Chemotherapy was originally derived from deadly mustard gas used as chemical warfare in World War I

Did you know that 75 percent of MDs and oncologists would never use chemotherapy on themselves or their relatives? Why? They know that there’s only a 2.3 percent average chance that it works, and for the rest of humanity, it destroys the entire human immune system and creates new cancers in the blood and body. It’s true; cancer is the uncontrolled growth and errant replication of cells that are exposed to an overload of chemicals, synthetics, heavy metal toxins and other carcinogens. Guess what’s in flu shots, diet soda and cigarettes?

Chemotherapy “alkylating agents” are composed of tetrazines and nitrogen mustards – chemicals that lead to other cancers. So, while you stave off certain bad cell divisions, you destroy healthy gut flora and the entire endocrine system, throwing off your hormonal balance and polluting the blood, heart and brain with carcinogens, which are what caused your cancer in the first place.

Flu shots contain mercury and formaldehyde – two of the most deadly neurotoxins known to medical science

Formaldehyde is a dangerous environmental pollutant that is used to embalm dead people in order to preserve their corpses. Formaldehyde is ranked as one of the most hazardous compounds to human health, and can cause liver damage, gastrointestinal issues, reproductive deformation and respiratory distress. You thought you got a little bit of the flu when you got your flu jab? That was your reaction to the formaldehyde!

Formaldehyde is a well-established neurotoxin that is detrimental to learning, behavior and memory. The levels of formaldehyde in the brain increase substantially with most neurodegenerative disorders. Coincidence? Did you know that the CDC has the nerve to recommend flu shots to pregnant women? That is totally insane.

Scientists and vaccine manufacturers use formaldehyde to “deaden” or weaken the influenza virus strains, but those viruses can lay dormant for extended periods of time and then suddenly “wake up” when fed by viral proteins (hemagglutinin) in your blood, especially when the virus sticks to cells lining the respiratory tract. That’s when the virus sheds its “coat.” The viral RNA enters the nucleus of the host cell and literally hijacks it.

Injecting formaldehyde into the body can cause blindness, brain damage, seizures, and yes, even cancer. Flu shots can lead to facial paralysis, as explained in the “post-marketing experience” section on the vaccine insert. Have you ever read that insert? Take a look right here.

Then, your body has to contend with massive amounts of mercury, which have been injected into your muscle tissue. Your body reacts violently as your immune system goes into a state of complete and utter panic. It’s called fight or flight. Why? Mercury is the most toxic non-radioactive element on earth. According to the CDC, no amount of mercury injected into the body has been determined as being too much, but eating or drinking mercury (like in fish or water) is very dangerous. Flu shots still contain massive amounts of mercury, a most potent neurotoxin, listed as thimerosal. However, thimerosal is just a fancy name for an anti-fungal chemical compound (C₉H₉HgNaO₂S) which consists of at least 50 percent mercury.

Mercury tests conducted on vaccines at the Natural News Forensic Food Lab using high-end laboratory instrumentation have revealed a shockingly high level of toxic mercury in an influenza vaccine (flu shot) made by GlaxoSmithKline (lot #9H2GX). Tests conducted document mercury in the Flulaval vaccine at a shocking 51 parts per million, or over 25,000 times higher than the maximum contaminant level of inorganic mercury in drinking water set by the EPA. (Read more news about vaccine ingredients at Vaccines.news)

Cigarettes or diet soda – which gives you cancer faster?

Artificial sweeteners are just that: artificial. That means your body is completely fooled into thinking it’s food because it tastes sweet and it’s entering your body with other food or beverages. Some synthetic, lab-made sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose and sorbitol can remain inside your cleansing organs for weeks, months and even years. Aspartame has been found lodged in the brains of children. Aspartame’s toxic effects are cumulative, building up over time. This complex molecule is made up of 50 percent phenylalanine, 40 percent aspartic acid and 10 percent methanol, and each of these substances can be dangerous to humans as they work together in the body. In children with the PKU phenylektoneuric gene (PKU), aspartame damages the developing brain.

Cigarettes, on the other hand, are loaded with formaldehyde, pesticides, fiberglass (it’s in the filter), aluminum and other deadly heavy metal toxins.

The new Splenda Essentials cleverly adds vitamin B and antioxidants to its core ingredient sucralose, a non-nutritive sweetener that does not grow in sugar fields, but is rather manufactured in laboratories as a synthetic compound. That’s right: At some point during the manufacturing process, the natural sugar disappears, and what remains are chlorinated atoms that are bulked up with dextrose and maltodextrin. You see, Sucralose is produced by substituting three chlorine atoms for three hydroxyl groups. Sucralose is not approved for use in most European countries, where national healthcare programs are prominent. Go figure.

So, now you’re asking: What’s the big deal with ingesting synthetic food agents? The Japanese Food Sanitation Council reports that up to 40 percent of ingested sucralose is absorbed and can concentrate in the liver, kidney and gastrointestinal tract. Can you say, “Irritable bowel syndrome, ulcers and cancer polyps,” three times, really fast?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wants to pull deadly mercury out of all flu shots

The one and only Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who was named one of Time magazine’s “Heroes for the Planet” in May of 2010, just authored an incredible, mind-blowing book entitled, Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak: The Evidence Supporting the Immediate Removal of Mercury — a Known Neurotoxin — from Vaccines, and has now been appointed by President Donald J. Trump to run the new Vaccine Safety Commission for the United States of America. Get ready for the most violent chemicals to be removed from American medicine, especially the flu shot.

Let’s all stop eating, drinking and injecting chemicals while pretending it’s okay – because it’s not okay. Find organic truth in everything, from food to medicine. It’s out there. (Read more censored news at Censored.news)

Sources for this article include:

TruthWiki.org

TruthWiki.org

NaturalNews.com

CourseHero.com

Aim4Health.com

RobertFKennedyJr.com

BarnesAndNoble.com

Vaccines.news

SaneVax.org

NaturalNews.com

The largest study of its kind ever conducted on aspartame was put together by researchers from the University of Iowa. They looked at 60,000 women who consumed aspartame-laden diet beverages over the course of 10 years and found that those who consume two or more diet drinks per day are significantly more prone than other women to develop cardiovascular disease — and to die from it.

The paper compared the health outcomes of women who consume diet beverages to those who don’t, observing that those who do are 30 percent more likely to suffer some kind of cardiovascular event such as a heart attack or stroke. Among those who suffer such a fate, those who consume aspartame are 50 percent more likely to die from it compared to non-diet beverage drinkers. (Related: Learn about other toxic ingredients at Ingredients.news)

Dr. Ankur Vyas, lead investigator of the study, noted that this is one of the largest studies ever to look at aspartame, and that the findings are “consistent with some previous data, especially those linking diet drinks to metabolic syndrome.”

“On average, women who consumed two or more diet drinks a day were younger, more likely to be smokers, and had a higher prevalence of diabetes, high blood pressure, and higher body mass index,” the paper explained.

Aspartame, artificial sweeteners make people fat

It is hardly surprising, then, that diet soda sales have continued to plummet year after year as research such as this continues to emerge. Folks are waking up to the dangers of aspartame and switching to healthier alternatives like local honey and stevia extract. Not only is aspartame dangerous in these many ways, but it doesn’t even do the one thing that most people falsely believe it does — help them to lose weight.

There are a number of reasons for this, not the least of which include the fact that artificial sweeteners like aspartame do not activate the food rewards pathway in the brain that tells people that they’re full, and that it’s time to stop eating. Instead, diet soda consumers can chug can after can, and bottle after bottle, of their favorite chemical-laced soft drink and simply not stop.

Aspartame specifically has also been shown in studies to actually make people more hungry than if they simply consumed sugar. Since anything that tastes sweet enhances appetite, the hunger-promoting effects of aspartame end up leading people who consume it to also consume other foods — and lots of them!

There is also evidence to suggest that consuming aspartame increases fat storage in the body. Since phenylalanine and aspartate, the two chemical components of aspartame, interfere with insulin and leptin, both of which control how fat is handled by the body, their consumption actually causes people to pack on more pounds rather than shed them.

And then there’s the science suggesting that aspartame could increase the risk of brain tumors. A 1996 study published in the Journal of Neuropathology & Experimental Neurology identified a strong correlation between aspartame consumption and brain tumors in mice, leading the researchers of that study to conclude that “there is need for reassessing the carcinogenic potential of aspartame.”

Another web resource coming soon: Sweeteners.news, covering aspartame, stevia, Sucralose and more.

Sources:

EatLocalGrown.com

UIowa.edu

GlobalHealingCenter.com

NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov

China seems to have a lower cultural standard for business ethics. News accounts abound of dangerous Chinese products in the US marketplace. Examples include toxic lead paint on children’s toys, deadly melamine in pet food, and human feces used as fertilizer for rice and farmed fish. (RELATED: See more news about questionable food ingredients at Ingredients.news)

A minefield of quality

True Activist reports that the Chinese government has no system in place to determine what is organic, and that Chinese food exporters have taken to using the organic label as a means of circumventing US Customs inspections, “especially those foods that appear dirty or unusual.” The report also notes that “US Customs personnel often reject entire shipments of food from China due to the addition of dangerous and unsavory additives, the presence of drug residues, mislabeling, or the poor hygienic state of the food.”

“Even if ‘organically grown’ food from China was in fact that, the quality of the water used in the production of food intended for export is so contaminated that a person could fall ill just by handling it. Much of China’s industrial-scale agriculture is found along the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers, both of which are extremely polluted. This is because thousands upon thousands of Chinese factories also line these same rivers, adding their chemical waste to the same water used to irrigate the country’s food supply.” In a recent example of this behavior, a chemical plant along one of the tributaries of the Yangtze river was found to have dumped an excessive amount of ammonia into the water, and even after over 100 tons of dead fish were removed from the poisoned water, the water itself remained in use for many reasons, including agriculturally.

True Activist continues that the Chinese products to avoid, those most likely to be contaminated, are fish, chicken, apples, rice, mushrooms, green peas, black pepper, and garlic.

What’s in a name?

Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, stated in a previous Natural News scathing expose, that despite the USDA legal standard, which specifies the methods employed to produce the food, it still allows for any amount of toxins in the end product. In other words, if a chemical lab analysis were to find unacceptable levels of mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic,  aluminum, PCBs, BPA and other synthetic chemicals, then that is still acceptable under the organic label, as long as the grower did not add the “pesticides, herbicides, petroleum-based fertilizer, metals or synthetic chemicals to the crop.”

Mike continues, “the environment in which organic foods are produced is critical to the cleanliness of the final product.” China is a country almost entirely lacking in any environmental standards, and it is therefore a land incredibly polluted and ruinous. Regarding organic food grown in the US and Europe the word has integrity, and consistently is shown to contain less toxins than conventionally grown food. The Health Ranger makes clear the point “China is a culture of corruption, deception and exploitation.” Cheap foods from China end up on the shelves of American retailers such as Whole foods for no reason other than greater profits. The Health Ranger Store sells nothing from China except for Goji berries, which Mike Adams has tested and found to be clean. He further points out that the climate of dishonesty in China stands in contrast to the integrity of the organic label for food grown in the US and European nations such as Germany, The UK, and the Netherlands.

What can you do?

If you purchase organic food because you want to eat healthfully, you must be ever vigilant about the source. You can demand from your local retailer that the source country be listed for all organic products. Lamentably, Chinese agricultural commodities are at times sold to a buyer in a third country and when exported to the US, the country of origin is hidden. This would not matter if Chinese food exports were safe, but they are not. Consider growing your own organic garden, that you know is safe.

Read Metals.news to stay informed about toxic heavy metals in your food.

Sources:

TrueActivist.com

NaturalNews.com

USDA.gov

Some news outlets are calling it India’s “rice revolution” — a unique method of growing this long-prized grain that involves using variant planting methods and less water. Farmers like Sumant Kumar, who was recently featured in a piece published by the The Guardian, have been utilizing this novel technique to grow rice in relatively small land plots without pesticides, herbicides, or other synthetic additives — and you wouldn’t believe how much they’re producing.

Kumar, who cultivates rice in India’s poorest state, Bihar, is reportedly able to produce an astonishing 22.4 tons of rice per season on just one hectare (about 2.5 acres) of land, using only manure that he gathers from his farmyard. This exceptionally high volume is a world record, topping even the most “advanced” growing methods touted by international international humanitarian organizations as producing the highest yields. (RELATED: Learn more about how to grow your own food at home naturally.)

“It beat not just the 19.4 tonnes achieved by the ‘father of rice,’ the Chinese agricultural scientist Yuan Longping, but the World Bank-funded scientists at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, and anything achieved by the biggest European and American seed and GM companies,” wrote John Vidal for The Guardian.

Growing crops naturally is the best way to produce the highest yields of healthy food

Fortunately for India, Kumar isn’t alone in his endeavors. Many of his friends, neighbors, and even rivals in nearby states are adopting the natural growing methods that he uses after observing their success, which is unmatched by anything else in modern agriculture. Numerous other farmers have reported yields topping 17 tons of rice per hectare, which in some cases is more than double what they were producing using other methods such as biotechnology.

Kumar’s successes have been so great that he’s on occasion been accused of “cheating.” Even the state’s head of agriculture, a rice farmer himself, had his doubts — he actually came out to Kumar’s village to personally verify that he had, indeed, produced the 22.4 tons of rice on one hectare that he’d claimed.

The process Kumar and his friends are using to grow rice with this high level of success is known as the System of Rice (or root) Intensification, or SRI. It is being used to grow not only rice, but also wheat, potatoes, sugar cane, yams, tomatoes, garlic, aubergine, and a host of other crops at yields far higher than anything biotechnology or so-called “Golden Rice” has to offer.

“Instead of planting three-week-old rice seedlings in clumps of three or four in waterlogged fields, as rice farmers around the world traditionally do, the Darveshpura farmers carefully nurture only half as many seeds, and then transplant the young plants into fields, one by one, when much younger,” The Guardian explains about how it works.

“Additionally, they space them at 25cm intervals in a grid pattern, keep the soil much drier and carefully weed around the plants to allow air to their roots. The premise that ‘less is more’ was taught by Rajiv Kumar, a young Bihar state government extension worker who had been trained in turn by Anil Verma of a small Indian NGO called Pran (Preservation and Proliferation of Rural Resources and Nature), which has introduced the SRI method to hundreds of villages in the past three years.”

Sources:

WakingTimesMedia.com

TheGuardian.com

Benefits of this naturally healthy remedy

The combination of the three ingredients yields specific advantages to anyone who mixes then drinks them. It can help to prevent and treat gastrointestinal symptoms such as indigestion, and it has also been shown to ward off weight issues like obesity. With the obesity rate climbing ever higher, having people take a few minutes to prepare this drink can certainly provide a solution to a growing problem.

Taking a look at the benefits of the three individual ingredients gives some clues as to what makes them so powerful when combined:

• Garlic is high in allicin, which is anti-inflammatory and anti-aging. It offers a world of miraculous benefits, and when taken internally, it can be helpful for treating all sorts of infections.
• Honey contains high levels of vitamins, minerals and enzymes, and it’s an excellent antiseptic.
• Apple cider vinegar may provide the secret sauce in the garlic, honey and apple cider vinegar combination because of the sour-tasting liquid’s anti-obesity and indigestion-fighting properties.

You can imagine what a powerhouse you are creating when you combine the three items, in light of their individual properties and benefits even when used alone. (RELATED: Learn more news about the healing power of superfoods at Superfoods.news)

How to make this powerful mixture

Preparing for yourself a healthy drink of these three wonderful ingredients could not be easier or quicker. Simply measure out one cup of apple cider vinegar, one cup of honey and ten cloves of freshly minced garlic. Thoroughly combine the ingredients in a blender, and pour the mixture into a glass jar. Refrigerate that. Take two tablespoons of the mixture each day in the morning, before eating or drinking anything. The mixture keeps for five days, and after that it will not provide the same powerful benefits. If you would like to improve the flavor some, add a small amount of water or organic juice such as apple juice.

Tips for maximum effectiveness

To get the most healing power out of the garlic, honey and apple cider vinegar mixture, make sure you follow certain rules. First, preferably use only organic ingredients. Also, garlic should be as fresh as possible or even grown in your own garden. Avoid using garlic that feels spongy or has dried out. Honey needs to be raw and preferably local, and avoid at all costs the “fake” honey that has become more prevalent in recent years. It is a “mystery” concoction of additives masquerading as a healthy food. Use raw apple cider vinegar that contains particles, also known as the “mother,” that settle to the bottom of the bottle. Before pouring out some vinegar, shake the capped bottle vigorously to thoroughly mix the particles in with the liquid.

Additional benefits include reduced cholesterol and blood pressure, cancer treatment and diabetes improvement. What if one of the cures for those dreaded ailments is right in your kitchen? So cheers to your health, and enjoy the rewards that come from setting aside a few minutes daily to take care of yourself by drinking this remedy.

Learn more about natural remedies at Remedies.news.

Sources:

PinoyHealthGuide.com

SteptoHealth.com

LPI.OregonState.edu

FoodSafetyNews.com

FoodRenegade.com

In response, the sugar industry created advertisements that maintained no singular food is fattening, and so the mantra was born: a calorie is a calorie. The ads declared that there was no difference between calories from steak or sugar. There is a degree of truth to that: if you were to eat a surplus of calories daily for a sustained period of time, you would gain weight — even if all you were eating was steak or vegetables. Calories are, at their core, a unit of energy.

However, what those calories are comprised of can have very different effects on your body. (RELATED: Learn more about harmful food ingredients at Ingredients.news)

What actually happens when you eat sugar

So when you eat sucrose, also known as table sugar, your digestive tract breaks it down into fructose and glucose. It is then transported directly to the liver via the portal vein. Fructose (and high fructose corn syrup) are especially problematic for the body: your liver will keep absorbing the fructose, even when its energy stores are full. This leads to fat deposits in the liver, and more fat circulating in your bloodstream — which raises triglycerides and cholesterol, and in turn, raises the risk for conditions like heart disease and type-2 diabetes.

Liver fat may also decrease insulin’s ability to do it’s job, which increases the risk of diabetes. And when insulin isn’t working well,  the amount of fat the liver sends out into the blood also increases. It creates a rather vicious cycle where the more sugar you eat, the sicker you become — and the less capable your body is of recovering from it.

(Related: Learn more about what you’re eating at Fresh.news)

Countless studies have pointed to sugar intake as a means of developing insulin resistance. For example, a 2007 study that was published in The Journal Of Biological Chemistry found that sucrose-sweetened water induced insulin resistance, exacerbated memory deficits and increased amyloid plaque formation in mice with Alzheimer’s disease. The team noted that their research indicated that dietary sugar plays a plausible role in the development of Alzheimer’s.

Another study found that feeding sucrose to normal, healthy rats caused a significant loss of insulin sensitivity. And you can bet there are more; decades of research have shown that sugar can, and is, harmful. As The New York Times reports, “By the 1960s, researchers in these fields had clearly demonstrated that different carbohydrates, like glucose and fructose, are metabolized differently, leading to different hormonal and physiological responses, and that fat accumulation and metabolism were influenced profoundly by these hormones.”

The detrimental health effects of sugar consumption

In spite of the understood biological processes involved that clearly demonstrate at least one pathway for sugar to cause insulin resistance and other health issues — the industry, and even the American Diabetes Association (ADA) — are clutching their pearls of denial closer than ever. A 2014 article from the ADA even went so far as to declare that there is no evidence to suggest that “any dietary or added sugar has a unique or detrimental impact relative to any other source of calories on the development of obesity or diabetes.” This sentiment is echoed throughout the nutrition industry: a calorie is a calorie. And yet, actual biology dictates that this sentiment is a fallacy.

Research links sugar consumption to everything from to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and even Alzheimer’s disease. This is not new, and the research has been going on for decades. But, there is always someone you can pay off.

In the 1970s, Fred Stare — founder of the Harvard School of Public Health — was paid off by the sugar industry to sing the praises of sugar and absolve the substance of its health crimes in a lengthy journal supplement.

In 2016, it was revealed that the last five decades of research on sugar have largely been influenced by — you guessed it — the sugar industry. Internal documents revealed that industry big-wigs were paying off scientists to play down the ill effects of sugar all the way back in 1967.

The food industry’s hold over nutrition science continues to persist to this day, preventing real research from being conducted and encouraging the consumption of a substance they know is harmful.

Sources:

ITechPost.com

NYTimes.com

YouTube.com

HealthyEating.sfgate.com

NYTimes.com

The issue is only increasing in relevance as consumers continue to turn to organic rather than conventionally produced foods. From 2014 to 2015, the amount consumers spent on packaged organic products went from $12.8 billion to $13.4 billion. That doesn’t include sales of organic produce, bulk dried goods, meat, or meals at organic restaurants.

Yet you’ll still hear certain scientists, along with pesticide and GMO company spokespeople, claim that organic food is no better for you than “conventional” food. What’s the truth? (RELATED: Discover more news about healthful vs. harmful food ingredients at Ingredients.news)

Dramatically higher antioxidant content

The evidence for organic foods’ superior nutrient content just keeps getting stronger. In 2011, the journal Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences published what was, at that time, one of the most sophisticated analyses of the prior research comparing nutrient content of organic and conventional foods. They found that in general, organic foods tend to be higher in antioxidants (including vitamin C) and phenolic acids, but may be lower in protein and vitamin A.

They hypothesized that the main difference between the foods is the excessive use of synthetic fertilizers in conventional agriculture, which adds much more nitrogen to the plants’ diets. This leads to a reduction in stress, causing the plants to produce fewer defense-related secondary metabolites, such as vitamin C and other antioxidants. But it may cause the plant to accumulate more nitrogen in the form of protein, and to increase the content of secondary metabolites unrelated to defense, like vitamin A.

The researchers found that the levels of secondary plant metabolite-based nutrients in organic fruits and vegetables were about 12 percent higher in organic than in non-organic produce. Defense-related secondary metabolites in particular were 16 percent higher.

“This subset encompasses most of the important, plant-based antioxidants that promote good health,” the researchers wrote.

In 2014, an even more comprehensive analysis reviewed the findings of 343 prior peer-reviewed studies on the same topic. This paper, published in the British Journal of Nutrition, was the largest such analysis ever performed.

The researchers found much stronger results than the analysis from three years prior. They found that the antioxidant content of organic fruits and vegetable was between 19 and a shocking 69 percent higher than that of non-organic produce. This difference was large enough that shifting to an all-organic diet could provide the same nutritional benefit as eating an extra two servings of fruits and vegetables daily.

Organic food lower in poisons

Higher nutrient content isn’t the only reason that organic food is better for your health, of course. Organic food is guaranteed free of GMOs, which have been linked to organ and reproductive problems.

It is also free from the residue of dangerous pesticides that have also been linked to problems across the health spectrum.

According a study published in the journal Environmental Research, switching to an organic diet can reduce an adult’s overall pesticide exposure by 90 percent. Another study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, showed the same effect over the long-term. It found that study participants who reported eating a higher proportion of organic produce showed evidence of significantly less organophosphate pesticide exposure than participants who ate mostly conventional produce.

This translates into real health benefits. According to a letter published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, you can reduce your pesticide-related health risk by 94 percent just by eating only organic forms of the top six most pesticide-intensive fruits (currently strawberries, apples, nectarines, peaches, grapes and cherries).

Despite the growing popularity and increasingly strong case for organic foods, farmers have been slow to convert their farmland to organic production. Several major food companies are now offering monetary incentives to help farmers make the switch.

Sources:

Collective-Evolution.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

EWG.org

In a new book called The Case Against Sugar, health journalist Gary Taubes singles out sugar as the main reason that people around the world are dying every second from diseases that were once unheard of in places that did not consume a Western diet or adopt a Western lifestyle. Here is a look at five of the best reasons you might want to skip the candy aisle and give up sugar for good. (RELATED: Learn more about harmful food ingredients at Ingredients.news)

Sugar can feed cancer

Consuming sugar can lead to insulin resistance, which occurs when cells can no longer respond to insulin in an effective manner. This spurs the body to produce more insulin to make up for it, and cancer calls need insulin to grow. This means that the connection between sugar and cancer is hard to deny. In particular, scientists have found that cancer cells use fructose in the process of dividing and reproducing.

Sugar can cause heart disease

Sugar’s ability to prompt the body to make extra insulin is also linked to high blood pressure and heart disease. The excess insulin stimulates the nervous system, which boosts the heart rate and constricts blood vessels. In fact, a study in JAMA Internal Medicine recently noted that sugar is now believed to be an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

Sugar consumption is also strongly linked to type-2 diabetes, especially when sugar consumption is combined with a sedentary lifestyle.

Sugar can boost your dementia risk

While the exact mechanisms of dementia remain a mystery, researchers think that the insulin resistance that comes from a high sugar intake impairs certain brain functions, stunting the brain’s ability to get rid of the plaques believed to cause Alzheimer’s disease. While some people believe dementia is inevitable, leading UK dementia specialist Dr. Naji Tabet says that it can be stopped or delayed in about a quarter of patients who are destined to develop it by reducing their sugar intake and body mass index.

Sugar can make smoking even worse for you

As if sugar didn’t already have a lot of very effective ways to send you to an early grave, Taubes points out that it can also join forces with that other deadly habit, smoking, to enable smokers to inhale the toxic smoke of cigarettes more deeply, boosting the absorption of carcinogens and nicotine cravings in one fell swoop.

Sugar is highly addictive

Sugar is so addictive that some experts have labeled it the most powerful addiction in the world, surpassing heroin, nicotine and cocaine. Breaking free from the habit might be one of the best things you ever do for your health, but it will also likely be one of the most difficult.

Quitting cold turkey is a common and uncomplicated approach. Don’t make the mistake of turning to toxic sweeteners. Consuming a bit of protein every few hours and sipping on herbal tea can help keep cravings at bay while you get through the withdrawal phase. You’ll not only improve your health, but you’ll also feel a lot better and more energized after a week or two – right around the time those cravings subside for good.

With the average American ingesting 150 pounds of refined sugar each year, Taubes gave the New York Post some interesting food for thought when he said that the single best way to fix the American diet is to cut out nearly all sugar.

Dessert menu? We’ll pass.

Sources:

NYPost.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

The community-supported Ethos Health agricultural program Weiss has founded is based on the principle that food is medicine, and that diet can be more effective than pharmaceutical drugs in the prevention and treatment of disease. (RELATED: Read about food as medicine to prevent disease at Prevention.news)

“Plant-based whole foods are the most powerful disease-modifying tools available to practitioners — more powerful than any drugs or surgeries,” Weiss told NJ.com. “I am talking about treating and preventing chronic disease — the heart attacks, the strokes, the cardiovascular disease, the cancers … the illnesses that are taking our economy and our nation down.”

The 348-acre ‘farmacy’ feeds 90 families

Weiss’s undergraduate degree in botany has no doubt come in handy in setting up his “farmacy.” And with the assistance of two local farmers, the project is now producing fresh organic fruits, vegetables and herbs for 90 families.

In turn, the families pay a membership fee and perform volunteer work on the farm, such as picking produce or pulling weeds. This helps people take a greater interest in the foods they eat – an awareness that is the foundation of good health, according to Weiss.

“Human health is directly related to the health of the environment, the production of food and how it is grown,” Weiss said. “I see this farm as an opportunity for me to take everything I’ve done all my life, all the biology and chemistry of plants I have studied, and link them to the human biological system.”

Although many mainstream medical practitioners continue to express skepticism regarding the “food as medicine” philosophy, there’s a growing body of evidence suggesting that it really works, and some of Weiss’s patients are good examples.

‘More than a miracle’

For instance, 90-year-old Angelina Rotella was able to recover from chronic heart disease and diabetes by switching to Weiss’s plant-based dietary prescription.

Rotella was confined a wheelchair and suffering from congestive heart failure when she first visited Dr. Weiss. Eight months later, after changing her diet, she had lost 40 pounds and was able to get around without the wheelchair.

Her daughter, Angie Rotella-Suarez, called it “more than a miracle,” and after witnessing their mother’s dramatic improvement, Rotella-Suarez and her sister also switched to Weiss’s vegan diet plan, enabling them both to also lose 40 pounds and reverse their pre-diabetic status.

Weiss is encouraged by those within the medical profession who advocate a plant-based diet, such as Kim A. Williams, former president of the American College of Cardiology, who has written essays on the subject and spoken out about his own experiences. Williams has said that he succeeded in lowering his cholesterol levels on a vegan diet after failing to do so on a low-fat diet.

Other health experts remain critical of the concept, labeling all-plant diets as “still experimental.”

Whether or not a strict vegan diet is superior to one that includes some protein obtained from meat is open to debate, but what does seem clear is that primarily consuming fresh organic fruits and vegetables is the true prescription for good health.

It doesn’t take a medical degree to understand that what you put in your body not only affects but actually determines your state of health – and in fact, a conventional education in medicine tends to steer people away from that realization.

One of the reasons that plant-based medicine is still considered “fringe” appears to be that the medical establishment feels threatened by an approach that might put them out of business.

Big Pharma and the cancer industry would simply cease to exist if plant-based therapies and remedies became mainstream. Stay informed about the healing benefits of fresh foods at Fresh.news.

Sources:

HealthyHolisticLiving.com

NJ.com

AltHealthWorks.com

Even China has phased out the use of paraquat. In 2012, the Chinese government announced that the pesticide would no longer be used in order to “safeguard people’s lives.” China is not a nation that is recognized for its environmental protection policies. If they’re concerned about this pesticide, it stands to reason we should be too.

And yet, for some reason, paraquat is still available in the United States — even in spite of the growing body of research that suggests it is an extremely harmful chemical that likely causes Parkinson’s disease.

You’d think that as Europe and China ceased to use paraquat, the US would follow suit. But instead, use of this pesticide has only begun to increase. Last year, some 7 million pounds of paraquat were used on 15 million acres of land. To make matters worse, more weeds are becoming resistant to more popular pesticides like Roundup, and paraquat is being marketed as a substitute.

(Related: Learn more about glyphosate at Glyphosate.news)

The Paraquat Controversy

Paraquat first became heavily scrutinized for its use in suicide attempts; just a single sip of this stuff can be lethal. But now, a wave of research on this contentious product has shown that there are less-immediate effects of exposure to paraquat — like Parkinson’s disease.

The New York Times has even reported that the Environmental Protection Agency made note of paraquat’s toxicity in a recent regulatory filing. The EPA itself said, “There is a large body of epidemiology data on paraquat dichloride and Parkinson’s disease.” The Times writer Danny Hakim writes that the EPA is currently debating on whether or not the pesticide should still be allowed to be sprayed on our country’s farmland. A decision is not expected to be reached until sometime in 2018.

Europe is known for their cautious approach to pesticides; several bans and moratoriums on a number of different products have taken place over the years. While often criticized by industry officials, paraquat shows that caution is truly necessary when dealing with toxic chemicals — even if they are supposedly not intended to be toxic to humans.

Research on paraquat and Parkinson’s disease

Perhaps what is most disturbing about paraquat is that science has indicated that the pesticide was possibly linked to Parkinson’s disease for more than twenty years. Over the last five years, however, research on the matter has grown more extensive.

In 2011, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) led a study that found two pesticides — rotenone and paraquat — were linked to a substantially higher risk of Parkinson’s disease. The study found that the use of either pesticide was linked a 2.5-time increase in risk of developing the condition. The research was a collaborative effort that included National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), which is part of the National Institutes of Health, and the Parkinson’s Institute and Clinical Center in Sunnyvale, CA.

Freya Kamel, Ph.D. is a researcher in the intramural program at NIEHS and co-author of the paper appearing online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. She stated that “Paraquat increases production of certain oxygen derivatives that may harm cellular structures. People who used these pesticides or others with a similar mechanism of action were more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease.”

A meta-analysis that was published in 2013 by the journal Neurology also found that exposure to paraquat and other similar pesticides could increase Parkinson’s disease risk. In their conclusion, the team states that current literature supports the theory that pesticide exposure increases Parkinson’s disease risk.

In 2000, which was almost 2 decades ago, research confirmed a potential link between pesticide exposure and Parkinson’s. Later, a 2006 study would show that exposure to paraquat resulted in a 70 percent higher chance of developing Parkinson’s disease. Research has been indicative of paraquat’s dangers for the last 20 years or so, and more recent research has only confirmed these suspicions.

The call to ban paraquat in the US has been a long time coming, but will the EPA listen?

Sources:

NYTimes.com

Neurology.org

NIH.gov