Health & Fitness

 

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Type 2 diabetes is a metabolic condition that is affected by several factors, including the foods you eat and the amount of exercise you get. There are several significant consequences of Type 2 diabetes, including neuropathy, loss of sight, kidney disease and heart disease.¹ Recent data² show people who eat sardines may lower their risk of Type 2 diabetes.

Risk factors for Type 2 diabetes³ include being overweight, having a family member with Type 2 diabetes, being physically inactive and having been diagnosed with gestational diabetes (diabetes during pregnancy).

People with metabolic syndrome also have a higher risk of being diagnosed with diabetes. You may be diagnosed with metabolic syndrome if you have three of the five health conditions associated with the syndrome.⁴ These include high blood sugar, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, low levels of high-density lipoproteins (HDL) or a large waist circumference.

Prediabetes is a condition in which your blood sugar level is too high, but not high enough for Type 2 diabetes.⁵ Nearly 88 million adults in the U.S. have prediabetes, and a vast majority of those do not know they have it. Prediabetes also increases your risk of heart disease and stroke.

According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases,⁶ there are an estimated 34.2 million people in the U.S. with diabetes. This is 10.5% of the population. Nearly 7.3 million of those do not know they have diabetes. You may help reduce your potential risk of developing this condition by making dietary and exercise changes.

Two Sardines a Day May Keep Diabetes at Bay

One simple dietary change that may have a positive impact on your risk for diabetes may be adding sardines to your daily regimen. According to a 2021 study published in Clinical Nutrition,⁷ eating sardines consistently may have a protective effect against developing Type 2 diabetes.

The researchers enrolled 152 people who had a diagnosis of prediabetes and were at least 65 years old.⁸ In this study, they defined pre-diabetes as glucose levels between 100 and 124 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL). The whole group was placed on a nutritional program to help reduce the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

They were then randomized into a control group and an intervention group, members of which consumed approximately two cans of sardines in olive oil each week. The participants were given instructions to eat the entire sardine without removing the bones and were given a list of recipes.

At the end of the year-long intervention, the researchers compared the risk of developing diabetes from the beginning of the study and the end of the study. In the control group, 27% were at high risk of developing Type 2 diabetes at the start of the study, which dropped to 22% at the end of one year with nutritional changes.⁹

However, in the sardine group, 37% were at high risk of developing Type 2 diabetes before the intervention began. At the end of one year, this dropped to 8%. The researchers also found there were other measurable parameters that improved in the group that consumed sardines each week.

These included a reduction in insulin resistance, a rise in HDL cholesterol and an increase in adiponectin, a hormone that accelerates the breakdown of glucose. They also measured a decrease in blood pressure and triglycerides.¹⁰

The study's lead researcher believes sardines should be recommended as a food as opposed to separating the nutritional benefits from the fatty fish, which are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, calcium, vitamin D and taurine. She said:¹¹

"Not only are sardines reasonably priced and easy to find, but they are safe and help to prevent the onset of Type 2 diabetes. It is easy to recommend this food during medical check-ups, and it is widely accepted by the population.

As we get older, restrictive diets (in terms of calories for food groups) can help to prevent the onset of diabetes … the results lead us to believe that we could obtain an equally significant preventive effect in the younger population."

Sardines Are High in Omega-3 Fat

Sardines are a fatty fish, high in omega-3 fatty acids. After the data analysis, researchers stated they plan to study how sardines may affect the gut microbiome.¹² Eating a diet high in omega-3 fats has demonstrated a protective effect on other health markers as well.

The rise in chronic inflammatory diseases in the past decades is likely associated with the introduction and current ubiquitous use of vegetable oils and processed foods high in omega-6 fatty acids.¹³ Although omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids are essential for good health, a correct balance is required to be your healthiest.¹⁴

Many people consume far too many omega-6 fatty acids found in everything from french fries to frozen meals and salad dressings. Ideally, you want to maintain a ratio of 4-to-1 of omega-6 and omega-3 fats or less.¹⁵ Yet, this can be nearly impossible if you are regularly eating processed foods or restaurant fare.

In my view, one of the most hazardous fats in the human diet is omega-6 linoleic acid (LA). Processed vegetable oils are a primary source of LA, but animal foods such as chicken from concentrated animal feeding operations and farmed salmon also have a high amount thanks to the food they are fed, which is high in LA-rich grains.

As I discuss in "Why You Need More Omega-3," there is evidence to suggest that an excessive amount of LA plays a role in many chronic diseases. Omega-3 fats are found in both plants and marine animals. However, they are different types of omega-3 and they are not interchangeable.¹⁶

Plant-based omega-3 fats are found in walnuts, leafy green vegetables, flaxseed and chia seeds.¹⁷ They contain short-chain alpha linoleic acid (ALA) and do not have the long chain docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) found in marine animal-based omega-3.

Although ALA is a precursor to EPA and DHA, it requires an enzyme to convert. In most people, the conversion rate is exceptionally small, typically less than 1%.¹⁸ While the small amount of ALA you may eat is converted into the long-chain omega-3 fats your body requires, the process is highly inefficient and cannot supply nearly as much as consuming marine-based omega-3 fats high in DHA and EPA.

It is also important to carefully select your fish since only cold-water fatty fish have high levels of omega-3. Some examples include wild-caught Alaskan salmon, sardines, anchovies, mackerel and herring. It's best to avoid farmed fish altogether for three reasons: first, because there's an exaggerated potential for contamination;¹⁹ second, most farms feed the fish genetically engineered corn and soy;²⁰ and third, the omega-6 fats fed to these fish are about 90% dangerous LA fat.

In other words, consuming these fish does not correct a high omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. In fact it contributes to it, since farmed salmon have only half the omega-3 of wild salmon^21,22 and more than 5.5 times the amount of omega-6.^23,24

Omega-3 Protects Your Lungs and Mitochondria

In addition to a protective effect against diabetes, omega-3 fatty acids help to protect your lungs and mitochondria. Researchers followed first responders after the September 11, 2001, attack on the Twin Towers in New York²⁵ during which firefighters and paramedics were exposed to 10 million tons of caustic material released as the towers were reduced to rubble.²⁶

Researchers from New York University School of Medicine undertook an analysis to determine if there were indications that some first responders may have had a greater risk than others of respiratory problems that occurred after exposure.

They measured metabolites,²⁷ which are a natural byproduct of the breakdown of fat, protein and carbohydrates, and found there were 30 specific metabolites in first responders who had a lower incidence of obstructive airway disease. They also found those with lower levels of the metabolites had a higher risk of developing pulmonary disease.

One group of metabolites associated with a lower risk of lung injury were lipids.²⁸ The researchers found that EPA in particular acts as a precursor for reducing inflammatory response and immune response to any injury and may have helped reduce the damage in first responders triggered by exposure to toxins.²⁹

Another study in children living in Baltimore City³⁰ also found evidence those who ate more foods with omega-3 had a lower asthmatic response to particulate matter pollution than children with lower levels of omega-3s. Conversely, children with higher levels of omega-6 had a higher percentage of neutrophils in response to pollution, which is a white blood cell marker of inflammation.

Your omega-3 levels may also affect mitochondrial function.³¹ Some of the more profound effects of mitochondrial disease are evident in the brain and muscle, including the heart. Your mitochondria are important in energy production and calcium signaling, as well as apoptosis and autophagy.

One animal study demonstrated there was a positive effect on mitochondrial function and neuroprotection with the administration of omega-3 fats.³² Another lab study showed omega-3 fat exposure to cells induced metabolic rate, thus increasing mitochondrial content in comparison to control cells.³³

One of the signs of advancing age is remodeling of the cell membranes in the heart.³⁴ An impact from this remodeling is mitochondrial function, which plays a role in sustaining energy production. Changes in the mitochondrial membrane are exacerbated by the presence of omega-6, but increasing omega-3 fat can help affect aging and facilitate mitochondrial energy production.

Your Omega-3 Index May Predict Mortality

A deficiency in EPA and DHA can leave you vulnerable to chronic disease. Optimizing your omega-3 levels is a foundational component to good health. However, there is no good way to know your omega-3 level without getting an Omega-3 Index test.

Your target Omega-3 Index is 8%.³⁵ This is the typical level of people living in Japan where you'll find the lowest rate of sudden heart death in the world. The highest risk is in people whose Index is 4% or lower. At this point there is no evidence to suggest the measurement is different for men, women or for different ages.

One study,³⁶ published in January 2021, evaluated 100 individuals' Omega-3 Index and compared them against their COVID-19 outcomes. The primary outcome measurement was death. When the overall data were analyzed, the researchers found only one death in the group with the highest quartile of Omega-3 Index.

The research data also confirmed past results that demonstrated the average person in the U.S. has an Omega-3 Index near 5%,³⁷ which is well below the measurement that has demonstrated protective effects on overall mortality.³⁸ The data from this group showed an average index of 5.09% and a median of 4.75%.³⁹

One study⁴⁰ published in 2018 confirmed omega-3 fat can reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease and all-cause mortality. The researchers measured Omega-3 Index in 2,500 participants and found those in the highest quintile had a total mortality 34% lower than those in the lowest quintile.

The Many Benefits of Omega-3 Fats

In addition to protecting your heart, lungs and mitochondria, omega-3 fats have more health benefits, including:

Reducing inflammation — This can be helpful for those with rheumatoid arthritis by reducing stiffness and pain.41 Women who suffer from menstrual pain may also experience milder pain.42,43

Optimizing muscle growth and bone strength — Omega-3 fats help your body build healthy muscle mass, including in people suffering from cancer who may experience cachexia.44 They can also help improve your bone strength by improving the utilization of calcium in your body. This may lead to a reduction in the development of osteoporosis.45

Improving metabolic syndrome46 and insulin resistance.47

Improving mental health and behavior — Evidence shows benefits for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), including reduced aggression, hyperactivity,48 impulsivity,49 oppositional behavior50 and restlessness.51 Omega-3 is associated with lowered risk for other neurological/cognitive dysfunction as well, including memory loss, brain aging, learning disorders and ADHD,52 autism and dyslexia.53

Protecting your vision — DHA is a major structural element in your eyes and brain.54 Low levels of DHA may increase your risk for age-related macular degeneration.55

Reducing your risk of kidney disease56 and colon cancer.57

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In previous articles, I’ve discussed the central role false advertising played in the creation of the opioid crisis.¹

To recap, a single paragraph in a 1980 letter to the editor^2,3 (not a study) in The New England Journal of Medicine — which stated that narcotic addiction in patients with no history of addiction was very rare — became the basis of a drug marketing campaign that has since led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people, or four times the number of Americans killed in Vietnam.

Between September 2019 and September 2020 alone, opioid overdoses killed a staggering 87,000 Americans — a new record-high.⁴

Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, used this letter to the editor as the basis for its claim that opioid addiction affects fewer than 1% of patients treated with the drugs. In reality, opioids have a very high rate of addiction, have not been proven effective for long-term use⁵ and, in fact, fail to control moderate to severe pain any better than over-the-counter pain relievers.⁶

Various court cases have demonstrated how Purdue systematically misled doctors about OxyContin’s addictiveness to drive up sales, resulting in an avalanche of opioid addiction and subsequent deaths.⁷

Unethical to the core, Purdue also cashed in on the addiction trend it manufactured by secretly founding Rhodes Pharma to manufacture generic opioids,⁸ and getting into the business of creating overdose treatments.^9,10

Facing an estimated 2,600 lawsuits^11,12 relating to its role in the opioid epidemic, Purdue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September 2019,¹³ as a way to avoid litigation losses. Just over a year later they pleaded guilty to three federal criminal charges, including violating a federal anti-kickback law, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and violating the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.^14,15

The company agreed to pay $8.3 billion in fines, forfeiture of past profits and civil liability payments to settle the charges,¹⁶ but short on cash — having transferred more than $10 billion of the company’s funds into family trusts and offshore accounts¹⁷ — the company was dissolved and its remaining assets used to erect a “public benefit company” owned and controlled by the U.S. government.¹⁸ Future earnings will supposedly be used to combat the opioid crisis.

Purdue’s PR Company Sued for Deceptive Marketing

While Purdue’s owners, the Sackler family, got off scot-free, states struggling with the exorbitant cost of opioid addiction aren’t ready to bury the hatchet just yet. Instead, some are going after the PR firm Purdue hired to run their deceptive marketing campaigns.

As it turns out, that PR firm is none other than Publicis, a partner of the World Economic Forum, which is leading the call for a Great Reset. As detailed in “The Web of Players Trying to Silence Truth,” Publicis appears to be coordinating the global effort to suppress information that runs counter to the technocratic narrative about COVID-19, its origin, prevention and treatment — suppression and censorship that has been repeatedly aimed at this website specifically.

At the beginning of May 2021, the Massachusetts attorney general filed a lawsuit¹⁹ against Publicis Health, accusing the Publicis subsidiary of helping Purdue create the deceptive marketing materials used to mislead doctors into prescribing OxyContin.^20,21,22,23 As reported by Yahoo! News:²⁴

“The lawsuit alleges that Publicis ‘engaged in myriad unfair and deceptive strategies that influenced OxyContin prescribing across the nation,’ a statement by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey's office said. Those strategies were carried out through dozens of contracts between 2010 and 2019, worth more than $50 million …

Tactics included combatting doctors' ‘hesitancy’ to prescribe the medication, and persuading them to prescribe OxyContin over lower-dose, short-acting opioids, thus increasing the risk of addiction. Massachusetts is asking that Publicis Health pay ‘compensatory damages’ of an unspecified amount for having ‘created a public nuisance.’"

Publicis Knowingly Promoted Over-Prescription

Publicis Health argues that its work for Purdue was entirely lawful and limited to “implementing Purdue’s advertising plan and buying media space.” Publicis also claims the specific activities listed in the lawsuit fall outside the statute of limitations.

Some of those activities included placing illegal advertisements for OxyContin in the electronic medical records of patients, creating training materials for Purdue sales reps on how to combat doctor’s objections to the drugs, developing strategies to counter opioid guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and creating “patient stories” to “humanize” the OxyContin brand and counter negative press about addiction risks.^25,26

According to the lawsuit, one patient vignette featured a 40-year-old man who had his dose increased from 10 milligrams a day to 20 mg in just three weeks. It also claims Publicis was responsible for creating and sending thousands of deceptive emails to doctors, encouraging them to not only increase patients’ dosages but also to prescribe the drug to patients who were already on less dangerous pain meds.²⁷

Publicis also instructed Purdue to target doctors who were already writing out dangerously high numbers of prescriptions, even in the midst of a raging opioid epidemic,²⁸ all while agency executives gleefully discussed the record fees they’d collect from the Purdue account. A March 2016 email exchange reveals the Publicis subsidiary was expecting to make up to $12.28 million from Purdue that year alone.

Publicis Also Represented Addiction Center

According to the complaint:²⁹

“Publicis helped create a public nuisance of opioid use disorder, overdose, and death. By design, Publicis’s schemes worked to counter public health measures intended to reduce unnecessary opioid use, because more opioid use generated more profits for Publicis’s opioid clients.”

Like Purdue, Publicis also cashed in on the opioid addiction it helped create by pitching its services to organizations working to end addiction. As reported by Forbes,³⁰ the agency “won the account to work on drugfree.org after touting how it’s been ‘immersed in the evolving national opioid medication dialogue going on between pharma companies, the government and FDA, and the public via inside access as a trusted and informed consulting partner.’”

In an interview cited by Courthouse News, Amanda Pustilnik, a senior fellow on law and applied neuroscience at Harvard Law School who also teaches at the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital, noted that:³¹

“The story of the opioid epidemic is often misrepresented as a story of irresponsible patients and over-prescribing doctors. This prosecution gets at the heart of the matter.

Patients and doctors were not, on average, irresponsible. They acted under the influence of a concerted plan of misinformation and over-promotion orchestrated up and down the supply chain for these medications.”

Publicis Admits Role in Censorship Push

As mentioned earlier, Publicis appears to be playing an important role in the global censorship of information relating to COVID-19, and Publicis Health admitted its involvement in this agenda as recently as April 27, 2021. In a tweet,³² the agency announced its partnership with NewsGuard, “to fight the ‘infodemic’ of misinformation about COVID-19 and its vaccines.”

In short, Publicis Health is dedicated to suppressing any information that hurts its Big Pharma clients, which include Lilly, Abbot, Roche, Amgen, Genentech, Celgene, Gilead, Biogen, AstraZeneca, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer, just to name a few.

Publicis is more than a partner with NewsGuard, however. NewsGuard actually received a large chunk of its startup capital from Publicis, as detailed in “New Thought Police NewsGuard Is Owned by Big Pharma.” NewsGuard, a self-proclaimed arbiter of truth, rates websites on criteria of “credibility” and “transparency,” ostensibly to guide viewers to the most reliable sources of news and information.

In reality, however, NewsGuard ends up acting as a gate keeper with a mission to barricade unpopular truth and differences of opinion behind closed gates. Its clearly biased ranking system easily dissuades people from perusing information from low-rated sites, mine included.

Extensive Propaganda Network Works Against the Public

As detailed in “The Web of Players Trying to Silence Truth” (hyperlinked above), Publicis is part of an enormous network that includes international drug companies, fact checkers and credibility raters like NewsGuard, Google and other search engines, Microsoft, antivirus software companies like Trend Micro, public libraries, schools, the banking industry, the U.S. State Department and Department of Defense, the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum.

Mind you, this is not a comprehensive review of links. It’s merely a sampling of entities to give you an idea of the breadth of connections, which when taken together explain how certain views — such as information about COVID-19 and vaccines — can be so effectively erased.

To understand the power that PR companies such as Publicis wield, you also need to realize that PR has, by and large, replaced the free press. In decades past, pro-industry advertising stood in stark contrast to the free press, which would frequently expose problems with products and industries, thereby serving as a counterbalance to industry propaganda.

When a free press with honest reporting based on verifiable facts actually does its job, ineffective or toxic products are driven off the market. All of this changed in the late 20th century, when media outlets started relying on advertisers for the bulk of their revenues.

As intended, journalists quickly came under the control of advertisers, who suddenly had the power to kill stories they didn’t like. Today, news organizations simply won’t run reports that might harm the bottom line of its advertisers and, not surprisingly, the drug industry is among the top-paying advertisers.

By further partnering with the “big guns” of media — such as the Paley Center for Media, which is composed of every major media in the world³³ — Publicis and its industry clients have been able to influence and control the press to virtually eliminate your ability to get the truth on many important issues, including COVID-19.

Seeing how Publicis represents most of the major pharmaceutical companies in the world and funded the creation of NewsGuard, it’s not far-fetched to assume Publicis might influence NewsGuard’s ratings of drug industry competitors, such as alternative health sites. Being a Google partner,^34,35 Publicis also has unprecedented ability to simply bury undesirable views that might hurt its clientele. 

NewsGuard’s health-related service, HealthGuard,³⁶ is also partnered with the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — a progressive U.K.-based cancel-culture leader³⁷ with extensive ties to government and global think tanks that has labeled people questioning the COVID-19 vaccine as “threats to national security.”

The CCDH has also published a hit-list of 12 groups and individuals it wants Big Tech to bury, deplatform and ban for disseminating COVID-19 information that runs counter to status quo propaganda. Not surprisingly, Mercola.com is on that list, and a ramp-up of personal threats that cannot be defended against in a court of law recently forced me to delete many of the articles discussing alternative treatments for COVID-19 from my website.

The Crime of the Century

If you get the chance, I recommend watching Alex Gibney’s HBO documentary “The Crime of the Century,” which details how the opioid epidemic was manufactured. In a Wall Street Journal television review, John Anderson writes, in part:³⁸

“In Mr. Gibney’s two-part ‘Crime of the Century’ … the cinema is as exhilarating as the journalism is exhaustive. Still, the style remains in service to the story: how big pharma lied and bribed its way into billions of dollars while leaving death and devastation behind, through a seemingly conscience-free crusade to sell stronger and stronger opiates to more and more people.

It’s a success story, from the industry’s point of view. It’s also a story of villainy, with a catalog of villains — not just the Sackler family of Purdue Pharma, but their sales representatives; the U.S. congressmen to whom they made outsize donations … former prosecutors hired as lobbyists … and officials of the Justice Department and the Food and Drug Administration …

‘The business of criminal cartels and pharmaceutical companies are connected,’ Mr. Gibney says in voiceover — the very obvious example being the drift to heroin by addicts thwarted by the increased expense and reduced availability of opioids. The director then goes about establishing how and why that is so.

The default argument of Purdue Pharma and its defenders is that drug users, not drug makers, are responsible for addiction. But as the miniseries points out, the information that was fed to doctors and on which patients based the use of prescriptions — including the claim that delayed-action OxyContin wasn’t addictive — was simply untrue.”

Unethical Behavior Is Par for the Course

While Publicis is trying to downplay its role in what has been described as the crime of the century, the lawsuit against it will hopefully result in a reevaluation of marketing ethics. The agency, knowing full well there was an epidemic of opioid abuse underway, resulting in tens of thousands of premature deaths each year, took on the job of increasing Purdue’s profits by making that lethal trend worse.

Publicis claims they were just doing what advertising agencies do — they created promotional materials that boost client revenue. However, this argument circumvents any notion of ethics and concern about public health. They’re basically admitting that it’s all about making money, regardless of the cost.

So, even if their actions were within legal limits (which the Massachusetts case will eventually establish), their actions were immoral and clearly undermined public health.

They now want you to believe they are protecting public health by supporting COVID-19 censorship, but this too is working against the public good. How can you possibly make an educated decision about whether or not to participate in this gene therapy experiment if you’re not allowed to hear anything about the risks?

What Publicis calls “misinformation” is simply information that contradicts the propaganda being put out by the hands that feed it, i.e., the drug industry. History tells us companies driven by profit interest make poor truth tellers, as negative information will clearly have a detrimental impact on their bottom line. So, they lie and obfuscate. It’s that simple.

Public relations firms like Publicis are mere arms of these notoriously untruthful industries. They do their bidding because that’s what they’re paid to do. To think that Big Pharma and paid propagandists are looking out for anyone but themselves is dangerously naïve.

It is ironic doublespeak that Publicis claims to defend against misinformation that puts the public at risk, while being clearly guilty of crimes against humanity, having played a crucial role in one of the deadliest health care schemes involving lies and deceit.

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If you've ever considered consulting a naturopath - this is everything you need to know before you go.

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The study tracked 4,811 people in 27 countries who are living with atrial fibrillation and taking blood thinners. Consenting patients undertaking cardiopulmonary bypass surgery were randomly selected for the additional left atrial appendage occlusion surgery; their outcomes compared with those who only took medicine. They were all followed for a median of four years.

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A study uncovers a new role for ion transporters: they participate in gene regulation in chloroplasts.

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By Dr. Mercola

You may be aware, and possibly have experienced firsthand, that antibiotics can cause diarrhea.

This is because antibiotics, by design, disrupt the balance of good and bad bacteria in your gastrointestinal tract, often killing off both beneficial and harmful microorganisms without distinction.

It is through this same mechanism that antibiotics may also be causing you to pack on extra pounds.

In fact, Dr. Martin Blaser, a professor of microbiology at New York University Langone Medical Center, suggests that antibiotics may permanently alter your gut bacteria and interfere with important hunger hormones secreted by your stomach, leading to increased appetite and body mass index (BMI).

Antibiotics Lead to Increases in Body Fat and Hunger Hormones

Research by Dr. Blaser has shown that 18 months after antibiotics are used to eradicate H. pylori bacteria, there is a:

• 6-fold increase in the release of ghrelin (the "hunger hormone") after a meal
• 20 percent increase in leptin levels (leptin is a hormone produced by fat tissue)
• 5 percent increase in BMI

Levels of ghrelin should ordinarily fall after a meal to signal your brain that you're full and ready to stop eating; an increase would therefore essentially tell your brain to continue eating, leading to weight gain. Further, the increase in leptin levels is concerning because overexposure to high levels of the hormone can lead to leptin resistance, which means your body is unable to properly hear leptin's signals.

The way your body stores fat is a highly regulated process that is controlled, primarily, by leptin. If you gain excess weight, the additional fat produces extra leptin that should alert your brain that your body is storing too much fat and needs to burn off the excess.

To do this, signals are sent to your brain to stop being hungry and to stop eating. When you become leptin-resistant, your body can no longer hear these messages -- so it remains hungry and stores more fat.

Interestingly, you can easily become leptin resistant by eating the typical American diet full of sugar (particularly fructose), refined grains and processed foods … which, like antibiotics, will upset the balance of bacteria in your gut.

Farmers Use Antibiotics to Fatten Up Livestock Quickly

About 70 percent of all the antibiotics produced are used in agriculture -- not necessarily to fight disease, but rather to promote weight gain.

As stated by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs:

"Continuous, low-dose administration of an antibiotic can increase the rate and efficiency of weight gain in healthy livestock. The presence of antibiotics likely changes the composition of the gut flora to favor growth. Debate is ongoing as to how gut flora are changed; change may simply be a reduction in numbers, a change in species composition or a combination of the two.

… Some antibiotics may also enhance feed consumption and growth by stimulating metabolic processes within the animal."

Unfortunately, this practice is also contributing to the alarming spread of antibiotic-resistant disease. As it pertains to your weight, there's ample reason to believe that this same phenomenon occurs in humans as well, figuratively turning Americans into fatted calves.

Your Gut Bacteria and Your Waistline Go Hand-in-Hand

Research by Dr. Blaser, for instance, found that mice fed antibiotics (in dosages similar to those given to children for throat or ear infections) had significant increases in body fat despite their diets remaining unchanged.

Multiple studies have actually shown that obese people have different intestinal bacteria than slim people, and that altering the microbial balance in your gut can influence your weight. Here are six such studies:

1. When rats were given lactic acid bacteria while in utero through adulthood, they put on significantly less weight than other rats eating the same high-calorie diet. They also had lower levels of minor inflammation, which has been associated with obesity.
2. Babies with high numbers of Bifidobacteria and low numbers of Staphylococcus aureus -- which may cause low-grade inflammation in your body, contributing to obesity -- appeared to be protected from excess weight gain. This may be one reason why breast-fed babies have a lower risk of obesity, as Bifidobacteria flourish in the guts of breast-fed babies.
3. Two studies found that obese individuals had about 20 percent more of a family of bacteria known as Firmicutes, and almost 90 percent less of a bacteria called Bacteroidetes than lean people. Firmicutes help your body to extract calories from complex sugars and deposit those calories in fat. When these microbes were transplanted into normal-weight mice, those mice started to gain twice as much fat.
4. Obese people were able to reduce their abdominal fat by nearly 5 percent, and their subcutaneous fat by over 3 percent, just be drinking a probiotic-rich fermented milk beverage for 12 weeks.
5. Probiotics (good bacteria) have been found to benefit metabolic syndrome, which often goes hand-in-hand with obesity.
6. Probiotics may also be beneficial in helping women lose weight after childbirth when taken from the first trimester through breastfeeding.

Healthy Gut Bacteria Cannot Coexist With Antibiotics

Antibiotics can save your life if you develop a serious bacterial infection, but it's important that you resist the urge to ask your physician for a prescription for every ear, nose, or throat infection you come down with. Likewise for a cold or the flu. Antibiotics are useless against viral infections like these, and when used for this purpose will only harm your health by wiping out the good bacteria in your gut.

Antibiotic use has become so routine in the United States that one round of the drugs may seem like no big deal, but remember that using them drastically alters the makeup of bacteria in your gut, which will need to be rebuilt in order for you to stay in good health. Whenever you use an antibiotic, you're also increasing your susceptibility to developing infections with resistance to that antibiotic -- and you can become the carrier of this resistant bug and even spread it to others.

Ultimately the problem of antibiotic-overuse needs to be stemmed through public policy on a nationwide level, especially in the agricultural community, but I urge you to also take personal responsibility and evaluate your own use of antibiotics, and avoid taking them -- or giving them to your children -- unless absolutely necessary.

Remember that the foods you eat are also a major source of exposure to antibiotics, so to protect your gut bacteria you should buy primarily antibiotic-free, organically raised meat and produce. Keep in mind that conventionally farmed food is often grown in fertilizer derived from factory-farmed animal waste and human sewage, which may be a source of contamination with antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The Recipe for Healthy Gut Bacteria

Your gut bacteria are vulnerable to your lifestyle. If you eat a lot of processed foods, for instance, your gut bacteria are going to be compromised because processed foods in general will destroy healthy microflora and feed bad bacteria and yeast.

In addition to antibiotics, your gut bacteria are also very sensitive to:

• Chlorinated water
• Antibacterial soap
• Agricultural chemicals
• Pollution

Because virtually all of us are exposed to these at least occasionally, ensuring your gut bacteria remain balanced should be considered an ongoing process, and consuming fermented foods is one of the best ways to do this.

One of the reasons why fermented foods are so beneficial is because they contain lactic acid bacteria -- a type of beneficial gut bacteria that research shows can help you stay slim.

I have long stated that it's generally a wise choice to "reseed" your body with good bacteria from time to time by taking a high-quality probiotic supplement or eating non-pasteurized, traditionally fermented foods such as:

• Lassi (an Indian yoghurt drink, traditionally enjoyed before dinner)
• Fermented  organic grass-fed raw milk, such as kefir
• Various pickled fermentations of cabbage, turnips, eggplant, cucumbers, onions, squash and carrots
• Natto (fermented soy)

If you do not eat fermented foods on a regular basis, a high-quality probiotic supplement can be incredibly useful to help maintain healthy gut bacteria when you stray from your healthy diet and consume excess grains or sugar, or if you have to take antibiotics.

Also please remember that it is vital to eliminate ALL sugars. They will sabotage any beneficial effects of the fermented foods, as they will act as nutrients for the pathogenic yeast, fungi and bacteria that are in your gut.

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Breast cancer rates dropped by half in tandem with the discontinuation of hormone replacement therapy, according to a study published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The study was reported in the Telegraph in the United Kingdom.

The Telegraph said:

"Dr Prithwish De, of the Canadian Cancer Society, and colleagues, found that use of HRT dropped from 12.7 per cent in 2002 to 4.9 per cent in 2004.

During the same period breast cancer rates dropped by 9.6 per cent even though the same number of women were having mammography tests.

Between 2004 and 2006 use of HRT remained stable at around five per cent of women aged 50 to 59 but breast cancer rates began to increase again.

Dr De wrote: 'The results support the hypothesised link between the use of hormone replacement therapy and invasive breast cancer incidence and indicate that the sharp decline in breast cancer incidence in 2002 is likely explained by the concurrent decline in the use of hormone replacement therapy among Canadian women.'"

The study's authors said these numbers support existing evidence of the link between HRT and breast cancer.

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In January of this year, Oprah Winfrey invited Suzanne Somers on her show to talk about health tips. The 62-year-old actress uses bio-identical estrogen cream and progesterone on her other arm two weeks a month.

According to Somers, the bio-identical hormones are identical to the ones created by the human body, unlike conventional hormones, which are made from mare’s urine.

The result has been a media firestorm condemning both Somers and Oprah, including the hit piece in Newsweek linked below. The authors of the piece, Weston Kosova and Pat Wingert, argue that bio-identical hormones are just as synthetic as conventional hormones -- although they don’t much discuss the fact that conventional hormones are actually different from the 17-beta-estradiol made by your body, while the bio-identical hormones are 17-beta-estradiol itself.

The real reason for the attacks on bio-identical hormones?

As Somers points out, many doctors, scientists and media figures make a good deal of money off of the pharmaceutical industry.

And one thing you won’t see mentioned in the Newsweek article is the fact that Pat Wingert is the co-author of a pharmaceutically biased book on hormones and menopause, and that  Newsweek is heavily funded by pharmaceutical companies.

This resembles an incident a few years ago when the cattle industry actually sued Oprah Winfrey just for talking about Mad Cow Disease.

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The contraceptive pill may disrupt women's natural ability to choose a partner genetically dissimilar to themselves. This could result in difficulties when trying to conceive, an increased risk of miscarriage and long intervals between pregnancies. Passing on a lack of diverse genes to children could also weaken their immune systems.

Humans tend to be attracted to those with a dissimilar genetic make-up to themselves, maintaining genetic diversity, which is signaled by subtle odors. A research team analyzed how the contraceptive pill affects odor preferences, and found that the preferences of women who began using the contraceptive pill shifted towards men with genetically similar odors.

Not only could genetic similarity in couples lead to fertility problems, but it could ultimately lead to the breakdown of relationships when women stop using the contraceptive pill, as odor perception plays a significant role in maintaining attraction to partners, researchers said.

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Despite widespread publicity, the 2002 landmark study on the potential dangers of hormone therapy for postmenopausal women is completely unknown to most women. 

New research from the Stanford University School of Medicine discovered that only 29 percent of the women surveyed knew anything about the study two years later. Additionally, only 40 percent of the women were able to identify possible risks and benefits linked to hormone therapy. 

Hormone therapy is used to ease your symptoms of menopause, but has also been widely prescribed for preventive purposes, based in part on earlier observational studies that had suggested it could help protect women against heart disease, weak bones, and dementia. 

In July 2002, the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) abruptly ended its combination of estrogen and progestin therapy study, as their data discovered higher rates of breast cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and blood clots in the population taking the hormones, compared to those taking placebos. 

Later, in April 2004, WHI also halted the portion of the study for estrogen-only therapy, after finding the hormone did not offer any protective heart disease prevention, but rather increased your risk of stroke and blood clots. 

The WHI findings triggered enormous changes in the use of hormone therapy, and prescriptions had dropped 38 percent by 2003. 

Senior author Randall Stafford, MD, PhD, said their latest survey indicates there's a huge problem in communicating crucial health information to patients effectively, which in turn is indicative of an even larger problem – ensuring that people can make informed decisions about their medical care. 

Menopause April 10, 2007

Women's Health Initiative June 21, 2007

WHI March 2, 2007 (The Estrogen-Alone Study Links)

Women's Health Initiative (The Estrogen-Plus-Progestin Study Links)

Eurekalert September 18, 2007

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While it has been said that the eyes are a window to the soul, a new study shows they could be a means for understanding diseases of the brain. According to new research, retinal scans can detect key changes in blood vessels that may provide an early sign of Alzheimer's, while offering important insights into how one of the most common Alzheimer's risk genes contributes to the disease.

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Researchers have observed a new feature of neural activity in the hippocampus - the brain's memory hub - that may explain how this vital brain region combines a diverse range of inputs into a multi-layered memories that can later be recalled.

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Breast cancer rates dropped by half in tandem with the discontinuation of hormone replacement therapy, according to a study published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The study was reported in the Telegraph in the United Kingdom.

The Telegraph said:

"Dr Prithwish De, of the Canadian Cancer Society, and colleagues, found that use of HRT dropped from 12.7 per cent in 2002 to 4.9 per cent in 2004.

During the same period breast cancer rates dropped by 9.6 per cent even though the same number of women were having mammography tests.

Between 2004 and 2006 use of HRT remained stable at around five per cent of women aged 50 to 59 but breast cancer rates began to increase again.

Dr De wrote: 'The results support the hypothesised link between the use of hormone replacement therapy and invasive breast cancer incidence and indicate that the sharp decline in breast cancer incidence in 2002 is likely explained by the concurrent decline in the use of hormone replacement therapy among Canadian women.'"

The study's authors said these numbers support existing evidence of the link between HRT and breast cancer.

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In January of this year, Oprah Winfrey invited Suzanne Somers on her show to talk about health tips. The 62-year-old actress uses bio-identical estrogen cream and progesterone on her other arm two weeks a month.

According to Somers, the bio-identical hormones are identical to the ones created by the human body, unlike conventional hormones, which are made from mare’s urine.

The result has been a media firestorm condemning both Somers and Oprah, including the hit piece in Newsweek linked below. The authors of the piece, Weston Kosova and Pat Wingert, argue that bio-identical hormones are just as synthetic as conventional hormones -- although they don’t much discuss the fact that conventional hormones are actually different from the 17-beta-estradiol made by your body, while the bio-identical hormones are 17-beta-estradiol itself.

The real reason for the attacks on bio-identical hormones?

As Somers points out, many doctors, scientists and media figures make a good deal of money off of the pharmaceutical industry.

And one thing you won’t see mentioned in the Newsweek article is the fact that Pat Wingert is the co-author of a pharmaceutically biased book on hormones and menopause, and that  Newsweek is heavily funded by pharmaceutical companies.

This resembles an incident a few years ago when the cattle industry actually sued Oprah Winfrey just for talking about Mad Cow Disease.

from Articles : Hormones, Drugs https://ift.tt/3uExYwy
via IFTTT

The contraceptive pill may disrupt women's natural ability to choose a partner genetically dissimilar to themselves. This could result in difficulties when trying to conceive, an increased risk of miscarriage and long intervals between pregnancies. Passing on a lack of diverse genes to children could also weaken their immune systems.

Humans tend to be attracted to those with a dissimilar genetic make-up to themselves, maintaining genetic diversity, which is signaled by subtle odors. A research team analyzed how the contraceptive pill affects odor preferences, and found that the preferences of women who began using the contraceptive pill shifted towards men with genetically similar odors.

Not only could genetic similarity in couples lead to fertility problems, but it could ultimately lead to the breakdown of relationships when women stop using the contraceptive pill, as odor perception plays a significant role in maintaining attraction to partners, researchers said.

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via IFTTT

Despite widespread publicity, the 2002 landmark study on the potential dangers of hormone therapy for postmenopausal women is completely unknown to most women. 

New research from the Stanford University School of Medicine discovered that only 29 percent of the women surveyed knew anything about the study two years later. Additionally, only 40 percent of the women were able to identify possible risks and benefits linked to hormone therapy. 

Hormone therapy is used to ease your symptoms of menopause, but has also been widely prescribed for preventive purposes, based in part on earlier observational studies that had suggested it could help protect women against heart disease, weak bones, and dementia. 

In July 2002, the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) abruptly ended its combination of estrogen and progestin therapy study, as their data discovered higher rates of breast cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and blood clots in the population taking the hormones, compared to those taking placebos. 

Later, in April 2004, WHI also halted the portion of the study for estrogen-only therapy, after finding the hormone did not offer any protective heart disease prevention, but rather increased your risk of stroke and blood clots. 

The WHI findings triggered enormous changes in the use of hormone therapy, and prescriptions had dropped 38 percent by 2003. 

Senior author Randall Stafford, MD, PhD, said their latest survey indicates there's a huge problem in communicating crucial health information to patients effectively, which in turn is indicative of an even larger problem – ensuring that people can make informed decisions about their medical care. 

Menopause April 10, 2007

Women's Health Initiative June 21, 2007

WHI March 2, 2007 (The Estrogen-Alone Study Links)

Women's Health Initiative (The Estrogen-Plus-Progestin Study Links)

Eurekalert September 18, 2007

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Scientists have identified a new immunotherapy to combat the hepatitis B virus (HBV), the most common cause of liver cancer in the world.

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Researchers have develop first-in-class inhibitors against ASH1L, a key protein in the development and progression of leukemia.

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A new method to analyse the blood thinning drug Heparin has been developed that can pinpoint contaminants more accurately and quickly, providing greater quality control and safety.

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Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco, has written a number of excellent books about health. His latest, “Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine” goes deep into the details of how changes in our food supply have damaged our metabolic health. (The created term “metabolical” is actually a portmanteau of the words “metabolic” and “diabolical.”)

“I wrote it because nothing else has worked,” Lustig says. “Part of the problem is this is such a complicated issue. There are too many stakeholders and you have to find a method for making everyone happy. Until you do, you can't solve it.

There is a way to actually solve this, [but] every stakeholder, whether it be the patient, the doctor, the food company, the insurance industry, the medical profession, Wall Street and Congress … has to understand the same thing. They all have to be working off the same set of facts. You see what happens when you don't work off the same set of facts.

So, my job was to put all of this in one volume so that everyone had access to the same information, and then we can go from there. I lay out in the book what the argument for fixing the entire food system is, and how everyone can benefit from it, even the food industry.”

The Two Primary Keys

In summary, it boils down to two primary key issues or problems. The first is that the medical establishment doesn't want you to know that drugs were never intended or designed to treat the foundational cause of chronic disease. They merely treat the symptoms.

“In the book, I make it very clear that modern medicine has two factions, two paradigms,” Lustig says. “One is treatment of acute disease, and for the most part, they've gotten it reasonably right. I was part of that system for 40 years and was comfortable within it.

But for chronic disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, lipid problems, cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, polycystic ovarian disease — all of which are chronic metabolic diseases, all of which are mitochondrial diseases — we don't have anything. We have symptomatic relief only.

So, we have LDL lowering agents — and if LDL were the problem, that would be fine — except LDL is NOT the problem. LDL is a symptom of the problem. It is a manifestation of the metabolic dysfunction. Same thing with hyperglycemia.

Same thing with hypertension. Same thing with osteoporosis. Same thing with autoimmune disease. All of these, we have symptomatic treatments. We don’t cure or reverse the disease; we just treat the symptoms. And so the disease gets worse.

The way I describe it in the book is, it's like giving an aspirin to a patient with a brain tumor because they have a headache. It might work today, but it's not going to solve the problem. And that's what modern medicine is throwing at people with chronic disease, and it is, of course, breaking the bank.”

The other problem is that the food industry doesn't want you to know that virtually all foods are intrinsically good for you until they’re processed, and processed foods make up a majority of the foods people eat.

As noted by Lustig:

“The point I make in the book is that just because they call it processed food, doesn't make it food. Calling it a processed food suggests that it is a subset of food. Michael Pollan [calls it] palatable food-like substances. The fact of the matter is, processed food is poison. Food is medicine, but processed food is poison, and there's no medicine that can undo the damage of processed food.”

Indeed, once you understand the molecular pathways, when you understand the transcription factors and the actual mechanisms of action of various diseases, and the various drugs used to treat them, you can easily see that they do not treat the underlying problem. And that’s why people don’t get well.

“What I'm trying to do in this book is to separate food from processed food and explaining that processed food is the problem, and we will not solve the health care crisis or the environmental crisis until we solve processed food,” Lustig says.

The History of Medicine

In his book, Lustig does an excellent job of presenting the history of our food and medical systems, and the various pressures that led us down the path to where we are today. For example, a significant part of why medical doctors are so clueless about health today is because Big Pharma was placed in charge of their education. The drug industry, in turn, was a distinct profit-making scheme from its inception.

In 1910, Abraham Flexner, an educator, wrote the Flexner Report, which turned out to be a turning point in terms of creating evidence-based modern medicine, while simultaneously eliminating many health-related factors, including nutrition and preventive medicine. His brother, Simon Flexner, a pathologist and pharmacist, was the first president of Rockefeller University.

One of the reasons the Flexner Report eliminated certain aspects of medicine was because John D. Rockefeller, president of Standard Oil, was also in the pharmaceutical business. He was trying to sell coal tar, a byproduct of oil refining, as a treatment for a range of ailments.

So, Rockefeller was seeking new profit avenues. “He basically said we have to get drugs and especially coal tar into the hands of physicians who can prescribe it,” Lustig says. The only way to do that was by overhauling the medical system and shifting the focus to pharmaceuticals.

“So that was the start of Big Pharma. That's not the story they want to tell, but that is in fact the case,” Lustig says. “Same thing with dentistry. Weston Price, perhaps the most famous of all dentists, knew this back in the 1920s and '30s and actually said that sugar was the primary driver of chronic oral disease, whether it be periodontitis or dental caries.

Everything was going in that direction until 1945 with the advent of fluoride, and then promptly everything Weston Price had developed up to that point got deep-sixed. In fact, the dentists even said that if we got rid of dental caries, how are we going to make money? So, his work was basically forgotten.

The same thing in dietetics. It turns out that Lenna Cooper, co-founder of the American Dietetic Association, back in 1917, was the apprentice of John Harvey Kellogg. She didn't even have a dietary degree … Kellogg was very much against meat. He was a Seventh-Day Adventist, and it turned out that the American Dietetic Association adopted the entire Seventh-Day Adventist religious paradigm.

To this day, we still see it in terms of vegan diets. So, people talk about vegan diets being appropriate for health, and they can be, but they are not by any means exclusive. They also talk about it being important for environmental health to try to reduce the methane from the cows.

It turns out the cows didn't spew methane until we started giving them antibiotics, because we killed off the good bacteria in their guts and now they have quadruple the amount of methane compared to what they did in 1968 before the animal antibiotic craze got started. So, it's not the cows, it's what we do to the cows. All food is inherently good. It's what we do to the food that's not, and that's what I show in the book.”

The adulteration of our food can actually be traced back to around 1850. In Great Britain, the industrial revolution was a turning point where two things happened at the same time.

One, people in sweatshops worked long days and didn't have time to cook proper meals, so they ended up eating processed biscuits laden with sugar, which had become available from other British colonies like Barbados. This undernourished them in terms of antioxidants, fatty acids and other important nutrients. The second big dietary change was canning, which exposed people to lead poisoning as the cans were made of lead.

Why You Shouldn’t Focus on Food Labels

By now, you’ve probably trained yourself diligently to read food labels. The problem is that the label will not tell you what’s been done to the food. “This is one of the reasons why nobody's getting better because there's nothing to learn from the label that will actually help you,” Lustig says. According to Lustig, a food is healthy if it satisfies two criteria:

1. It protects your liver
2. It feeds your gut

A food that does neither is poison, and any food that does only one or the other, but not both, is somewhere in the middle. Real food, because it has fiber, protects your liver and nourishes your gut. Processed food is fiberless, and the reason for this is because fiber decreases shelf life. By removing the fiber from the food, it prevents it from going rancid, but it also makes it inherently unhealthy.

Essentially, “in an attempt to try to increase availability, decrease wastage, we turned our entire food supply on its head in order to create commodities rather than make food available,” Lustig says.

Then, in the 1970s, Richard Nixon told the U.S. agriculture secretary, Earl Butts, to come up with a plan to decrease food prices, as fluctuating food prices were causing political unrest. The result was the start of monoculture and chemical-driven farming.

“Now, we have nitrogen runoff destroying our environment and antibiotics in the feed in order to keep the animals alive, but basically killing off their own bacteria and ours, and also creating chronic disease and destroying the environment as well.

It's basically built into our Western food system. And we're not going to solve health care, we're not going to solve chronic disease, we're not going to solve the economics [or] the environmental problems until we recognize what the problem is,” Lustig says.

Refinement Makes Everything Worse

While Lustig argues that the refinement of carbohydrates is the primary culprit that makes processed food so bad for your health, I believe processed fats may be an even bigger contributor.

Omega-6 linoleic acid (LA), in particular, is a pernicious metabolic poison. In 1850, the LA in the average diet was about 2% of total calories. Today, it’s between 20% and 30%. While we do need some omega-6, since your body does not make it, the point is we need nowhere near the amount we’re now getting.

“I agree that omega-6s are a problem,” Lustig says. “No. 1, they're proinflammatory by themselves and No. 2, they have enough unsaturated double bonds so that if you heat them high enough, you flip them and end up making trans fats. That's the problem of all of these polyunsaturated fats. They're not meant to be heated beyond their smoking point, and we do.”

In addition to those issues, polyunsaturated fats such as LA are highly susceptible to oxidation, and as the fat oxidizes, it breaks down into harmful sub-components such as advanced lipid oxidation end products (ALES) and oxidized LA metabolites (OXLAMS). These ALES and OXLAMS also cause damage.

One type of advanced lipid oxidation end product (ALE) is 4HNE, a mutagen known to cause DNA damage. Studies have shown there’s a definite correlation between elevated levels of 4HNE and heart failure. LA breaks down into 4HNE even faster when the oil is heated, which is why cardiologists recommend avoiding fried foods. LA intake and the subsequent ALES and OXLAMS produced also play a significant role in cancer. 

HNE and other ALES are extraordinarily harmful even in exceedingly small quantities. While excess sugar is certainly bad for your health and should typically be limited to 25 grams per day or less, I believe LA is far more damaging overall. As explained by Lustig:

“We have a metabolic burden of reactive oxygen species (ROS) that are doing damage if you can't quench them. That's why we have antioxidants in our body — glutathione, vitamin E — [they’re] basically the sink for those reactive oxygen species. The fact of the matter is our mitochondria are making ROS every single minute of every single day.

It is a normal byproduct of metabolism. The point is we're supposed to be able to quench them. You can only quench them if you get the antioxidants into you.

The problem is as soon as you've taken the germ out of the grain kernel, you've basically reduced your antioxidant consumption by tenfold. So, we are antioxidant deficient because of food processing, which then leaves us vulnerable to the ravages of ROS from multiple sources including our own mitochondria.”

Real Food Is the Answer

The key, then, is to eat whole food, which is naturally rich in fiber and low in sugar. On a side note, free radicals are not all bad. They’re also biological signaling molecules, and if you indiscriminately suppress them, which is the danger you run into when using very high amounts of antioxidant supplements, it can backfire.

The best way is to get your antioxidants from your food, and real food not only provides antioxidants, but also doesn’t create excessive ROS, so you get help from both ends, as it were. As for the type of diet you choose, any diet can work, provided it’s right for your metabolism. The only diet that does not work for anyone is a processed food diet.

Solutions, Solutions

Now that you know the root problems, what solutions does Lustig suggest? For starters, education alone is not enough, he says. We need education plus implementation. And that requires a different societal response.

“The way I describe it is that there's personal intervention, which for the lack of a better word we can call rehab, and societal intervention, which for lack of a better word we can call laws. Rehab and laws for everything that is a hedonic substance — you need both.”

The first step of personal intervention is figuring out if you’re sick. “And don't ask your doctor because they don't know how to figure it out,” Lustig says. In Chapter 9 of his book, he lists clues that can help you self-diagnose.

In terms of addressing your health problems, your primary “treatment” will be to make, possibly significant, changes to how you shop and eat. As a general, easy-to-follow rule, if it has a label, don’t buy it. Real food does not have ingredient labels. Lustig’s book also includes guidance on how to read food labels in cases where you might not have an option.

“We also need societal intervention. The problem is the food industry doesn't want any societal intervention because this is their gravy train. So, the question is, how do you do this?

Normally we would do it through legislation, but the food industry has completely co-opted the entire legislative branch; 338 out of 535 congressmen take money from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and agriculture is their fourth [largest] contributor after petroleum, tobacco and pharma.”

Barring legislative success, we’re left with litigation. Already, there are a number of lawsuits in the works, several of which Lustig is a part of. Ultimately, we must restructure the entire food system so that all stakeholders benefit. “And we have to demonstrate to them how they can benefit,” Lustig says.

Subsidies Are the Biggest Hindrance to Change

Can the food industry make money selling real food? Lustig believes the answer is yes, and in his book, he details how real food makes both financial and ecological sense. The key is to remove subsidies, which currently grease the wheels of the processed food industry.

“The subsidies are the single biggest blockade,” Lustig says. “They're the single biggest obstacle to being able to fix the food supply because that's what's making processed food cheap. The Giannini Foundation at UC Berkeley did a back of envelope calculation several years ago.

What would the price of food look like if we got rid of all food subsidies? It turns out that the price of food would not change. People say it would go up. No, it wouldn't. It would not change except for two items. Two items would go up: Sugar and corn [used for high-fructose corn syrup]. So, basically, that would reduce consumption of the primary toxin in our diet that's causing the most trouble …

The food industry … can make more money doing the right thing provided we get rid of the subsidies or make the subsidies for real food so that they can make money selling the right thing. This requires government. There's no way around it. That's why this book is complete. It's laid out for all the stakeholders, including government, as to what has to happen and why.

I wrote this book for everyone to understand the same principles all at once, so that we can actually have an argument and a debate and hopefully come to the table about the facts, because until we do that, there will be no solving this problem. If everyone comes to the table, honestly, and admits to what the issue is, what the problem is, we can, in fact, solve it.”

To learn more, be sure to pick up a copy of Lustig’s book, “Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine.” You can also find a wealth of information on his website, RobertLustig.com, including media appearances, audio recordings, video lectures, books, articles and upcoming events where you can hear him speak. 

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I recently had the opportunity to be a guest on Mikhaila Peterson’s “Opposing Views” on the topic of COVID-19. Open debate and sharing of information from all sides is so important, especially now that censorship of certain groups, organizations and individuals — in direct violation of Constitutional law — is rampant.

The other guest featured was Jeremy Kamil, Ph.D., an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at LSU Health Shreveport, who has studied the herpes virus for two decades and has a passion for studying how viruses work. Peterson said she emailed 20 doctors to get views from the conventional medical community on COVID-19 — and Kamil was the only one who agreed to be on the show.

I encourage you to watch the video in full and make up your own mind about what you hear, but as I didn’t get a chance to respond to Kamil’s statements directly, I’d like to do that now, as well as provide a recap of some of the most important take-away points from the interview.

A Trial Run for COVID-19, a Lab-Engineered Virus

When talking about COVID-19, it’s important to start at the beginning — not the start of the pandemic but Event 201, which took place in October 2019.

Representatives from the World Economic Forum, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Johns Hopkins University Population Center, the World Bank, the Chinese government and vaccine maker Johnson & Johnson were among those at the event, which was organized by Bill Gates and, too coincidentally, simulated a worldwide pandemic triggered by a novel coronavirus.^1,2

Mirroring what is now occurring, social media censorship was a prominent strategy used at the event to protect the dissemination of vaccine propaganda and the narrative surrounding the global event. If you are considering brushing this off as “conspiracy theory,” you can read about Event 201 for yourself at its official site.³ 

Peterson and I discussed a bit about Gates, and you may be wondering why I’m bringing him up. It’s part of understanding the immense power and control being wielded by private individuals and the ultimate goal of technocratic tyranny. When the U.S. withdrew funding from the World Health Organization in 2020, Gates became the biggest funder of the WHO.

The two — Gates and the WHO — have been instrumental in pushing for a global vaccination campaign, and Gates has a great deal of money invested in these vaccines. The WHO is the tool that was used to implement a global shutdown — a catastrophe — in 2020, with the end goal being wealth transfer, economic destruction and societal reformation.

It is also interesting that Gates and company have restricted access to this highly profitable vaccine only to countries that can afford it. The patents have not been shared with other countries so they could get this “lifesaving” vaccine, which clearly emphasizes that the primary purpose of this vaccine is not to save lives but to make large profits.

Gates isn’t the only player — there are many others, including Google and founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Klaus Schwab, who first started circulating the idea of The Great Reset. Kamil said he wasn’t familiar with the term, which is something I’d urge him to read up on as he formulates his opinions.

I also touched briefly on the overwhelming evidence suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 is an engineered virus that leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which was conducting gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, funded by Dr. Anthony Fauci.⁴ It’s a lot to take in, I know, especially if this is the first you’re hearing about it, but as the pieces of the puzzle come together, it becomes obvious what is really going on.

No Flu Cases Because ‘Masks Are Really Effective’?

When asked about the mysterious disappearance of flu during the 2020-2021 season, Kamil stated it’s because “masks are really effective [at] suppressing viral transmission.” If that’s the case, then why didn’t COVID-19 cases similarly disappear? The next rational question is, were flu cases and deaths simply reallocated as COVID-19 deaths?

Up until around July 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) counted flu and pneumonia deaths separately, but then began reporting a combination of pneumonia, flu and COVID deaths, under a new category listed as "PIC" (Pneumonia, Influenza, COVID), via their COVIDView webpage.⁵

February 12, 2021 — toward the end of peak flu season in the U.S. — COVIDView was replaced with the COVID Data Tracker Weekly Review, which no longer appears to mention flu and pneumonia.⁶

As for the effectiveness of masks — and the absurdities surrounding their use during activities like swimming — there’s a wealth of evidence that masks are ineffective. Only one randomized controlled trial has been conducted on mask usage and COVID-19 transmission, and it found masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection.⁷

A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research⁸ found that nonpharmaceutical interventions, such as lockdowns, quarantines and mask mandates, have not significantly affected overall virus transmission rates.⁹

Proper Response ‘Must Be Driven by Case Numbers’

When asked what the “proper” response to the pandemic would be, Kamil said, “It has to be driven by case numbers.” This sounds good in theory, provided the case numbers you’re basing recommendations on are accurate — and the resulting recommendations are in line with the severity of the disease and individual risk assessments. But, in the case of COVID-19, they most often were not.

What evidence is there that the case numbers were manipulated? PCR tests recommended by the WHO used to be set to 45 cycle thresholds (CTs),¹⁰ yet the scientific consensus has long been that anything over 35 CTs renders the test useless,¹¹ as the accuracy will be a measly 3%, with the other 97% being false positives and artificially driving up case numbers.

Then, one hour after Joe Biden’s inauguration as the 46th president of the United States, January 20, 2021, the WHO — suddenly and out of the blue — lowered the recommended PCR CT,¹² which automatically guaranteed that the number of “cases,” i.e., positive PCR test results, would plummet.

And this isn’t even getting into how the CDC changed how COVID-19 is recorded on death certificates in March 2020, de-emphasizing preexisting conditions and comorbidities, and basically calling all deaths in which the patient had a positive SARS-CoV-2 test a COVID-19 death.

‘Look to People Who Aren’t Making a Buck Off It’

Another one of Kamil’s points was to avoid getting data from “someone trying to sell you something.” I would agree, only Kamil used the example of someone “selling a health supplement online,” ignoring the fact that the real profiteers in this pandemic are not people selling supplements online but billionaires who are only getting richer.

Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, now has a net worth of $5.3 billion,¹³ to give one example. He joined the billionaires club April 2, 2020, when news that phase 2 trials of Moderna’s COVID vaccine were set to begin, driving up its stock.¹⁴

Meanwhile, Pfizer’s COVID vaccine has already generated $3.5 billion in revenue in the first three months of 2021,¹⁵ and the company said it expects “durable demand” for the vaccine to continue in coming years, similar to flu vaccines. Estimates suggest revenue will reach $26 billion for Pfizer’s COVID vaccine by the end of 2021.¹⁶

So, following Kamil’s own advice, Pfizer and Moderna would be among those to not trust, based on their making billions, which is exponentially more than any supplement manufacturer is making. But even putting profits aside, as I told Peterson, one point that should give anyone pause before trusting a company would be if it has a criminal history of fraud and selling dangerous products — of which both Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson can attest to.

Myth: It’s ‘Impossible to Die From COVID’ After Vaccination

Kamil made some statements that I strongly disagree with, one of them being that if you get a COVID-19 vaccine “it’s almost 100% impossible for you to die from COVID — even if you caught like the scariest variants we know of.” This is simply not true. As of April 26, 2021, there have been 9,245 reported cases of COVID-19 in fully vaccinated individuals, including 132 deaths.¹⁷ This is from the CDC’s own data.

There’s also a risk of death from the COVID-19 vaccine. According to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), as of April 23, 2021, there have been 3,544 deaths reported following COVID-19 vaccination.¹⁸ Past investigations have shown only between 1%¹⁹ and 10%²⁰ of adverse reactions are ever reported to VAERS, which is a passive, voluntary reporting system, so the actual number could be much higher.

Kamil also suggested that if you’re healthy, it makes no difference in terms of getting sick from COVID-19 because “viruses like healthy cells” and “they love a healthy [cell] just like a person might, if you're a carnivore, might like a juicy steak.”

This seriously undermines the power that you have to take control of your health, because, in reality, it’s well known that people who are unhealthy, with underlying conditions, are far more likely to contract and die from COVID-19. Your state of health absolutely matters.

Kamil also seems to be seriously misguided about health organizations like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, stating that it doesn’t “make a dollar more” by approving a vaccine and describing it as “one of the best organizations, like, as far as protecting your health and watching out for, like, Americans.”

While the FDA itself does not accept corporate money, it does receive money funneled via a nonprofit foundation, which in turn receives money from other nonprofits funded by private interests. It’s really all a façade because the end result is the same. Those donating the money ultimately end up with the ability to pull strings, when needed. The FDA’s conflicts of interest and failures to act on behalf of Americans’ best interests are also well noted.

Fear Is the Most Powerful Emotion to Drive Human Behavior

The pandemic has succeeded in generating fear and controlling human behavior, and anything that counters its final solution of vaccination is being censored — this is a clue that shouldn’t be overlooked. Vaccine passports are also being offered as part of this solution, as a tool to get your freedom back, but it’s at the price of — your freedom.

Imagine a world in which you cannot travel, go to a sports event, enter your workplace or even a grocery store unless you have the proper credentials. If it sounds like history repeating itself in the most horrific way, you’re not far off. Even open debate is being silenced, and it’s impossible to give informed consent to vaccination if you only know one side. When you only have one side to the story, then that’s propaganda, not real information.

What Should You Do to Stay Healthy Against COVID?

Peterson asked me one very important question, which was what should people be doing to stay healthy. One key strategy is to be metabolically flexible, and my No. 1 recommendation to do so is to remove linoleic acid from your diet.

Omega-6 linoleic acid (LA) is a pernicious metabolic poison that is highly susceptible to oxidation, and as the fat oxidizes, it breaks down into harmful subcomponents such as advanced lipid oxidation end products (ALES) and oxidized LA metabolites (OXLAMS). These ALES and OXLAMS also cause damage. To avoid LA, which is linked to chronic degenerative disease, you need to avoid all vegetable oils and eliminate virtually all processed foods and restaurant foods from your diet.

Other strategies to build immunity include optimizing vitamin D. My peer reviewed study, published in the journal Nutrients in October 2020,²¹ demonstrates the clear link between vitamin D deficiency and severe cases of COVID-19.

I also recommend familiarizing yourself with nebulized hydrogen peroxide, which can be used not only to improve symptoms but as a routine maintenance strategy to support optimal health. You can hear the rest of the interview in its entirety, including the unique risks posed by mRNA vaccines, by watching the video above.

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