Kellogg’s Breakfast—A Threat to Your Health?

Pesticides in your Froot Loops is only one of the problems.

The Kellogg Company recently announced it was pulling ads from a news agency it felt was “not aligned with our values as a company.”

Fair enough. But this leads to an obvious question: the “values” the company says it is protecting—just what are they?

Here is a short list. It is just our opinion, but there seems to us to be plenty of evidence that these are the values Kellogg’s is most concerned about:

1. Trying to get young children addicted to sugar-laced products.

One study found that high-fat, high-sugar foods light up the same parts of the brain as highly addictive drugs like cocaine. But Kellogg’s entire business model seems to be based on selling sugar to kids under the guise of breakfast cereals and other products. The company has signed on to a code of ethics that is supposed to protect children, but just check out the massive advertising they aim at children as young as two!

Sugar isn’t merely addictive. It is dangerous. The deeper science delves into this, the more danger it finds:

• Sugar dumbs you down. A 2012 UCLA study showed that rats fed a sugary diet had a serious decrease in brain function.
• Sugar damages your heart. Recent research has found a direct, independent link between sugar overconsumption and heart disease.
• A 2013 study showed that higher blood sugar levels were associated with a decrease in memory recall and learning ability. Just what kids in school don’t need.
• By now, most people know that sugar causes type 2 diabetes, and that type 2 diabetics have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s. However, study after study is demonstrating that Alzheimer’s may actually be another form of diabetes.

2. Selling kids foods heavily laced with pesticides or herbicides, especially in foods genetically modified to withstand these poisons.

Kellogg’s does not sell GMO Roundup weedkiller-exposed food in countries where it is illegal. But they do here in the US. GMOFreeUSA.com states, “We sent two Kellogg’s products to labs for GMO and glyphosate content testing and the results aren’t pretty. Read our report on Kellogg’s Froot Loops cereal here and Kashi GoLean Original cereal here.”

As most of our readers know, GMO food is controversial for many reasons. One of the most important is that we don’t know what this food will do to humans over time. The few independent experiments with lab animals have not been reassuring. The animals get cancer, kidney and liver damage, and more.

One of the scarier effects in animals—sterility—can take several generations to show up. Could our grandchildren end up sterile from this food? Over 300 independent researchers, physicians, and scholars—none of whom has any financial interest in GMOs—signed a statement published in Environmental Sciences Europe that there is no consensus that GMOs are safe.

Another huge problem with GMO food is that it is designed to withstand massive applications of pesticides, far more than would be used on conventional crops. The main pesticide used with such foods, glysophate, has been labeled a “probable carcinogen” (cause of cancer) by the World Health Organization. A UN panel disputed this conclusion, but only after receiving massive donations from companies selling the product.

In Hawaii, where glyphosate is used heavily, it is now thought to be causing birth defects at ten times the national rate. Moms Across America founder Zen Honeycutt in an op-ed demonstrated that high levels of glyphosate could be found in breast milk.

And glyphosate may not be the worst of it. Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini’s recent study shows that the other, supposedly inert ingredients added to glysophate in Roundup are even more toxic to humans.

These poisons are on top of other toxins such as atrazine, which is scary enough on its own:

• Atrazine has been shown to adversely affect developmental, hormonal, and reproductive systems of the animals studied.
• One analysis of towns in the “corn belt” found that in some towns, infants reached their maximum lifetime safe dosage of atrazine in less than four months. This analysis was done in the late 1990s—and levels are almost certainly worse now.
• Another study found that higher concentrations of atrazine in drinking water are associated with human birth defects.
• Evidence also shows that atrazine could be making us fat. A rat study found that long-term treatment with low concentrations of atrazine induced insulin resistance and weight gain.
• Atrazine is also an endocrine disruptor, interfering with the hormones in the brain that trigger ovulation.

3. Crony Capitalism

Kellogg’s is a force to be reckoned with among crony circles in Washington, DC. Operating on its own or through the powerful Grocery Manufacturers Association, it seeks to influence the departments of government that regulate it, directly or indirectly: the FDA, USDA, EPA, FTC, and the office of the president, among others.

Recently it successfully fought to pass a bill in Congress that supposedly labeled GMO food for consumers while actually doing the exact opposite. It allows companies like Kellogg’s to put the GMO disclosure in the form of a bar code that nobody can read without a handheld scanner, and provides zero penalties for non-compliance.

Regardless of Kellogg’s political motivations in pulling its advertising, it seems clear that its most basic value is greed—particularly when consumers (especially children) are getting sick from their sugary, pesticide-laden GMO cereals.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Antipsychotics: Are They Killing OLD People?

Hospital Malpractice 

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/2jzCbNt via Aloe for Health

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Antipsychotics: Are They Killing OLD People?

More reason to question their common use among the very old and very young.

A new study has found that taking powerful antipsychotic drugs significantly increases the likelihood of premature death for Alzheimer’s patients.

The study looked at 58,000 people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s between 2005 and 2011. Those who were prescribed antipsychotics (usually to control the unruly behavior some Alzheimer’s patients display) had a 60% higher risk of dying than those who didn’t take the drugs.

The study confirms current recommendations that antipsychotics be used only for the most difficult cases for a short period of time.

As we’ve reported previously, this advice has not been heeded. A 2015 report from the Government Accountability Office found that nearly one third of seniors with dementia who spend more than 100 days in a nursing home were given antipsychotic drugs—despite the fact that the FDA has never approved such drugs to be used for behavioral problems from dementia.

That’s just the beginning. We’ve also reported that antipsychotics are routinely given to kids in foster care and even toddlers as young as two years old. Brain-damaged veterans are also commonly given these drugs.

Other than increasing risk of death, antipsychotics have many other side effects, including hypotension, movement disorders, and metabolic syndrome issues.

The pain caused by these drugs is avoidable—but natural approaches are demonstrating far more exciting results:

• We’ve reported before that there has been strong evidence to show that coconut oil can prevent, and even reverse, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
• Fish oil has also been found to reduce the inflammation associated with dementia, with one study finding that the risk of all forms of dementia could be reduced by almost half with fish oil. Encouraging work has shown that B vitamins could reduce the rate of brain atrophy in patient with mild cognitive impairment—50% of which go on to develop Alzheimer’s.
• HBOT (hyperbaric oxygen therapy) is one of the best treatments for brain damage. Most hospitals have the HBOT tanks. But because they are not FDA-approved for this use, they sit empty most of the time.

Note the irony here: it’s fine to use antipsychotics for unapproved uses, even on toddlers, while it is not fine to use HBOT for anything not yet approved! And the FDA knows full well that because the tanks are generally beyond patent protection, nobody will spend the money to get other uses approved.

Check out our latest videos for more: Imprecise Medicine I and II.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Kellogg’s Breakfast—A Threat to Your Health?

Hospital Malpractice

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/2jzAnUl via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/2jRGSmE

Kellogg’s Breakfast—A Threat to Your Health?

Pesticides in your Froot Loops is only one of the problems.

The Kellogg Company recently announced it was pulling ads from a news agency it felt was “not aligned with our values as a company.”

Fair enough. But this leads to an obvious question: the “values” the company says it is protecting—just what are they?

Here is a short list. It is just our opinion, but there seems to us to be plenty of evidence that these are the values Kellogg’s is most concerned about:

1. Trying to get young children addicted to sugar-laced products.

One study found that high-fat, high-sugar foods light up the same parts of the brain as highly addictive drugs like cocaine. But Kellogg’s entire business model seems to be based on selling sugar to kids under the guise of breakfast cereals and other products. The company has signed on to a code of ethics that is supposed to protect children, but just check out the massive advertising they aim at children as young as two!

Sugar isn’t merely addictive. It is dangerous. The deeper science delves into this, the more danger it finds:

• Sugar dumbs you down. A 2012 UCLA study showed that rats fed a sugary diet had a serious decrease in brain function.
• Sugar damages your heart. Recent research has found a direct, independent link between sugar overconsumption and heart disease.
• A 2013 study showed that higher blood sugar levels were associated with a decrease in memory recall and learning ability. Just what kids in school don’t need.
• By now, most people know that sugar causes type 2 diabetes, and that type 2 diabetics have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s. However, study after study is demonstrating that Alzheimer’s may actually be another form of diabetes.

2. Selling kids foods heavily laced with pesticides or herbicides, especially in foods genetically modified to withstand these poisons.

Kellogg’s does not sell GMO Roundup weedkiller-exposed food in countries where it is illegal. But they do here in the US. GMOFreeUSA.com states, “We sent two Kellogg’s products to labs for GMO and glyphosate content testing and the results aren’t pretty. Read our report on Kellogg’s Froot Loops cereal here and Kashi GoLean Original cereal here.”

As most of our readers know, GMO food is controversial for many reasons. One of the most important is that we don’t know what this food will do to humans over time. The few independent experiments with lab animals have not been reassuring. The animals get cancer, kidney and liver damage, and more.

One of the scarier effects in animals—sterility—can take several generations to show up. Could our grandchildren end up sterile from this food? Over 300 independent researchers, physicians, and scholars—none of whom has any financial interest in GMOs—signed a statement published in Environmental Sciences Europe that there is no consensus that GMOs are safe.

Another huge problem with GMO food is that it is designed to withstand massive applications of pesticides, far more than would be used on conventional crops. The main pesticide used with such foods, glysophate, has been labeled a “probable carcinogen” (cause of cancer) by the World Health Organization. A UN panel disputed this conclusion, but only after receiving massive donations from companies selling the product.

In Hawaii, where glyphosate is used heavily, it is now thought to be causing birth defects at ten times the national rate. Moms Across America founder Zen Honeycutt in an op-ed demonstrated that high levels of glyphosate could be found in breast milk.

And glyphosate may not be the worst of it. Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini’s recent study shows that the other, supposedly inert ingredients added to glysophate in Roundup are even more toxic to humans.

These poisons are on top of other toxins such as atrazine, which is scary enough on its own:

• Atrazine has been shown to adversely affect developmental, hormonal, and reproductive systems of the animals studied.
• One analysis of towns in the “corn belt” found that in some towns, infants reached their maximum lifetime safe dosage of atrazine in less than four months. This analysis was done in the late 1990s—and levels are almost certainly worse now.
• Another study found that higher concentrations of atrazine in drinking water are associated with human birth defects.
• Evidence also shows that atrazine could be making us fat. A rat study found that long-term treatment with low concentrations of atrazine induced insulin resistance and weight gain.
• Atrazine is also an endocrine disruptor, interfering with the hormones in the brain that trigger ovulation.

3. Crony Capitalism

Kellogg’s is a force to be reckoned with among crony circles in Washington, DC. Operating on its own or through the powerful Grocery Manufacturers Association, it seeks to influence the departments of government that regulate it, directly or indirectly: the FDA, USDA, EPA, FTC, and the office of the president, among others.

Recently it successfully fought to pass a bill in Congress that supposedly labeled GMO food for consumers while actually doing the exact opposite. It allows companies like Kellogg’s to put the GMO disclosure in the form of a bar code that nobody can read without a handheld scanner, and provides zero penalties for non-compliance.

Regardless of Kellogg’s political motivations in pulling its advertising, it seems clear that its most basic value is greed—particularly when consumers (especially children) are getting sick from their sugary, pesticide-laden GMO cereals.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Antipsychotics: Are They Killing OLD People?

Hospital Malpractice 

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Hospital Malpractice

Is it reaching a criminal level?

A recent report by Reuters details how hospitals around the country are outrageously negligent when it comes to reporting outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant infections, and it’s costing lives.

Consider this story. Between 2008 and 2011, twenty-one patients were infected with a deadly, drug-resistant bug at St. Anthony’s Medical Center in St. Louis, Missouri. The hospital didn’t think the number of cases warranted reporting to state health authorities. In 2009, a patient named Richard Armbruster, who was in St. Anthony’s for a hip replacement, died two days after contracting the infection. His daughter told Reuters, “Had [the outbreak]been reported to the authorities and the story picked up by the media, there is NO WAY we would’ve allowed by Dad to have his surgery there.”

Twenty-two patients were infected with a drug-resistant “superbug” in Ohio, causing seven deaths. The outbreak was able to spread through a hospital and seven long-term care facilities because they did not warn each other when infected patients were transferred.

Typically, states require hospitals to report an outbreak within twenty-four hours, but hospitals are given lots of leeway in determining what constitutes an “outbreak.” This leaves room for hospital administrators to downplay the seriousness of an outbreak to keep the patients—and the dollars—rolling in.

Hospitals are rarely held accountable, and when they are, states rarely dole out any punishment. Reuters reports that thirty-six states are able to impose civil or criminal penalties—yet none of those states did so in the last five years. When states release reports on outbreaks, they lack basic information: in sixteen states, the name of the facility must be removed.

Meanwhile, Medicare favoritism toward hospitals (the government pays far more for the same procedure if the doctor works for a hospital) has driven most private practices out of business. They have been forced to sell out to—who else?—hospitals!

This is our crony medical system: a system that cares about and looks after hospitals (and pharmaceutical companies) rather than patients.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Kellogg’s Breakfast—A Threat to Your Health?

Antipsychotics: Are They Killing OLD People?

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/2jrq8qb via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/2jRlFf2

Antipsychotics: Are They Killing OLD People?

More reason to question their common use among the very old and very young.

A new study has found that taking powerful antipsychotic drugs significantly increases the likelihood of premature death for Alzheimer’s patients.

The study looked at 58,000 people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s between 2005 and 2011. Those who were prescribed antipsychotics (usually to control the unruly behavior some Alzheimer’s patients display) had a 60% higher risk of dying than those who didn’t take the drugs.

The study confirms current recommendations that antipsychotics be used only for the most difficult cases for a short period of time.

As we’ve reported previously, this advice has not been heeded. A 2015 report from the Government Accountability Office found that nearly one third of seniors with dementia who spend more than 100 days in a nursing home were given antipsychotic drugs—despite the fact that the FDA has never approved such drugs to be used for behavioral problems from dementia.

That’s just the beginning. We’ve also reported that antipsychotics are routinely given to kids in foster care and even toddlers as young as two years old. Brain-damaged veterans are also commonly given these drugs.

Other than increasing risk of death, antipsychotics have many other side effects, including hypotension, movement disorders, and metabolic syndrome issues.

The pain caused by these drugs is avoidable—but natural approaches are demonstrating far more exciting results:

• We’ve reported before that there has been strong evidence to show that coconut oil can prevent, and even reverse, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
• Fish oil has also been found to reduce the inflammation associated with dementia, with one study finding that the risk of all forms of dementia could be reduced by almost half with fish oil. Encouraging work has shown that B vitamins could reduce the rate of brain atrophy in patient with mild cognitive impairment—50% of which go on to develop Alzheimer’s.
• HBOT (hyperbaric oxygen therapy) is one of the best treatments for brain damage. Most hospitals have the HBOT tanks. But because they are not FDA-approved for this use, they sit empty most of the time.

Note the irony here: it’s fine to use antipsychotics for unapproved uses, even on toddlers, while it is not fine to use HBOT for anything not yet approved! And the FDA knows full well that because the tanks are generally beyond patent protection, nobody will spend the money to get other uses approved.

Check out our latest videos for more: Imprecise Medicine I and II.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Kellogg’s Breakfast—A Threat to Your Health?

Hospital Malpractice

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/2jzAnUl via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2kdjwbV

Hospital Malpractice

Is it reaching a criminal level?

A recent report by Reuters details how hospitals around the country are outrageously negligent when it comes to reporting outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant infections, and it’s costing lives.

Consider this story. Between 2008 and 2011, twenty-one patients were infected with a deadly, drug-resistant bug at St. Anthony’s Medical Center in St. Louis, Missouri. The hospital didn’t think the number of cases warranted reporting to state health authorities. In 2009, a patient named Richard Armbruster, who was in St. Anthony’s for a hip replacement, died two days after contracting the infection. His daughter told Reuters, “Had [the outbreak]been reported to the authorities and the story picked up by the media, there is NO WAY we would’ve allowed by Dad to have his surgery there.”

Twenty-two patients were infected with a drug-resistant “superbug” in Ohio, causing seven deaths. The outbreak was able to spread through a hospital and seven long-term care facilities because they did not warn each other when infected patients were transferred.

Typically, states require hospitals to report an outbreak within twenty-four hours, but hospitals are given lots of leeway in determining what constitutes an “outbreak.” This leaves room for hospital administrators to downplay the seriousness of an outbreak to keep the patients—and the dollars—rolling in.

Hospitals are rarely held accountable, and when they are, states rarely dole out any punishment. Reuters reports that thirty-six states are able to impose civil or criminal penalties—yet none of those states did so in the last five years. When states release reports on outbreaks, they lack basic information: in sixteen states, the name of the facility must be removed.

Meanwhile, Medicare favoritism toward hospitals (the government pays far more for the same procedure if the doctor works for a hospital) has driven most private practices out of business. They have been forced to sell out to—who else?—hospitals!

This is our crony medical system: a system that cares about and looks after hospitals (and pharmaceutical companies) rather than patients.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Kellogg’s Breakfast—A Threat to Your Health?

Antipsychotics: Are They Killing OLD People?

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/2jrq8qb via Aloe for Health
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Imprecise Medicine Part 2

Full Story
If you have not done so, please subscribe to the Pulse of Natural Health.

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Imprecise Medicine Part 2

Full Story
If you have not done so, please subscribe to the Pulse of Natural Health.

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Drugs Don’t Work!

Studies on the effectiveness of the drug industry’s biggest sellers are frankly shocking, according to researchers.

We—as individual consumers and as taxpayers—are apparently wasting money on expensive drugs that don’t work. And the side effects are often disastrous.

“Every day, millions of people are taking medications that will not help them,” says Nicholas J. Schork, director of human biology at the J. Craig Venter Institute and a professor at UC–San Diego. His article in the journal Nature provides hard data about the effectiveness of the top moneymakers for Big Pharma—and the scorecard is not good. Unfortunately, it affirms what we and many others in the natural health community have been saying for years.

Of the top ten blockbuster drugs, the most effective ones work for only one in four patients. Crestor (a statin) is effective for only one in eighteen patients, and Nexium (an acid blocker) helps only one in twenty-five. That’s a failure rate of 96%! These drugs individually generate between $4 and $8 billion dollars per year, which leads to the inevitable conclusion that patients are wasting mind-boggling sums of money on drugs that simply don’t work.

Adding insult to injury, not only do these drugs fail completely most of the time, they also create a host of terrible side effects, many of which we’ve discussed in previous articles (see here for statins and here for acid blockers). These side effects lead to even higher healthcare costs, because now the side effects must be treated as well—usually with more drugs, which have more side effects!

Let’s break this down. Drugs that don’t work and often harm consumers’ health are hugely profitable. Who is responsible for this absurd drug system? The US Food and Drug Administration, of course.

How much more evidence do we need before our nation realizes that the FDA is urgent need of reform?

What would reform look like? A good place to start would be to repeal the Kefauver amendments, which charged the FDA with ensuring the effectiveness of drugs in addition to their safety. This caused the cost of approving drugs to soar—currently into the billions—to the detriment of natural medicine (natural products cannot afford the high price of approval by the FDA, since natural substances cannot be patented). The whole premise is flawed, because the government cannot prove effectiveness, even after the waste of billions per drug. As we’ve just seen, the top-selling drugs simply do not work for most people.

One in four Americans over the age of forty-five takes a statin—yet, as Dr. Schork cites in his article, these drugs work for as few as one in fifty people!

Since 2005, FDA-approved drugs, vaccines, and medical devices have killed more than 786,000 people, as detailed on our FDA Death Meter page. Does that look like a drug approval system that works?

The FDA must be reshaped and reformed so it sees the public, not the drug companies, as its boss. If not, thousands more will continue to suffer the consequences.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Want Your Kid to Have Asthma? Take Acid Blockers!

Vaccine Mania  

Scotts-Monsanto GM Grass Threatens National Forests, Rivers, Ranchers, and Farmers

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Want Your Kid to Have Asthma? Take Acid Blockers!

Not only do they make your acid reflux problems worse, they actually sicken your unborn child. Action Alert!

An analysis of eight different studies, including data from over 1.6 million patients, found that taking heartburn medication during pregnancy significantly increases the risk for asthma for the baby.

The researchers found that proton pump inhibitors (such as Prilosec or Nexium) increase the risk of babies developing asthma by 30%; other acid blockers (like Pepcid and Tagamet) increased the risk by 46%. These are huge numbers.

The reason for this effect is unclear, but some think that the drugs interfere with digestion, resulting in undigested food allergens being passed on to the fetus.

This is of course only the latest alarm bell to go off regarding Big Pharma’s wrong-headed answer to acid reflux and stomach problems. These drugs are the poster children of everything wrong with our current medical establishment and drug approval process.

Acid blockers do not address the root cause of stomach trouble, which is often too little stomach acid, not too much. This means that in many cases, taking acid blockers simply makes your stomach problems even worse. Public health experts say between 60 and 70% of people who take these drugs don’t need them.

Then there are the side effects, which we’ve written about extensively. Acid blockers:

• Increase the risk of bacterial infection, including pneumonia, and bone fracture.
• Shut down lysosomes (the cell’s garbage disposal) in every cell in the body, inhibiting energy production and detoxification.
• Cause both acute and chronic kidney disease.
• Increase the risk of dementia by as much as 52%.
• Raise the risk of heart attack by as much as 20%.

We suggest consulting with an integrative doctor before deciding to use these ineffective and dangerous drugs.

Don’t expect a “conventional” doctor to tell you that stomach pain can be managed using natural medicine, such as supplementing with hydrochloric acid to restore stomach acid—acid-blocking proton pump inhibitor drugs are obscenely profitable and bring in billions for Big Pharma. Lifestyle changes can also help reduce stomach pain and acid reflux, such as losing weight and eating a healthy diet.

Action Alert! Write to the FDA and tell them to warn consumers about the dangers of acid blockers. Please send your message immediately.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Drugs Don’t Work!

Vaccine Mania

Scotts-Monsanto GM Grass Threatens National Forests, Rivers, Ranchers, and Farmers

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Vaccine Mania

Big Pharma-dependent mainstream media again dismiss legitimate concerns about vaccine safety while legislators threaten your right to decide for yourself. State-based Action Alerts!

Earlier this month, Daniel Neides, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic wrote an article pointing out that vaccines contain dangerous ingredients. What prompted the article was his recent flu shot. He later learned that his shot contained formaldehyde, a known carcinogen. In the article, he describes how humans are exposed to thousands of toxic chemicals that disrupt normal bodily functions and cause disease.

Dr. Neides is not anti-vaccine—on the contrary, he believes vaccines can be helpful when used properly. But he notes that

the vaccination timing and understanding one’s epigenetics (how your genes interact with the environment) are all critical to our risk of developing chronic disease. Please talk to your doctor about the optimal timing of vaccinations for your children, and therefore reduce your risk of raising a child with a neurologic complication.

This appears to be sensible advice, yet the mainstream media’s reaction to the doctor’s advice has been to go ballistic. For example, a Forbes headline reads, “Cleveland Clinic Doctor Goes Full Anti-Vaccine.” Other outlets echoed this sensationalism. The hysteria and the concerted effort to attack Dr. Neides is the most recent evidence that the media is unable to fairly address the issue of vaccine safety.

We’ve written before about vaccine ingredients like aluminum or formaldehyde—or, in the case of the flu shot, mercury. These dangerous neurotoxins have never been adequately tested for safety. The FDA relies on data about ingesting aluminum, not injecting it. New data on injecting aluminum shows that it travels directly to the brain.

There are other reasons for concern. A new report from the World Health Organization on the HPV vaccine supports previous findings that this vaccine is associated with serious adverse events, including death.

And how about glass in vaccines? A Sanofi Pasteur manufacturing plant found tiny pieces of glass in some batches of vaccines intended for babies. After the company assured the FDA that there was no problem, the agency did nothing—no recall was ordered.

The National Academy of Medicine (NAM, formerly the Institute of Medicine), which advises the government on issues relating to medicine and health, has also voiced concerns about the current vaccination paradigm. In a 2013 report, the Academy concluded, “Key elements of the schedule—the number, frequency, timing, order, and age at administration of vaccines—have not been systematically examined in research studies.”

There are legitimate safety concerns about vaccines, ranging from contaminants to the safety of adjuvants to the timing of their administration. People have a right NOT to be injected with carcinogens, neurotoxins, glass, or whatever else may be in these FDA-approved vaccines.

State-based Action Alerts! Check below if your state is considering a bill that would restrict or remove your freedom of choice when it comes to vaccination. Please send your message immediately.

Indiana

Kentucky

Minnesota

Missouri

New Jersey

New York

Oklahoma

Texas

Virginia

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Drugs Don’t Work!

Want Your Kid to Have Asthma? Take Acid Blockers!

Scotts-Monsanto GM Grass Threatens National Forests, Rivers, Ranchers, and Farmers

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/2jtJC9m via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/2jtQhR9

Drugs Don’t Work!

Studies on the effectiveness of the drug industry’s biggest sellers are frankly shocking, according to researchers.

We—as individual consumers and as taxpayers—are apparently wasting money on expensive drugs that don’t work. And the side effects are often disastrous.

“Every day, millions of people are taking medications that will not help them,” says Nicholas J. Schork, director of human biology at the J. Craig Venter Institute and a professor at UC–San Diego. His article in the journal Nature provides hard data about the effectiveness of the top moneymakers for Big Pharma—and the scorecard is not good. Unfortunately, it affirms what we and many others in the natural health community have been saying for years.

Of the top ten blockbuster drugs, the most effective ones work for only one in four patients. Crestor (a statin) is effective for only one in eighteen patients, and Nexium (an acid blocker) helps only one in twenty-five. That’s a failure rate of 96%! These drugs individually generate between $4 and $8 billion dollars per year, which leads to the inevitable conclusion that patients are wasting mind-boggling sums of money on drugs that simply don’t work.

Adding insult to injury, not only do these drugs fail completely most of the time, they also create a host of terrible side effects, many of which we’ve discussed in previous articles (see here for statins and here for acid blockers). These side effects lead to even higher healthcare costs, because now the side effects must be treated as well—usually with more drugs, which have more side effects!

Let’s break this down. Drugs that don’t work and often harm consumers’ health are hugely profitable. Who is responsible for this absurd drug system? The US Food and Drug Administration, of course.

How much more evidence do we need before our nation realizes that the FDA is urgent need of reform?

What would reform look like? A good place to start would be to repeal the Kefauver amendments, which charged the FDA with ensuring the effectiveness of drugs in addition to their safety. This caused the cost of approving drugs to soar—currently into the billions—to the detriment of natural medicine (natural products cannot afford the high price of approval by the FDA, since natural substances cannot be patented). The whole premise is flawed, because the government cannot prove effectiveness, even after the waste of billions per drug. As we’ve just seen, the top-selling drugs simply do not work for most people.

One in four Americans over the age of forty-five takes a statin—yet, as Dr. Schork cites in his article, these drugs work for as few as one in fifty people!

Since 2005, FDA-approved drugs, vaccines, and medical devices have killed more than 786,000 people, as detailed on our FDA Death Meter page. Does that look like a drug approval system that works?

The FDA must be reshaped and reformed so it sees the public, not the drug companies, as its boss. If not, thousands more will continue to suffer the consequences.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Want Your Kid to Have Asthma? Take Acid Blockers!

Vaccine Mania  

Scotts-Monsanto GM Grass Threatens National Forests, Rivers, Ranchers, and Farmers

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/2jb3blS via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2keMOGS

Want Your Kid to Have Asthma? Take Acid Blockers!

Not only do they make your acid reflux problems worse, they actually sicken your unborn child. Action Alert!

An analysis of eight different studies, including data from over 1.6 million patients, found that taking heartburn medication during pregnancy significantly increases the risk for asthma for the baby.

The researchers found that proton pump inhibitors (such as Prilosec or Nexium) increase the risk of babies developing asthma by 30%; other acid blockers (like Pepcid and Tagamet) increased the risk by 46%. These are huge numbers.

The reason for this effect is unclear, but some think that the drugs interfere with digestion, resulting in undigested food allergens being passed on to the fetus.

This is of course only the latest alarm bell to go off regarding Big Pharma’s wrong-headed answer to acid reflux and stomach problems. These drugs are the poster children of everything wrong with our current medical establishment and drug approval process.

Acid blockers do not address the root cause of stomach trouble, which is often too little stomach acid, not too much. This means that in many cases, taking acid blockers simply makes your stomach problems even worse. Public health experts say between 60 and 70% of people who take these drugs don’t need them.

Then there are the side effects, which we’ve written about extensively. Acid blockers:

• Increase the risk of bacterial infection, including pneumonia, and bone fracture.
• Shut down lysosomes (the cell’s garbage disposal) in every cell in the body, inhibiting energy production and detoxification.
• Cause both acute and chronic kidney disease.
• Increase the risk of dementia by as much as 52%.
• Raise the risk of heart attack by as much as 20%.

We suggest consulting with an integrative doctor before deciding to use these ineffective and dangerous drugs.

Don’t expect a “conventional” doctor to tell you that stomach pain can be managed using natural medicine, such as supplementing with hydrochloric acid to restore stomach acid—acid-blocking proton pump inhibitor drugs are obscenely profitable and bring in billions for Big Pharma. Lifestyle changes can also help reduce stomach pain and acid reflux, such as losing weight and eating a healthy diet.

Action Alert! Write to the FDA and tell them to warn consumers about the dangers of acid blockers. Please send your message immediately.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Drugs Don’t Work!

Vaccine Mania

Scotts-Monsanto GM Grass Threatens National Forests, Rivers, Ranchers, and Farmers

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Vaccine Mania

Big Pharma-dependent mainstream media again dismiss legitimate concerns about vaccine safety while legislators threaten your right to decide for yourself. State-based Action Alerts!

Earlier this month, Daniel Neides, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic wrote an article pointing out that vaccines contain dangerous ingredients. What prompted the article was his recent flu shot. He later learned that his shot contained formaldehyde, a known carcinogen. In the article, he describes how humans are exposed to thousands of toxic chemicals that disrupt normal bodily functions and cause disease.

Dr. Neides is not anti-vaccine—on the contrary, he believes vaccines can be helpful when used properly. But he notes that

the vaccination timing and understanding one’s epigenetics (how your genes interact with the environment) are all critical to our risk of developing chronic disease. Please talk to your doctor about the optimal timing of vaccinations for your children, and therefore reduce your risk of raising a child with a neurologic complication.

This appears to be sensible advice, yet the mainstream media’s reaction to the doctor’s advice has been to go ballistic. For example, a Forbes headline reads, “Cleveland Clinic Doctor Goes Full Anti-Vaccine.” Other outlets echoed this sensationalism. The hysteria and the concerted effort to attack Dr. Neides is the most recent evidence that the media is unable to fairly address the issue of vaccine safety.

We’ve written before about vaccine ingredients like aluminum or formaldehyde—or, in the case of the flu shot, mercury. These dangerous neurotoxins have never been adequately tested for safety. The FDA relies on data about ingesting aluminum, not injecting it. New data on injecting aluminum shows that it travels directly to the brain.

There are other reasons for concern. A new report from the World Health Organization on the HPV vaccine supports previous findings that this vaccine is associated with serious adverse events, including death.

And how about glass in vaccines? A Sanofi Pasteur manufacturing plant found tiny pieces of glass in some batches of vaccines intended for babies. After the company assured the FDA that there was no problem, the agency did nothing—no recall was ordered.

The National Academy of Medicine (NAM, formerly the Institute of Medicine), which advises the government on issues relating to medicine and health, has also voiced concerns about the current vaccination paradigm. In a 2013 report, the Academy concluded, “Key elements of the schedule—the number, frequency, timing, order, and age at administration of vaccines—have not been systematically examined in research studies.”

There are legitimate safety concerns about vaccines, ranging from contaminants to the safety of adjuvants to the timing of their administration. People have a right NOT to be injected with carcinogens, neurotoxins, glass, or whatever else may be in these FDA-approved vaccines.

State-based Action Alerts! Check below if your state is considering a bill that would restrict or remove your freedom of choice when it comes to vaccination. Please send your message immediately.

Indiana

Kentucky

Minnesota

Missouri

New Jersey

New York

Oklahoma

Texas

Virginia

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Drugs Don’t Work!

Want Your Kid to Have Asthma? Take Acid Blockers!

Scotts-Monsanto GM Grass Threatens National Forests, Rivers, Ranchers, and Farmers

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Scotts-Monsanto GM Grass Threatens National Forests, Rivers, Ranchers, and Farmers

Now biotech companies want local residents to pay the costs of clean-up! Action Alert!

Over a decade ago, Scotts partnered with Monsanto to market a GM bentgrass resistant to glyphosate (Roundup). It was planted next to the Malheur National Forest in test plots ostensibly controlled by Oregon State University. Unbeknownst to most people, it was also planted all over the US—in California, Iowa, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and seventeen other states.

It was supposed to be confined and controlled, but it very quickly escaped and spread out of the test plots in Oregon into Idaho, and crossbred with natural grasses to create new breeds that were also resistant to glyphosate. It clogged up irrigation ditches, threatening food crops and contaminating pasture-raised cattle with GMOs. In addition to the immediate threats to farmers and ranchers, grass seed—which is among Oregon’s top five commodities—is now under threat.

Initially, Scotts-Monsanto tried to stop the spread and clean up the contamination. But it was unable to do so because the original bentgrass (and now the other grasses it cross-pollinated with) are glyphosate-resistant. More toxic herbicides have been brought in to try to keep irrigation ditches clear, and to stop the grasses from clogging and eventually killing waterways important to wildlife and humans.

Now, according to The Oregonian, Scotts-Monsanto is walking away from the monster it created, leaving farmers, ranchers, wildlife, and eventually the fishing industry (if it spreads to the Columbia River) to deal with it. The current conundrum is that herbicides necessary to kill the invasive GM grasses are toxic to aquatic life, including fish. Soon the grasses will become resistant to even the most toxic chemicals, and nothing will eradicate the invasive grasses but heavy equipment.

Worst of all, the effects of GM products replacing natural grasses and plants on wildlife were completely predictable.

Scotts-Monsanto was fined $500,000, the maximum penalty under the Plant Protection Act, and agreed never to sell GM bentgrass. In addition, the companies were ordered to eradicate the GM nuisance in irrigation districts so farmers could continue farming.

But the federal government is apparently stepping in to help Scotts-Monsanto avoid liability. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently deregulated the GM grass, a move that shifts the burden of controlling GM bentgrass from Scotts-Monsanto to local landowners and American taxpayers.

The law is clear: if a plant poses a risk, the USDA is not to deregulate it. Scotts-Monsanto has already signed an agreement not to sell the product. So why is the USDA violating the law and deregulating GM bentgrass? Why would Scotts-Monsanto ask that it be deregulated when it has agreed not to sell it? It may be because GM bentgrass has been planted all over the United States, and when it’s discovered that Oregon scenario is happening in every state, Scotts-Monsanto can pin it on the government and the taxpayers avoiding responsibility for costly clean-ups.

There are precedents for farmers and consumers holding biotech companies legally accountable in these scenarios. Midwestern corn growers filed a class-action lawsuit against Syngenta last year, claiming the company’s GM corn contaminated their crops and cost them billions in international sales. In 2011, Bayer paid $750 million to Southern rice growers in a similar scenario.

We hope justice is done in Oregon, and the parties responsible for this mess are forced to clean it up.

Action Alert! Tell the USDA to stop offering legal liability protection to biotech companies. Please send your message immediately.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Drugs Don’t Work!Want Your Kid to Have Asthma? Take Acid Blockers!

Vaccine Mania

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Action Alert: Tell USDA to Stop Protecting Biotech Companies

Related article: Scotts-Monsanto GM Grass Threatens National Forests, Rivers, Ranchers, and Farmers

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

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Action Alert: Tell FDA to Warn Consumers About Acid Blockers

Related article: Want Your Kid to Have Asthma? Take Acid Blockers!

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

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Scotts-Monsanto GM Grass Threatens National Forests, Rivers, Ranchers, and Farmers

Now biotech companies want local residents to pay the costs of clean-up! Action Alert!

Over a decade ago, Scotts partnered with Monsanto to market a GM bentgrass resistant to glyphosate (Roundup). It was planted next to the Malheur National Forest in test plots ostensibly controlled by Oregon State University. Unbeknownst to most people, it was also planted all over the US—in California, Iowa, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and seventeen other states.

It was supposed to be confined and controlled, but it very quickly escaped and spread out of the test plots in Oregon into Idaho, and crossbred with natural grasses to create new breeds that were also resistant to glyphosate. It clogged up irrigation ditches, threatening food crops and contaminating pasture-raised cattle with GMOs. In addition to the immediate threats to farmers and ranchers, grass seed—which is among Oregon’s top five commodities—is now under threat.

Initially, Scotts-Monsanto tried to stop the spread and clean up the contamination. But it was unable to do so because the original bentgrass (and now the other grasses it cross-pollinated with) are glyphosate-resistant. More toxic herbicides have been brought in to try to keep irrigation ditches clear, and to stop the grasses from clogging and eventually killing waterways important to wildlife and humans.

Now, according to The Oregonian, Scotts-Monsanto is walking away from the monster it created, leaving farmers, ranchers, wildlife, and eventually the fishing industry (if it spreads to the Columbia River) to deal with it. The current conundrum is that herbicides necessary to kill the invasive GM grasses are toxic to aquatic life, including fish. Soon the grasses will become resistant to even the most toxic chemicals, and nothing will eradicate the invasive grasses but heavy equipment.

Worst of all, the effects of GM products replacing natural grasses and plants on wildlife were completely predictable.

Scotts-Monsanto was fined $500,000, the maximum penalty under the Plant Protection Act, and agreed never to sell GM bentgrass. In addition, the companies were ordered to eradicate the GM nuisance in irrigation districts so farmers could continue farming.

But the federal government is apparently stepping in to help Scotts-Monsanto avoid liability. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently deregulated the GM grass, a move that shifts the burden of controlling GM bentgrass from Scotts-Monsanto to local landowners and American taxpayers.

The law is clear: if a plant poses a risk, the USDA is not to deregulate it. Scotts-Monsanto has already signed an agreement not to sell the product. So why is the USDA violating the law and deregulating GM bentgrass? Why would Scotts-Monsanto ask that it be deregulated when it has agreed not to sell it? It may be because GM bentgrass has been planted all over the United States, and when it’s discovered that Oregon scenario is happening in every state, Scotts-Monsanto can pin it on the government and the taxpayers avoiding responsibility for costly clean-ups.

There are precedents for farmers and consumers holding biotech companies legally accountable in these scenarios. Midwestern corn growers filed a class-action lawsuit against Syngenta last year, claiming the company’s GM corn contaminated their crops and cost them billions in international sales. In 2011, Bayer paid $750 million to Southern rice growers in a similar scenario.

We hope justice is done in Oregon, and the parties responsible for this mess are forced to clean it up.

Action Alert! Tell the USDA to stop offering legal liability protection to biotech companies. Please send your message immediately.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Drugs Don’t Work!Want Your Kid to Have Asthma? Take Acid Blockers!

Vaccine Mania

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Action Alert: Tell USDA to Stop Protecting Biotech Companies

Related article: Scotts-Monsanto GM Grass Threatens National Forests, Rivers, Ranchers, and Farmers

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

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Action Alert: Tell FDA to Warn Consumers About Acid Blockers

Related article: Want Your Kid to Have Asthma? Take Acid Blockers!

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

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In Pain? The Feds Don’t Care!

Another key natural medicine to bite the dust? Action Alert!

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is moving against cannabidiol (CBD), a supplement used to control pain and inflammation. The circumstances are extremely suspicious.

Late last year, the DEA published a final rule that classifies marijuana and hemp extracts, including CBD, as Schedule 1 controlled substances—a category that includes heroin, LSD, mescaline, and MDMA. Note that none of the CBD extracts contains significant amounts of the psychoactive chemical in marijuana—only the non-psychoactive painkilling chemicals.

There are thousands of published scientific studies on CBD and its beneficial health effects on pain, inflammation, seizures, rheumatoid arthritis, and other inflammatory conditions. CBD is available as a dietary supplement.

The DEA’s move sent a shockwave through the CBD industry, with many producers fearing a crackdown. If past is prologue, these fears are completely justified.

This is not a merely irrational move by the DEA—it’s a deeply suspicious one. The US government holds a patent on CBD that covers the use of CBD to protect the brain from degeneration and the treatment of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Sound familiar? The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been obsessed with natural remedies that can treat Alzheimer’s. So far, the agency has attacked supplements such as picamilon, vinpocetine, and pyridoxamine, essentially clearing the field for expensive Big Pharma-owned Alzheimer’s drugs that they know don’t work. The government seems to be employing the same playbook against CBD.

One of Big Pharma’s most loyal puppets is Sen. Claire McCaskill. A powerful democrat from Missouri, she has waged an all-out war against vinpocetine. ANH-USA has been in the trenches fighting these monopolist actions by Big Pharma since our founding. With such powerful friends doing the pharmaceutical industry’s bidding, we shouldn’t be surprised that once again a brain health supplement is under attack—though in this case, CBD is much more than a brain supplement.

There is, after all, big money in Alzheimer’s. Everyone gets old, and many people get senile, right? At a certain point in the future, every old person in the country may be prescribed an Alzheimer medication—if the drug companies can finally find one that doesn’t flop. Hence the motivation to push out the competition.

So, on one hand, the government is saying there is “no accepted medical use” for CBD by classifying it as a Schedule 1 drug, which would normally remove CBD from the market as a supplement. On the other hand, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has a patent that says there are important medical uses for it!

Is this an example of government incompetence? Collusion? We can’t say for sure. Both possibilities are plausible. But we do know that the results are all too common: consumers lose, and Big Pharma wins. Except for one major consideration: consumers are also voters. It’s time to make your voice heard once again!

Big Pharma has in fact already “moved in” on CBD. GW Pharmaceuticals has a CBD-based drug in Phase III trials for the treatment of severe epilepsy. Even the FDA is getting in on the action. In a wave of warning letters sent to supplement companies marketing CBD products, the agency claims that CBD does not meet the definition of a dietary supplement because (a) it is currently being investigated as a drug and (b) there is no evidence that CBD has previously been marketed as a dietary supplement. “Not marketed as a supplement”? The FDA’s assertion is patently and demonstrably untrue, as tens of thousands of people across the country can attest. These patients come to rely on CBD supplements to control their pain, and they can testify to its safety and effectiveness.

(For background on the issue of investigational new drug applications and how they can be used to eliminate the supplement form of natural products, see our coverage here.)

Meanwhile, the federal government claims to be concerned about the totally out-of-control epidemic of prescribed opioid painkillers. This is just too hypocritical for words.

Action Alert! Write to the DEA—and send a copy to Congress—and tell them to reverse their rule that classifies CBD as a Schedule 1 drug. Please send your message immediately.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Roses are Red, Violets are Blue—and Gene Silencing Spray Can Change Both Their Hues!

Is Your Town Leaking Lead?

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Roses are Red, Violets are Blue—and Gene Silencing Spray Can Change Both Their Hues!

The next generation of genetic engineering is about to create even more unexpected outcomes.

This is no joke. Scientists are currently developing gene-silencing sprays that are being billed as the next generation of GMO technology. No longer will biotech firms need to introduce foreign DNA from another species into a plant to make it resistant to chemicals; these products can simply be sprayed on a plant to silence a mobile form of DNA called RNA (ribonucleic acid). RNA are small, mobile pieces of DNA.

Some think that these sprays can be safely rushed to market. “A spray can be used immediately without having to go through the years involved in development of a GM or conventionally bred crop,” says David Baulcombe of the University of Cambridge, who studies gene silencing in plants.

Baulcombe says that the effects are temporary. Is that supposed to allay our concerns? RNA is a fundamental building block for life—needless to say, altering RNA should not be done lightly. Potential side effects range from RNA escaping and affecting native plants and animals, to causing viruses to run rampant. People looking to make a buck off of hacking nature’s programs never talk about the potential consequences.

We are in the Wild West of genetic manipulation, hacking, and experimentation. Government funding for projects using CRISPR, a gene-editing tool, has skyrocketed in recent years, and there’s a mad dash for patents that use the technology. You can even “play God” and experiment with genetic engineering in the comfort of your own home with do-it-yourself CRISPR kits that cost less than $200. Fun for the whole family! What could possibly go wrong?

GMOs have gotten a fair amount of bad publicity, especially after Congress sold out voters by passing a phony GMO labeling law. There is speculation that the Monsanto/Bayer merger currently underway may allow Monsanto to hide from bad PR by rebranding itself. Gene-editing technology may offer another way to escape the GMO label or make it so ubiquitous that labeling is no longer possible.

You can read more about these issues on our GMO Fact Check site.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

In Pain? The Feds Don’t Care!

Is Your Town Leaking Lead?

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Is Your Town Leaking Lead?

Governments and much of the press seem to be covering up that Flint is just the tip of the iceberg. State-based Action Alert!

We reported last month that in Flint, Michigan, tap water in residents’ homes contained astonishing levels of lead, as high as 104 parts per billion (ppb), when the Environmental Protection Agency’s limit for lead in drinking water is 15 ppb. We also noted that research has linked lead exposure to violent and criminal behavior.

A new report from Reuters shows that lead exposure is not an isolated problem in a few communities. In the investigation, Reuters found about 3,000 areas with lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint at the peak of that city’s crisis.

Flint, at least, has received national attention and funding to combat lead poisoning—most of these communities have received neither. In most cases, the exposure is a result of crumbling infrastructure: old paint, plumbing (lead is found in plastics, particularly PVC pipes), and industrial waste. There is no safe level of lead exposure. It is a powerful neurotoxin, and experts say that in locations where lead poisoning remains common, children will experience developmental delays and will start out behind other children in school.

Considering the effects that lead has on developing brains—and the links to criminal behavior—this is of tremendous concern. As we’ve noted elsewhere, chelation therapy is the gold standard for removing toxic metals such as lead. Conventional doctors rarely use it, but integrative doctors are well versed in the benefits of chelation therapy for removing lead and other toxins from the body.

Reasonable people might think the FDA would be promoting the best therapy for this health problem. Unfortunately, reason does not govern the FDA; Big Pharma profits do. Chelation therapy offers meager profit potential to Big Pharma, and therefore the FDA is hostile toward chelation—despite its effectiveness against lead.

State-based Action Alerts! Write to your state legislators and urge them to address this critical issue. Please send your message immediately.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

In Pain? The Feds Don’t Care!

Roses are Red, Violets are Blue—and Gene Silencing Spray Can Change Both Their Hues!

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Action Alert: Save Natural Pain Treatment

Related article: In Pain? The Feds Don’t Care!

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

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In Pain? The Feds Don’t Care!

Another key natural medicine to bite the dust? Action Alert!

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is moving against cannabidiol (CBD), a supplement used to control pain and inflammation. The circumstances are extremely suspicious.

Late last year, the DEA published a final rule that classifies marijuana and hemp extracts, including CBD, as Schedule 1 controlled substances—a category that includes heroin, LSD, mescaline, and MDMA. Note that none of the CBD extracts contains significant amounts of the psychoactive chemical in marijuana—only the non-psychoactive painkilling chemicals.

There are thousands of published scientific studies on CBD and its beneficial health effects on pain, inflammation, seizures, rheumatoid arthritis, and other inflammatory conditions. CBD is available as a dietary supplement.

The DEA’s move sent a shockwave through the CBD industry, with many producers fearing a crackdown. If past is prologue, these fears are completely justified.

This is not a merely irrational move by the DEA—it’s a deeply suspicious one. The US government holds a patent on CBD that covers the use of CBD to protect the brain from degeneration and the treatment of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Sound familiar? The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been obsessed with natural remedies that can treat Alzheimer’s. So far, the agency has attacked supplements such as picamilon, vinpocetine, and pyridoxamine, essentially clearing the field for expensive Big Pharma-owned Alzheimer’s drugs that they know don’t work. The government seems to be employing the same playbook against CBD.

One of Big Pharma’s most loyal puppets is Sen. Claire McCaskill. A powerful democrat from Missouri, she has waged an all-out war against vinpocetine. ANH-USA has been in the trenches fighting these monopolist actions by Big Pharma since our founding. With such powerful friends doing the pharmaceutical industry’s bidding, we shouldn’t be surprised that once again a brain health supplement is under attack—though in this case, CBD is much more than a brain supplement.

There is, after all, big money in Alzheimer’s. Everyone gets old, and many people get senile, right? At a certain point in the future, every old person in the country may be prescribed an Alzheimer medication—if the drug companies can finally find one that doesn’t flop. Hence the motivation to push out the competition.

So, on one hand, the government is saying there is “no accepted medical use” for CBD by classifying it as a Schedule 1 drug, which would normally remove CBD from the market as a supplement. On the other hand, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has a patent that says there are important medical uses for it!

Is this an example of government incompetence? Collusion? We can’t say for sure. Both possibilities are plausible. But we do know that the results are all too common: consumers lose, and Big Pharma wins. Except for one major consideration: consumers are also voters. It’s time to make your voice heard once again!

Big Pharma has in fact already “moved in” on CBD. GW Pharmaceuticals has a CBD-based drug in Phase III trials for the treatment of severe epilepsy. Even the FDA is getting in on the action. In a wave of warning letters sent to supplement companies marketing CBD products, the agency claims that CBD does not meet the definition of a dietary supplement because (a) it is currently being investigated as a drug and (b) there is no evidence that CBD has previously been marketed as a dietary supplement. “Not marketed as a supplement”? The FDA’s assertion is patently and demonstrably untrue, as tens of thousands of people across the country can attest. These patients come to rely on CBD supplements to control their pain, and they can testify to its safety and effectiveness.

(For background on the issue of investigational new drug applications and how they can be used to eliminate the supplement form of natural products, see our coverage here.)

Meanwhile, the federal government claims to be concerned about the totally out-of-control epidemic of prescribed opioid painkillers. This is just too hypocritical for words.

Action Alert! Write to the DEA—and send a copy to Congress—and tell them to reverse their rule that classifies CBD as a Schedule 1 drug. Please send your message immediately.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Roses are Red, Violets are Blue—and Gene Silencing Spray Can Change Both Their Hues!

Is Your Town Leaking Lead?

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/2jGLV9E via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/2iLfIzK

Roses are Red, Violets are Blue—and Gene Silencing Spray Can Change Both Their Hues!

The next generation of genetic engineering is about to create even more unexpected outcomes.

This is no joke. Scientists are currently developing gene-silencing sprays that are being billed as the next generation of GMO technology. No longer will biotech firms need to introduce foreign DNA from another species into a plant to make it resistant to chemicals; these products can simply be sprayed on a plant to silence a mobile form of DNA called RNA (ribonucleic acid). RNA are small, mobile pieces of DNA.

Some think that these sprays can be safely rushed to market. “A spray can be used immediately without having to go through the years involved in development of a GM or conventionally bred crop,” says David Baulcombe of the University of Cambridge, who studies gene silencing in plants.

Baulcombe says that the effects are temporary. Is that supposed to allay our concerns? RNA is a fundamental building block for life—needless to say, altering RNA should not be done lightly. Potential side effects range from RNA escaping and affecting native plants and animals, to causing viruses to run rampant. People looking to make a buck off of hacking nature’s programs never talk about the potential consequences.

We are in the Wild West of genetic manipulation, hacking, and experimentation. Government funding for projects using CRISPR, a gene-editing tool, has skyrocketed in recent years, and there’s a mad dash for patents that use the technology. You can even “play God” and experiment with genetic engineering in the comfort of your own home with do-it-yourself CRISPR kits that cost less than $200. Fun for the whole family! What could possibly go wrong?

GMOs have gotten a fair amount of bad publicity, especially after Congress sold out voters by passing a phony GMO labeling law. There is speculation that the Monsanto/Bayer merger currently underway may allow Monsanto to hide from bad PR by rebranding itself. Gene-editing technology may offer another way to escape the GMO label or make it so ubiquitous that labeling is no longer possible.

You can read more about these issues on our GMO Fact Check site.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

In Pain? The Feds Don’t Care!

Is Your Town Leaking Lead?

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Is Your Town Leaking Lead?

Governments and much of the press seem to be covering up that Flint is just the tip of the iceberg. State-based Action Alert!

We reported last month that in Flint, Michigan, tap water in residents’ homes contained astonishing levels of lead, as high as 104 parts per billion (ppb), when the Environmental Protection Agency’s limit for lead in drinking water is 15 ppb. We also noted that research has linked lead exposure to violent and criminal behavior.

A new report from Reuters shows that lead exposure is not an isolated problem in a few communities. In the investigation, Reuters found about 3,000 areas with lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint at the peak of that city’s crisis.

Flint, at least, has received national attention and funding to combat lead poisoning—most of these communities have received neither. In most cases, the exposure is a result of crumbling infrastructure: old paint, plumbing (lead is found in plastics, particularly PVC pipes), and industrial waste. There is no safe level of lead exposure. It is a powerful neurotoxin, and experts say that in locations where lead poisoning remains common, children will experience developmental delays and will start out behind other children in school.

Considering the effects that lead has on developing brains—and the links to criminal behavior—this is of tremendous concern. As we’ve noted elsewhere, chelation therapy is the gold standard for removing toxic metals such as lead. Conventional doctors rarely use it, but integrative doctors are well versed in the benefits of chelation therapy for removing lead and other toxins from the body.

Reasonable people might think the FDA would be promoting the best therapy for this health problem. Unfortunately, reason does not govern the FDA; Big Pharma profits do. Chelation therapy offers meager profit potential to Big Pharma, and therefore the FDA is hostile toward chelation—despite its effectiveness against lead.

State-based Action Alerts! Write to your state legislators and urge them to address this critical issue. Please send your message immediately.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

In Pain? The Feds Don’t Care!

Roses are Red, Violets are Blue—and Gene Silencing Spray Can Change Both Their Hues!

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