Health & Fitness

In the video above, Russel Brand discusses the conflicts of interest that arise when a regulatory agency is funded by the industry it is charged with regulating. Take the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for example. In years past, the FDA was funded entirely by U.S. taxpayers.

Today, nearly 45% of its annual budget comes from user fees paid by the drug companies that seek approval for a given product, Brand says. This transition from public to corporate funding has had a significant impact on how the agency operates, and it’s clearly not in the public’s best interest.

Brand cites data showing the FDA has gone from a drug approval rate of 38% in 2005 to 61% in 2018. In situations where a drug is aimed at a disease where few medication options already exist, 89% of new drug applications are approved on the first try.

Has drug development simply gotten that much better? Probably not. The fact is that drug companies view the FDA’s user fees as payment for service rendered, and that service includes approval. They’re not paying for the FDA to turn them down.

Why FDA and Big Pharma Have a Trust Problem

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA issued emergency use authorizations for completely novel types of “vaccine” in a matter of weeks. While some applaud this speediness, it’s worth remembering that as speedy approvals have increased with other drugs, so have the number found to be harmful after the fact.

Data cited by Brand show that 21% of FDA approved medications ultimately had to be removed from the market or be given a black box warning. Essentially, if you’re taking a newly approved drug, the chances that this drug will be found to be extremely dangerous is 1 in 5, which is hardly encouraging!

A 2017 Yale study¹ found the situation is even more dire than that, showing nearly 1 in 3 FDA approved drugs ends up having new safety issues detected in the years following approval.

The FDA is also allowing drug makers to profit at the expense of public health by allowing them to “claim success in trials based on proxy measurements instead of clinical outcomes like survival rates or cures, which take more time to evaluate,” Caroline Chen notes in a June 2018 ProPublica article.²

FDA Advisers Receive Payouts to Approve Drugs

In addition to that, “pay-later conflicts of interest” are widespread, according to an investigation by the journal Science.³ This is when doctors who advise the FDA or sit on drug panels that are in charge of drug approval are paid by drug makers AFTER the approval is a done deal.

Science examined 107 physician FDA advisers who voted on drug approvals. Of those, 40 ended up receiving more than $10,000 in post hoc earnings from the drug company whose drug they voted to approve; 26 of them got more than $100,000 and six were paid more than $1 million. FDA advisers who help drug makers gain approval also reap rewards in other ways. As noted by Science:⁴

“The FDA says its rules, along with federal laws, stop employees from improperly cashing in on their government service. But Science found that employees at the agency often reap later rewards — jobs or consulting work — from the makers of the drugs …

A 2016 study found that 15 of the 26 employees who left the agency later worked or consulted for the biopharmaceutical industry. Of the more than $24 million in personal payments or research support from industry to the 16 top-earning advisers, 93% came from the makers of drugs those advisers previously reviewed.”

FDA Has Already Lost Most of Its Credibility

As argued by Brand, the data is rather unequivocal. It tells us corruption is rampant and the FDA has completely abandoned its charter to ensure public health and safety. It’s really just there to give the appearance that someone is looking out for public health, while in actuality it’s a venue through which drug makers are enabled to profit from unsafe and unproven drugs.

The sad reality is that while FDA approval used to mean something, today it has basically lost all meaning. Just because a drug is FDA-approved doesn’t mean it’s been proven safe and effective.

Again and again, drugs are found to have serious safety issues in the years after their approval. As a result, drug companies are allowed to benefit while public health is sacrificed, which is precisely the situation that the FDA was created to prevent.

FDA Approves COVID Boosters for Seniors

September 17, 2021, the FDA approved the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID shot Comirnaty as a third-dose booster for people over the age of 65 and other high-risk individuals. As reported by The Vaccine Reaction September 19, 2021:⁵

“Despite not convening the Vaccines and Related Biologic Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) last month to vote on effectiveness and safety of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine (licensed under the name COMIRNATY), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) convened the advisory committee on Friday, Sept. 17, 2021 to vote on booster doses of the vaccine.

The FDA asked the VRBPAC to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on the following question: Do the safety and effectiveness data from clinical trial C4591001 support approval of a COMIRNATY booster dose administered at least six months after completion of the primary series for use in individual 16 years of age and older?

The C4591001 booster dose study did not include any subjects under 18 years of age and only 12 subjects 65-85 years of age in Phase 1 of the trial and none in Phase 2/3.”

At the end of the day, 16 of the 18 VRBPAC members voted “no” on approving a Comirnaty booster dose for people over the age of 16. A second vote was then hastily thrown together, after members indicated they’d be comfortable recommending a booster for seniors and “people at high risk of severe COVID-19,” which the FDA is defining as health care workers and those at increased risk of exposure due to their occupation.

This unscheduled second vote passed unanimously. However, as reported by The Vaccine Reaction:⁶

“It’s important to note the data VRBPAC was asked to consider for Vote #2 is different than for Vote #1. For Vote #2 they were instructed to consider the ‘totality of scientific evidence available’ — not just Pfizer’s booster dose clinical trial.

Had the VRBPAC been required to only consider the evidence provided by Pfizer, it would have had to base its decision on data from only 12 subjects 65 years and older in Phase 1 of the trial because they were not included in Phase 2/3. The particular evidence basis for VRBPAC’s approval of a booster dose for this group was not specified.”

What’s more, the FDA suddenly shifted from “individuals at high risk of severe COVID-19” infection, to having it apply to “health care workers or others at high risk of occupational exposure.”

“This effectively shifted the focus from those who were at high risk of become severely ill from COVID-19 to those who are simply at high risk of being exposed, which will greatly expand the scope of those recommended to have a booster dose,” The Vaccine Reaction states.⁷

In a September 19, 2021, appearance on CBS News,⁸ director of the National Institutes of Health Dr. Francis Collins stated he fully expects the FDA to extend boosters beyond seniors aged 65 and older, health care workers and others at high risk of occupational exposure.

1 in 1,000 mRNA Shots Results in Heart Inflammation

So, the FDA claims the Pfizer shot is safe and effective enough to warrant a third booster for certain groups. But is it? According to a retrospective study^9,10 by the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, 1 in 1,000 mRNA injections (Pfizer and Moderna) have resulted in myopericarditis, i.e., inflammation of the heart or heart sack, within one month of the shot, although symptom onset typically occurred within days.

The study was posted on the preprint server medRxiv September 16, 2021, the day before the FDA voted “yes” on boosters for the elderly and certain high-risk groups. As explained by the authors:¹¹

“This study is a prospective collection and review of all cases with a myocarditis/pericarditis diagnosis over a 2-month period at an academic medical center … Patients were identified by admission and discharge diagnoses which included myocarditis or pericarditis. Inclusion criteria: in receipt of mRNA vaccine within one month prior to presentation …

Diagnosis was based on clinical presentation, ECG/echo findings and serial troponins and was confirmed in each case by CMR. Incidence was estimated from total doses of mRNA vaccine administered in the Ottawa region for the matching time-period. This data was obtained from the Public Health Agency of Ottawa …

Results: 32 patients were identified over the period of interest. Eighteen patients were diagnosed with myocarditis; 12 with myopericarditis; and 2 with pericarditis alone. The median age was 33 years (18-65 years). The sex ratio was 2 females to 29 males.

In 5 cases, symptoms developed after only a single dose of mRNA vaccine. In 27 patients, symptoms developed after their second dose of. Median time between vaccine dose and symptoms was 1.5 days …

Chest pain was the commonest symptom, but many others were reported. Non-syncopal non-sustained ventricular tachycardia was seen in only a single case. Median LV ejection fraction (EF) was 57% (44-66%). Nine patients had an LVEF below the normal threshold of 55%.

Incidence of myopericarditis overall was approximately 10 cases for every 10,000 inoculations. This is the largest series in the literature to clearly relate the temporal relationship between mRNA COVID vaccination, symptoms and CMR findings.”

COVID Shots May Be Killing Two for Every Life Saved

According to expert testimony given during the September 17, 2021, FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee meeting (see video above),¹² the shots may in fact be killing far more people than they’re saving.

According to Dr. Joseph Fraiman, an emergency medicine physician in New Orleans, there’s no clinical evidence to prove the COVID shots are saving more people than they harm. He told the committee they ought to:

“Demand the booster trials are large enough to find a reduction in hospitalizations. Without this data we, the medical establishment, cannot confidently call out anti-COVID-vaccine activists who publicly claim the vaccines harm more than they save, especially in the young and healthy. The fact we do not have the clinical evidence to say these activists are wrong should terrify us all.”

Steve Kirsch, executive director of the COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund, then went on to show what Fraiman feared the most, namely that the Pfizer shot kills two people for every person it saves.

“We were led to believe that the vaccines were perfectly safe, but this is simply not true. For example, there are four times as many heart attacks in the treatment group in the Pfizer 6-month trial report. That wasn’t just bad luck.

VAERS shows heart attacks happen 71 times more often following these vaccines compared to any other vaccine,” Kirsch said, adding: “If the net all-cause mortality from the vaccines is negative, then vaccines, boosters and mandates are all nonsensical.”

Here’s a screenshot from Kirsch’s slide show, showing the number of people killed by the COVID shots, compared to the number of lives saved by them.

Kirsch went on to state that while the VAERS data is the only data that are statistically significant, the other two data sources are still “troubling”:

“Even if the vaccines have 100% protection, it still means we kill two people to save one life … Four experts did analyses using completely different non-U.S. data sources and all of them came up with approximately the same number of excess vaccine-related deaths — about 411 deaths per million doses.

That translates into 115,000 people who have died (due to the Covid-19 vaccines) … The real numbers confirm that we kill more than we save. And I would love everyone to look at the Israel ministry of health data on the 90+ year olds where we went from a 94.4% vaccinated group to 82.9% vaccinated in the last four months.

In the most optimistic scenario it means that 50% of the vaccinated people died and 0% of unvaccinated people died. Unless you can explain that to the American public you cannot approve the boosters.”

Kirsch also showed data suggesting 1 in 317 boys aged 16 to 17 will get myocarditis from the shots, and after a third booster, that number may reach as high as 1 in 25. He also points out that Pfizer’s Phase 3 trials must clearly be “gamed,” as “it is statistically impossible for protocol violations to be five times higher in the treatment group.” “Why has this not been investigated?” he asked.

What Do the VAERS Data Tell Us?

In a September 18, 2021, interview with The Covexit podcast, Jessica Rose, Ph.D., who holds degrees in applied mathematics, immunology, computational biology, molecular biology and biochemistry, discussed what the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) data tell us about the safety of the COVID shots.

Rose covers issues such as the magnitude of the side effects compared to other vaccination programs, the problem of under-reporting, and how causality can be assessed using the Bradford Hill Criteria. You can find a PDF of the slide show that Rose presents here.¹³ Here’s a summary of some of the key points made in this interview:

Between 2011 and 2020, the number of VAERS reports ranged between 25,408 and 49,412 for all vaccines. In 2021, with the rollout of the COVID shots, the number of VAERS reports have shot up to 521,667, as of September 3, 2021, for the COVID shots alone.

Between 2011 and 2020, the total number of deaths reported to VAERS ranged between 120 and 183. In 2021, as of September 3, the reported death toll had shot up to 7,662.

Cardiovascular, neurological and immunological adverse events are all being reported at rates never before seen.

The estimated under-reporting factor (URF) is 31. Using this URF, the death toll from COVID shots is calculated to be 205,809 as of August 27, 2021; Bell’s palsy 81,747; herpes zoster infection 149,017; paresthesia 305,660; breakthrough COVID 365,955; myalgia 528,457; life threatening events 230,113; permanent disabilities 212,691; birth defects 7,998.

If there’s no causal relationship between the shots and adverse events, we would expect side effects to occur at any given point between the vaccination date and symptom onset. This is not what we’re seeing. Death, for example, dramatically spikes within the first few days post-injection, and rapidly falls off after day 10.

The Bradford Hill Criteria for causation are all satisfied. This includes but is not limited to strength of effect size, reproducibility, specificity, temporality, dose-response relationship, plausibility, coherence and reversibility.

Children Are Now the Next Target

While the FDA voted against recommending a third booster to young adults aged 16 and over, there’s little doubt that the recommendation will soon be expanded to people under the age of 65, and eventually even young children.¹⁴ I say that because there seems to be no ceiling above which the death and disability toll is deemed too great. Why? We have not been given a straight answer, leaving us to speculate about the FDA’s intentions.

Why aren’t they concerned about safety when more than half a million side effect reports have been filed? How come nearly 15,000 reported deaths¹⁵ haven’t set off emergency alarms and in-depth investigations? As noted by Rose, 50 deaths have historically been the cutoff point at which a vaccine is pulled. We’re so far beyond that now, it seems there’s no threshold anymore.

At present, one wonders whether the FDA’s reluctance to approve a booster for younger individuals is mere show. Perhaps they’re trying to reclaim some measure of scientific authority, which was undermined by the U.S. government and Pfizer announcing the release of boosters before the FDA had even made its determination.

Whatever the case may be, I urge you to review as much data as you can before you jump on the booster bandwagon. Based on everything I’ve seen, I believe the risk of side effects is likely going to exponentially increase with each dose.

If you need a refresher on the potential mechanisms of harm, download and read Stephanie Seneff’s excellent paper,¹⁶ “Worse Than The Disease: Reviewing Some Possible Unintended Consequences of mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19,” published in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice and Research in collaboration with Dr. Greg Nigh.

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This article was previously published March 1, 2021, and has been updated with new information.

Vitamin D regulates the expression of hundreds of genes and is integral to biological functions that affect every bodily system. As you'll see in this short video, vitamin D insufficiency or deficiency can trigger several generalized symptoms that you may have associated with other health conditions.

It is also called the sunshine vitamin since your skin makes vitamin D when exposed to ultraviolet light from the sun.¹ Vitamin D performs many functions within the body, including maintaining adequate levels of calcium and phosphate, essential for normal bone mineralization.²

It helps reduce inflammation, which is necessary for the modulation of cell growth and immune function. Vitamin D also affects genes that help regulate cell differentiation and apoptosis.

The main indicator of your vitamin D level is 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25OHD). Data collected from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2005-2006 showed a deficiency prevalence of 41.6% in the U.S. population.³ However, as I discuss later in this article, today as many as 80% of people may be deficient in vitamin D.

It's important to note that how the measurement of insufficiency and deficiency is defined depends on the serum concentrations used. Some researchers use a level of 20 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL) or 50 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L); the ng/mL is used most frequently in the U.S. and nmol/L is the standard in Europe.

However, GrassrootsHealth Nutrient Research Institute recommends vitamin D serum concentration levels from 40 ng/mL to 60 ng/mL or 100 nmol/L to 150 nmol/L.⁴ At this level, the number of people who are likely deficient in vitamin D would be significantly higher.

14 Signs You Might Have a Vitamin D Deficiency

During cold and flu season when respiratory illnesses are prevalent, or if you're immune-compromised and want to build up your natural defenses against other infections, it is essential to maintain healthy levels of vitamin D to help reduce your risk of viral and bacterial illness.^5,6 A blood test is the best way to determine your vitamin D levels, but here are some symptoms that may indicate your levels are low:

80% of People With COVID-19 Are Deficient in Vitamin D

Vitamin D plays an important role in the development and severity of many diseases. This is why, from the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I suspected that optimizing vitamin D levels would significantly lower the incidence of infection and death in the general population.

Since then, mounting evidence has revealed that higher levels of vitamin D may reduce the rate of positive tests, hospitalizations and mortality related to this infection. One study,³⁴ released in late 2020, assessed the serum 25OHD levels of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 to evaluate the influence it might have on the severity of the disease. The researchers found 82.2% of those with COVID-19 were vitamin D deficient (levels lower than 20 ng/mL).

Interestingly, they also found those who were deficient had a greater prevalence of cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, high iron levels and longer hospital stays. A second study³⁵ found similar results for people who only tested positive for COVID-19.

In another study published in August 2021 in the American Journal of Physiology, Endocrinology and Metabolism, data showed that the vitamin’s metabolites can inhibit replication and expansion of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.^36,37

It's important to remember the data showing people who are deficient in vitamin D have a higher risk of severe disease were available long before the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, information that may suggest the other side of the same coin — namely supplementing with vitamin D — may have a positive effect on disease severity, can come under attack.

So, it isn't a big leap to understand that if simple and inexpensive solutions, such as supplementation with vitamin D, were to emerge, that, billions of dollars the pharmaceutical companies stand to make by vaccinating the world would be lost.

Unlike the painful reports of vaccine adverse events received by the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS),³⁸ supplementing with vitamin D, magnesium and vitamin K2 have been studied for years and found to be "well tolerated."^39,40

Added to which, the studies on vitamin D have demonstrated insufficiency and deficiency are associated with a number of health conditions.

Magnesium and Vitamin K2 Optimize Your Vitamin D3 Supplement

In the past, I've written about the importance of taking vitamin K2 MK-7 and magnesium with your vitamin D3 supplement. Both play an important role in your overall health and in the bioavailability and application of vitamin D in your body. If you're not using magnesium and vitamin K2, you could need nearly 2.5 times more vitamin D, which GrassrootsHealth discovered in its D*action project.⁴¹

Over 10,000 individuals provided information about supplement use and overall health status to GrassrootsHealth since they began conducting large-scale population-based nutrient research in 2007.⁴²

That information has led to the recommendation that vitamin D blood levels between 40 ng/ml and 60 ng/ml (100 nmol/L to 150 nmol/L) are safe, effective and lower overall disease incidence and health care costs. As reported by GrassrootsHealth from their data:⁴³

"... 244% more supplemental vitamin D was needed for 50% of the population to achieve 40 ng/ml (100 nmol/L) for those not taking supplemental magnesium or vitamin K2 compared to those who usually took both supplemental magnesium and vitamin K2."

In practical terms, this means when you take vitamin K2 and magnesium with vitamin D, you need far less vitamin D to achieve a healthy level.

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In a now-deleted Linkedin post, Jonathan Neman, CEO and co-founder of salad chain restaurant Sweetgreen, highlighted data showing that most people hospitalized with COVID-19 are overweight or obese.¹ “Is there an underlying problem that perhaps we have not given enough attention to? Is there another way to think about how we tackle ‘healthcare’ by addressing the root cause?” Neman wrote.²

Backlash quickly ensued, with media accusing Neman of fat-shaming and being “fat-phobic,”³ prompting him to apologize days later. While stating that he regretted his choice of words, he added, “I stand behind the intent of the post.”⁴

As Kim Iversen states in The Hill video above,⁵ the message that obesity worsens COVID outcomes is one that needs to be heard, and health officials should be sharing it widely, along with effective methods to help people lose weight and maintain it.

Overweight and Obesity Involved 79% of COVID Hospitalizations

Neman was “canceled” for daring to speak out against pandemic protocol, including suggesting that “no vaccine nor mask will save us” and adding:⁶

“What if we focused on the ROOT CAUSE and used this pandemic as a catalyst for creating a healthier future?? We clearly have no problem with government overreach on how we live our lives all in the name of 'health,' however we are creating more problems than we are solving.

What if we made the food that is making us sick illegal? What if we taxed processed food and refined sugar to pay for the impact of the pandemic? What if we incentivized health?”

Neman’s message was lost in the backlash, but the fact is that obesity increases the risk for severe COVID-19 illness — significantly. A CDC study involving 148,494 U.S. adults found a nonlinear relationship between body mass index (BMI) and COVID-19 severity, with the lowest risk found among those with BMIs in the healthy weight category and nearing the threshold to overweight.⁷ Risk then increased as BMI rose.

Among the adults who were hospitalized with COVID-19 from March to December 2020, 28.3% were overweight and 50.8% were obese — over 79%.⁸ Both overweight and obesity were risk factors for mechanical ventilation, while obesity was a risk factor for hospitalization and death, particularly among those aged 65 years and under. Even the CDC noted that these findings highlighted the need for “policies to support healthy behaviors.”⁹

Neman is far from the first or only person to call for efforts to focus on healthier living during the pandemic. In July 2021, Joel Hirschhorn, member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and America’s Frontline Doctors, also stated that governments have missed a public health opportunity by not issuing recommendations for effective and sustainable weight loss to lower your risk for severe COVID-19 infection and death:¹⁰

“As someone who has spent most of my waking time for the past 17 months researching the pandemic, I started to think: Why have we not seen the public health establishment mount an aggressive national campaign to get Americans to protect themselves from COVID by losing weight?

Especially because weight gain during the pandemic limitations on food freedom as well as shutdowns and school closing being acknowledged as curtailing physical activity.

Would not fighting obesity qualify as a valid prevention approach to curbing the ill effects of the COVID pandemic? Could the reason for government’s lack of aggressively pursuing an anti-obesity campaign be a bias for promoting vaccines? It seems a likely explanation.”

Even Mild Obesity Doubles Risk of COVID Complications

Researchers from the Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna in Italy also looked into BMI and COVID-19 outcomes.¹¹ Although BMI can be misleading in determining whether or not you’re at a healthy weight for your body — in part because it does not take muscle mass into account — it’s the most commonly used measurement for defining obesity.

If your BMI is between 25 and 29.9, you are considered overweight and anything over 30 is considered obese. However, obesity is often divided into categories, with class 1 defined as a BMI of 30 to < 35, class 2 as a BMI of 35 to < 40 and class 3 defined as a BMI of 40 or higher, and considered “extreme” or “severe” obesity.¹²

Patients with mild obesity had a 2.5 times greater risk of respiratory failure and a five times greater risk of being admitted to an ICU compared to nonobese patients. Those with a BMI of 35 and over were also 12 times more likely to die from COVID-19.¹³

“Whereas a BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2 identifies a population of patients at high risk for severe illness, a BMI ≥ 35 kg/m2 dramatically increases the risk of death,” the researchers explained.¹⁴

Why Obesity Raises COVID Risks

As for how obesity raises risks, the chronic, low-grade inflammation it causes is a likely factor. Inflammation triggered by obesity may be responsible for a threefold greater risk of pulmonary embolism (blood clots in the lungs) in COVID-19 patients who are obese,^15,16 according to separate research.

Dysregulated lipid synthesis triggered by obesity may also aggravate inflammation in the lungs, contributing to increased disease severity during respiratory viral infections.¹⁷ Leptin receptors are also expressed throughout your immune system, and leptin, typically associated with hunger signals, helps regulate both your innate and adaptive immune responses.¹⁸

Obesity is also frequently associated with insulin resistance, and higher blood glucose levels play a role in viral replication and the development of cytokine storms.^19,20

Pandemic Led to Weight Gain, Drove Up Obesity in Children

It’s no secret that Americans are facing an obesity crisis. The latest figures from the CDC state that 42.4% of Americans were obese in 2017 to 2018, an increase from 30.5% in 1999 to 2000.²¹

It’s possible that the pandemic has made these numbers even worse, as 42% of U.S. adults who responded to the American Psychological Association’s 2021 Stress in America poll said they had gained more weight than they intended since the pandemic started.²²

The average weight gain among this group was 29 pounds, with 10% stating they gained more than 50 pounds during the pandemic.²³ Children have been similarly affected, with significant increases in the rate of BMI change noted during the pandemic among 2- to 19-year-olds, according to the CDC, which translates to weight gain. The CDC noted:²⁴

“The COVID-19 pandemic led to school closures, disrupted routines, increased stress, and less opportunity for physical activity and proper nutrition, leading to weight gain among children and adolescents.

Among persons with overweight, moderate obesity, and severe obesity, pandemic rates of BMI increase more than doubled, compared with prepandemic rates … similar effects were observed for weight change …

Compared with other age groups, children aged 6-11 years experienced the largest increase in their rate of BMI change … with a pandemic rate of change that was 2.50 times as high as the prepandemic rate.”

September 15, 2021, the CDC also announced that the number of states with high obesity prevalence — defined as at least 35% of residents with obesity — has nearly doubled since 2018.²⁵ There are now 16 states where at least 35% of the residents are obese, up from nine states in 2018 and 12 in 2019.

Obesity Isn’t Simply a Matter of Overeating

Efforts geared toward “cutting calories” to lose weight are misguided, as obesity often stems not from overeating but rather, primarily, from eating the wrong foods. The U.S. diet is focused on ultraprocessed with a high glycemic load, which causes fundamental changes in metabolism leading to fat storage, weight gain and obesity.²⁶

Instead of the “energy balance model,” which states that people gain weight because they consume more energy than they use, researchers writing in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition recommended the “carbohydrate-insulin model,” which focuses on what you eat instead of how much.²⁷

Lead study author Dr. David Ludwig, endocrinologist at Boston Children's Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School, explained that "reducing consumption of the rapidly digestible carbohydrates that flooded the food supply during the low-fat diet era lessens the underlying drive to store body fat. As a result, people may lose weight with less hunger and struggle."²⁸

If you need to lose weight and/or want to reach optimal health, I recommend adopting a cyclical ketogenic diet, which involves radically limiting net carbs (replacing them with healthy fats and moderate amounts of protein) until you’re close to or at your ideal weight, ultimately allowing your body to burn fat — not carbohydrates — as its primary fuel.

This includes avoiding all ultraprocessed foods and also limiting added sugars to a maximum of 25 grams per day (15 grams a day if you're insulin resistant or diabetic). KetoFasting, the program I developed and detail in my book, "KetoFast: A Step-By-Step Guide to Timing Your Ketogenic Meals," combines a cyclical ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting with cyclical partial fasting to optimize weight, health and longevity.

Experts Recommend ‘Quarantine’ From Ultraprocessed Foods

Dr. Matteo Rottoli, lead author of the University of Bologna study, explained, "In the mid- and long-term, weight loss is the definitive answer to reduce the [COVID-19] risks in people with obesity."²⁹ Toward that end, eliminating ultraprocessed foods is essential and a step that will help bolster your health not only against COVID-19 but also against other forms of chronic and infectious illness.

While the CDC and other health officials aren’t sounding the alarm about the risks posed by ultraprocessed foods and other toxic exposures, the scientific community is taking note. As noted by a team of researchers in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, the role of toxic substance exposures, which includes ultraprocessed foods and poor diet, is under-reported in the COVID-19 pandemic.³⁰

“In short, it is the pervasive, constant exposure to toxic stressors in our environment, in combination with genetic factors, that cause us to develop diseases that impair our immune systems and make us susceptible to serious COVID-19 infection,” reported the Alliance for Natural Health.

As the researchers noted, this includes lifestyle factors such as inactivity, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, poor diet including ultraprocessed foods and refined grains and chronic sleep deprivation — all factors that also affect your weight.³¹

In order to protect the public, a “quarantine” from toxins like ultraprocessed foods, environmental chemicals and more would be far more effective than quarantining from one virus,³² and for long-term pandemic prevention, the researchers believe, and I would strongly agree, that toxicology-based approaches should be given priority over virology-based approaches.³³

The time to start protecting yourself from the toxic exposure of ultraprocessed food is now; the more you focus on healthy, whole foods instead, the faster you’ll lose weight, the better your immune system will function and the healthier you’ll be in the event of any viral exposure that may come your way.

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Ahead of her new comedy, she opens up about headlines, high school and why her daughters are her “harshest critics”.

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As businesses look for incentives that will encourage workers to return to the office once health restrictions lift, one potential drawcard could be allowing theirdogs to join them at the desk.

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With many of us now using online platforms to present from home, it has become more necessary than ever to control our nerves.

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A smartphone sensor, much like what is used in GPS systems, might be a way to determine whether or not someone is intoxicated after consuming marijuana, according to a new study.

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