic manifestations or autoimmune (inflammatory) syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA) …

Intramuscular injection of alum-containing vaccine was associated with the appearance of aluminum deposits in distant organs, such as spleen and brain where they were still detected one year after injection …

Particles linearly accumulated in the brain up to the six-month endpoint; they were first found in perivascular CD11b+ cells and then in microglia and other neural cells … Cerebral translocation was not observed after direct intravenous injection, but significantly increased in mice with chronically altered blood-brain-barrier …

Continuously escalating doses of this poorly biodegradable adjuvant in the population may become insidiously unsafe, especially in the case of overimmunization or immature/altered blood brain barrier or high constitutive CCL-2 production."

Clearly, Alzheimer's and autism are not caused by a single factor. Your diet and lifestyle play significant roles, as do other toxic exposures. Still, aluminum appears to be a significant concern that cannot be overlooked, especially where vaccines are concerned. Can we really justify loading infants up with aluminum at doses that are toxic even to an adult?

To learn more about the factors that raise your risk for Alzheimer's and recommended prevention strategies, see "How Excess Iron Raises Your Risk for Alzheimer's," "Trans Fats Linked to Increased Risk for Alzheimer's," and "Lifestyle Factors Linked to Alzheimer's."

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