Brain damage is often a result of unnecessary stress and exposure to air pollutants.
You might reconsider the consequence of these seemingly innocuous habits when you learn how they can inhibit neurological function and cause the brain to age.
1. Understimulation
Remember, for the most part, your comfort zone isn’t doing you any favours. Break away from your normal routine and explore, write, create and travel. Try new things that stimulate the senses. Learning new skills keeps your brain young, and should be a priority at every age.
2. Skipping Breakfast
Not eating breakfast can lead to lower blood sugar levels, which ultimately deprives your brain of nutrients. If your brain isn’t given sufficient nutrition, it begins to degenerate. Eat a healthy, filling breakfast high in protein.
3. Smoking
Smoking cigarettes can cause obstruction of blood flow to the brain, and also can lead to escape of blood into brain tissue. Smoking can cause brain cells to shrink, and has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease, strokes,
4. Eating Sugar
Eating sugar triggers inflammatory responses throughout the body, which ultimately stresses and ages cells. This can effect “from cognitive function to psychological wellbeing”. Sugar also has been linked to depression and anxiety.
5. Sleep Deprivation
When you’ve chronically been deprived of sleep, the brain is forced to emit stress responses which inflame and incite brain degeneration. Not sleeping naturally induces bad moods, lethargy and leads to depression and weight gain due to cortisol production. If you are in this habit currently, you may not realize it, but once you have a little sleep, you will soon notice the positive effect it has on your brain.
6. Covering Head While Sleeping
If you’re dependent on sleeping with a blanket covering your head then you might want to reconsider. The more ventilation, the better, because you want to be exposed to oxygen. Allow the body and mind to breathe in fresh air— the fresher the better. Open the windows, use fans, light incense, herbs, or aromatherapy.
7. Overeating
When you overindulge on food, the body can become overloaded by the refined sugars and fats, and release stress responses as a result. These types of foods also clog arteries, which can lead to blockages in the brain.
8. Avoiding Change/ Not Speaking
The brain craves intellectual stimulation. Spend time with people who challenge your traditional patterns of thinking. The brain can get into ruts of small-minded thinking, which ultimately inhibit growth. This is how evolution is able to take place, by developing adaptation to our respective environments. Humans need to express themselves verbally and spend time with people who are different from themselves.
Some citifies (sic)experience more air pollution because they use wood-burning stoves or burn carbon in electricity production. You can look up the air quality index in your area, here.
10. Not resting the brain.
The brain functions like a muscle, and therefore it needs to be rested in order for exercise to be integrated. When the brain experiences the type of relaxation induced by meditation, it clears passages and triggers change on a deep level. This improves cognitive functions. Most daily actions are taking place on a superficial level, which produces a natural anxiety in most people, which is an unhealthy habit. Meditation helps inhibit this type of hyperactivity, stressful mode of the brain.
What a joke. There is no democracy in the USA. When did the USA have democracy anyway? It’s all a game of smoke and mirrors created by the corporatocracy and dark forces behind the scene which is propagated by the useless US mainstream media. Go home stupid bloody Yankees and fix your own country!
The Western Deep State wants to introduce “democracy” in Venezuela through political sanctions, financial system hacking, and religious war due to the country’s refusal to surrender control of its vast energy resources to the Wall Street bankers.
These multi-pronged Deep State attacks on Venezuela has been very persistent in the last decade.
As always, the Western media continue to be a critical tool in demonizing Latin American leaders who continue to exercise Bolivarian principles of defiance.
The allegations against Venezuela’s vice-president could not have been more serious. Announcing sanctions against Tareck El Aissami this week, the US Treasury Department described him as a “prominent drug trafficker” who had overseen and even partially owned narcotics shipments from Venezuela to the US.
As governor of Aragua state and minister of the interior, he allegedly oversaw or partially owned drug shipments of more than one tonne from Venezuela, and dealt directly with Mexico’s Zetas cartel and Colombian narco-boss Daniel El Loco Barrera. In January he was promoted to vice-president.
But as bad as that sounds, El Aissami is only the latest – if the most highly placed – in a long list of Venezuelan officials or people close to power who have been tied to drug trafficking.
The consequence of what the media is trying to say is that the people of Venezuela are immature to put in power these druglords and charlatans, and the West is morally right to introduce another Libya-like democracy into the region.
What lies behind the attacks on Venezuela?
April 10, 2017 03:23 by ThePrisma
The destabilizing plan being pursued is not new. Why is there this insistence on thwarting the Bolivarian Revolution? The Venezuelan Foreign Minister has said that “never before in the history of international organizations have we seen unlawful, deviant, arbitrary, biased behaviour.”
Caracas (PL) Venezuela was victorious once again in the Organization of American States (OAS) after it managed to thwart the interventionist and meddling efforts driven by its Secretary General, Luis Almagro.
Bolivarian diplomacy successfully dealt with the plans of a powerful alliance led by the United States Department of State and supported by some right-wing governments in the region, with dignity and integrity. For this, Almagro acted as the right hand of the alliance by aligning himself with the most reactionary groups in the country.
The destabilizing plan being pursued against Venezuela is not new. In June of last year, the head of the so-called “ministry of colonies” – as Cuba’s Eminent Foreign Minister, Raúl Roa García, described the OAS – tried to unsuccessfully activate the Inter-American Democratic Charter, as an instrument of coercion and blackmail, against the Bolivarian government.
Almagro’s dream
On March 14, Almagro presented a report on Venezuela funded by the so-named International Crisis Group NGO which is supported by US oil company Exxon Mobil; and is sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute which has clear interests in Venezuelan energy resources.
This same step had been taken a year earlier, in June 2016, and the results were the same: it did not work despite Washington’s political backing. But some wonder why there is this insistence in thwarting the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.
According to reports issued by the powers that be in Caracas, the secretary general of the OAS maintains close ties with the most reactionary factions of Venezuela’s extreme right, and between 2016 and 2017 met 26 times with representatives of these opposition groups.
It is striking that more than 70% of his messages on Twitter”s social network are aimed at attacking Venezuela, its government and its officials.
Undoubtedly, Almagro took sides with the right-wing groups that are fighting for power against the government presided over by Nicolás Maduro, despite the latter’s victory at the ballot box and the fact that these groups are not inclined towards dialogue as a means of reaching national agreements .
Hence Almagro’s continual “reports”, which were described by the Venezuelan Minister for Foreign Affairs, Delcy Rodríguez, as “a complex strategy of intervention in the medium and short term.”
Why is he insisting on the Democratic Charter?
The Inter-American Democratic Charter, adopted on September 11, 2001, in a special session of the OAS Assembly, held in Lima, Peru, is a mechanism that would be applied in case of a rupture in the democratic institutional political process or the legitimate exercise of power by an elected government, in any of the member states of the organization.
By triggering this, a temporary suspension of the right to participate of an OAS member state can be approved, although to realise this a two thirds majority vote is required.
Exclusion from this inter-American regional process limits the sanctioned government’s ability to take action and it would also be isolated and sanctioned internationally.
Application of the Inter-American Democratic Charter to Venezuela – according to the above thinking and as part of the plan orchestrated by Almagro – could have consequences for other regional organizations, such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of America, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, The Union of South American Nations, Petrocaribe, among others – which promote social integration in the region.
Obviously, that was the task entrusted to Almagro by the US State Department, which, if carried out, could lead to a dangerous destabilization of Latin America comparable with what has already been experienced in the Middle East and in some areas of Eastern Europe.
Venezuela continues to struggle
In a recent press conference, the Venezuelan Foreign Minister stated that “never before in the history of international organizations have we seen unlawful, deviant, arbitrary, biased behaviour. The behaviour shown towards Venezuela really has been unprecedented and unusual, marked by attacks which articulate a plan of intervention. ”
For Rodríguez, with its new interventionist attitude, “the OAS is returning to the darkest pages in its history,” with a shameful record of silence in the face of coup d’états, systematic violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms; and always at the service of the oligarchies and the most reactionary power groups.
The high ranking official explained that the plans that were being plotted against Bolívar’s homeland “via vile blackmail, pressure and extortion” by Washington were known about.
He added that two US congressmen threatened “in a crude, vulgar and brutal way member states of the organisation, sister states that remained standing with their heads held high, their morals to the fore, defending the dignity and also the sovereignty and independence of the Great Homeland.” (PL) *Journalist in Venezuela
Late last year, the banking system of Venezuela was sabotaged when its electronic payment system collapsed.
President Maduro branded the attack an act of international aggression against Venezuela, orchestrated to hurt the people in the country.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced Saturday the arrest of those responsible for the banking system sabotage that saw the nation’s electronic payments system collapse in the country on Friday.
Five employees from Credicar, a company in charge of credit and debit card operations in the country, were arrested Friday night. “It was a deliberate action what happened in Credicar, it’s confirmed, and those responsible have been detained,” said Maduro.
While this formula of hybrid geopolitical interventions is familiar to all of the advanced readers of this site, most of the people in the Americas have yet to understand the hidden agenda which motivated the leaders behind the mass actions, which complements the power of Western propaganda which fueled color revolutions in many parts of the world, and within the United States, too.
As typical in any religious countries, Vatican embedded agents has also tried to do their part in instigating rift right at the core of the Venezuelan society. The Catholic priests unleashed their anti-Maduro propaganda to solicit an aggressive response from his die hard supporters.
Collectives are pro-government groups that organize community events and social projects, but they also have been accused of intimidation and violence against those who oppose the government.
“They started to shout insults, then would be calm, and then they would shout again,” said Maria Cisneros, who has attended the church for 20 years. She requested her name be changed for this story out of fear of retaliation.
“These were aggressive people, with aggressive vocabulary, using profanity, and they said all kinds of vulgarities; we felt very attacked,” she said.
The Deep State is also insulated from a possible coordinated retaliation of its sanctions against targeted country because it is only the people of US that will suffer from it, and not the Deep State crowd themselves.
‘Get your dirty hands out of Venezuela’ – Maduro to Trump
Published time: 20 May, 2017 17:23
The United States should “get out of Venezuela,” the country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, said after Washington slapped Venezuelan top judiciary officials with sanctions to “support” the Venezuelan people.
The new sanctions package, targeting the chief judge and seven other members of Venezuela’s Supreme Court, was imposed by the US Treasury to “advance democratic governance” in the country.
“Enough meddling … Go home, Donald Trump. Get out of Venezuela,” Maduro said in a speech broadcasted live on TV, as cited by Reuters. “Get your dirty hands out of here.”
The Venezuelan president’s tirade echoed a statement issued by the government, accusing the US of intervening into country’s internal affairs and seeking to further destabilize it.
“President Trump’s aggressions against the Venezuelan people, its government and its institutions have surpassed all limits,” the statement said.
It urged the US to focus on sorting out its own internal problems, instead of meddling in Venezuela’s affairs.
“The extreme positions of a government just starting off only confirmed the discriminatory, racist, xenophobic, and genocidal nature of US elites against humanity and its own people, which has now been heightened by this new administration which asserts white Anglo-Saxon supremacy,” the statement read, as cited by Reuters.
The sanctions imposed by the US Treasury include freeze of any assets the eight judges might have in the US, deny them entering the country, and prohibit US citizens to do any business with them. The situation in Venezuela “is a disgrace to humanity” and the country “has been unbelievably poorly run,” Donald Trump said Thursday.
“We haven’t really seen a problem like that, I would say, in decades,” Trump added.
Thousands of anti-government protesters hit the streets Saturday with large crowds marching down the streets of the capital, Caracas, and the city of Christobal in the western Tachira state, which has grown into one of the main centers of the ongoing unrest.
In light of the worsening food shortage in Venezuela, Putin decided to send “several thousand tons of wheat each month to the struggling South American country.”
Russia’s Putin pledges to send food to starving Venezuela
May 19, 2017 Associated Press
The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry announced Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had promised to start delivering food after speaking on the phone with President Nicolas Maduro.
Flour is one of the hardest goods to come by in shortage-hit Venezuela. It is rarely available in regular grocery stores. Instead, people find it on the black market or wait in line for hours to buy two packages each at state-run stores.
The gesture of support for the Maduro administration comes at a key moment. Regional governments have been distancing themselves from the embattled socialist president and calling on him to respect democratic norms.
One by one, these Latin American countries, e.g. Brazil and Argentina, succumbed to the will of the Deep State due in part to the ignorance of the middle class to the above methods that are being used in the region.
At present, only a combined Russia and China intervention might deter a complete Deep State usurpation of Latin America, unless some form of miracle will one day wake up the American “Patriots” to rise up in arms against the latter.
A recent scientific study just proved something that viewers of CNN have probably suspected for years: Journalists’ brains function at a lower level than the rest of the population.
A study conducted by neuroscientist Tara Swift and the London Press Club determined that “the highest functions of journalists brains were operating at a lower level than the average population, due to dehydration, self-medicating, and fueling their brains with caffeine and high-sugar foods”
“However, the pressures of the job are not affecting journalists ability to endure and bounce back from adversity in the long term, due to a belief that their work has meaning,” according to a press release from the London Press Club.
Journalists’ brains show a lower level of executive function – that is, the ability of the brain to regulate emotions, suppress biases, switch between tasks, solve complex problems and think flexibly and creatively – than the average person because to their heavy drinking, and caffeine consumption. They also eat too many high-sugar foods, and don’t devote enough time to mindfulness.
Dr Swart recruited 31 journalists from across the industry to participate in the study. Participants were required to record their eating and drinking habits, answer a brain profile questionnaire, take blood tests, and wear heart-rate variability monitors.
The study was initially launched to examine how journalists manage to “survive and thrive” while managing such high levels of occupational stress. “Journalism,” the press release notes, “is one of many industries under an increasing amount of pressure in the digital age. Low pay, frequent deadlines, and high levels of accountability all contribute to high reported stress levels.”
The U.S. spends more than $1 trillion each year fighting the damaging health effects of sugar, which includes obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer
Obesity is responsible for an estimated 500,000 cancer cases worldwide each year
Both sugar and overeating in general cause mitochondrial dysfunction, which can lead to DNA damage and result in cancer
According to the Credit Suisse Research Institute’s 2013 study1 “Sugar: Consumption at a Crossroads,” as much as 40 percent of US healthcare expenditures are for diseases directly related to the overconsumption of sugar.
Incredibly, we spend more than $1 trillion each year fighting the damaging health effects of sugar, which runs the gamut from obesity and diabetes, to heart disease and cancer.
The fact that sugar and obesity are linked to an increased risk of cancer is now becoming well-recognized. According to a report2 on the global cancer burden, published in 2014, obesity is responsible for an estimated 500,000 cancer cases worldwide each year.
Nearly two-thirds of obesity-related cancers — which include colon, rectum, ovary, and womb cancers — occur in North America and Europe.3 A more recent British report estimates obesity may result in an additional 670,000 cancer cases in the UK alone over the next 20 years.
According to BBC News,4 the Cancer Research UK and the UK Health Forum report are calling for a ban on junk food ads aired before 9pm to address out of control rise in obesity and obesity-related diseases.
Meanwhile, a German investigation into diet-induced diseases and related treatment costs reveal that sugar-induced oral disease represents the greatest chunk of that nation’s health care costs.
“… [T]he substantial impact of sugar consumption found in the study was mainly due to the costs of treating caries and other diseases of the hard tissue of teeth, hypertensive and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus, rectal and colon cancer, as well as chronic kidney disease.”
How Excess Sugar and Obesity Promotes Cancer
One of the key mechanisms by which sugar promotes cancer and other chronic disease is through mitochondrial dysfunction.
Since sugar is not our ideal fuel, it burns dirty with far more reactive oxygen species than fat, which generates far more free radicals which in turn causes mitochondrial and nuclear DNA damage along with cell membrane and protein impairment.
Research6 has also shown that chronic overeating in general has a similar effect. Most people who overeat also tend to eat a lot of sugar-laden foods — a double-whammy in terms of cancer risk.
Chronic overeating places stress on the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), the membranous network found inside the mitochondria of your cells. When the ER receives more nutrients than it can process, it signals the cell to dampen the sensitivity of the insulin receptors on the surface of the cell.
Thus continuously eating more than your body really needs promotes insulin resistance by the mere fact that your cells are stressed by the work placed on them by the excess nutrients. Insulin resistance in turn is at the heart of most chronic disease, including cancer.
High-Fructose Corn Syrup Primary Culprit in Cancer
This also helps explain why intermittent fasting (as well as other forms of calorie restriction) is so effective for reversing insulin resistance, reducing your risk of cancer, and increasing longevity.
Obesity, caused by a combination of eating too much refined fructose/sugar and rarely if ever fasting, may also promote cancer via other mechanisms, including chronic inflammation and elevated production of certain hormones, such as estrogen, which is associated with an increased risk for breast cancer.
According to recent research,7,8 from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, refined sugar not only significantly increases your risk of breast cancer, it also raises your risk of tumors spreading to other organs.
Moreover, this study found that it was primarily the refined fructose in high-fructose corn syrup, found in most processed foods and beverages that was responsible for the breast tumors and the metastasis.
Without Sugar, Cancer Cannot Thrive
One of the most powerful strategies I know of to avoid and/or treat cancer is to starve the cancer cells by depriving them of their food source, which is primarily sugar and excessive protein.
Unlike all the other cells in your body, which can burn carbs or fat for fuel, cancer cells have lost that metabolic flexibility and can only thrive if there enough sugar present.
German cancer researcher Dr. Otto Warburg was actually given a Nobel Prize in 1931 for discovering this. Sadly very few experts have embraced his metabolic theory of cancer, but have embraced the nuclear genetic theory that is a downstream side effect of mitochondrial dysfunction.
Make no mistake about it, the FIRST thing you want to do if you want to avoid or treat cancer if you have insulin or leptin resistance (which 85 percent of people do) is to cut out all forms of sugar/fructose and grain carbs from your diet, in order to optimize the signaling pathways that contribute to malignant transformation.
Reduce Your Fructose and Non-Fiber Carb Intake
I recommend reducing your total fructose intake to a maximum of 25 grams/day, from all sources, including fruit. If you are insulin resistant, you’d do well to make your upper limit 15 grams/day.
Cancer patients would likely be best served by even stricter limits. For a more detailed discussion please review my interview with Professor Thomas Seyfried, who is one of the leading cancer pioneer researchers in promoting how to treat cancer nutritionally. I personally believe that most would benefit from reducing all non-fiber carbs (total carbs minus fiber), not just fructose, to less than 100 grams per day.
I typically keep mine around 50 to 60 grams every day.
The easiest way to dramatically cut down on your sugar and fructose consumption is to switch to REAL foods, as most of the added sugar you end up with comes from processed fare, not from adding a teaspoon of sugar to your tea or coffee. But there are other ways to cut down well. This includes:
Cutting back on the amount of sugar you personally add to your food and drink
Using stevia or luo han instead of sugar and/or artificial sweeteners. You can learn more about the best and worst of sugar substitutes in my previous article, “Sugar Substitutes — What’s Safe and What’s Not“
Using fresh fruit in lieu of canned fruit or sugar for meals or recipes calling for a bit of sweetness
Using spices instead of sugar to add flavor to your meal
Signs of Progress, But Dietary Guidelines Are Still Flawed
The excess consumption of sugar in the U.S. can be directly traced to flawed dietary guidelines and misplaced agricultural subsidies. Progress is being made however, with the 2015 to 2020 U.S. dietary guidelines9 now recommending limiting your sugar intake to a maximum of 10 percent of your daily calories.10Google Trends11 also reveal that more people are now concerned with low-sugar diets than low-fat diets.
Unfortunately, the dietary guidelines still suggest limiting saturated fat to 10 percent of calories, which is likely far too low for most people. Tragically, it also makes no distinction between healthy saturated fats and decidedly unhealthy trans fats. Saturated fats are actually very important for optimal health, and those with insulin/leptin resistance may need upwards of 50 to 80 percent of their daily calories from healthy fat.
Trans fats, on the other hand, have no redeeming health value, and the evidence suggests there’s no safe limit for trans fats. Besides that glaring flaw, the conundrum with the new guidelines is that both sugar and fat should be limited to 10 percent each of daily calories.
This completely ignores the fact that as you cut out sugar (carbs), you need to replace that lost energy with something else, and that something else is healthy fat, such as that found in avocado, organic seeds and nuts, raw organic butter, cheese, and coconut oil, just to name a few.
They do get a number of things right though. In addition to the recommendation to limit sugar, the limits for dietary cholesterol have been removed, giving the thumbs up for eggs and other cholesterol-rich foods. They also note that most Americans need to reduce the amount of red meat consumed.
As I’ve discussed before, the risks of eating too much protein include an increased risk for cancer, as it can have a stimulating effect on the mTOR pathway, which plays an important role in many diseases, including cancer.
When you reduce protein to just what your body needs, mTOR remains inhibited, which helps minimize your chances of cancer growth. As a general rule, I recommend limiting your protein to one-half gram of protein per pound of lean body mass, which for most people amounts to 40 to 70 grams of protein a day.
U.S. Government Has Long Encouraged Sugar Consumption
With one food — sugar — causing such pervasive health problems and so much national expense (again, about $1 trillion per year!), U.S. regulators would do well by encouraging lower sugar consumption. Yet they don’t. The new dietary guidelines are one step in the right direction, but to really get to the root of the obesity problem, they also need to rethink sugar and corn subsidies.12
Current farm subsidies bring you high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), fast food, junk food, corn-fed beef from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), monoculture, and a host of other contributors to our unhealthy contemporary diet. Both the sugar and corn industry (from which you get high fructose corn syrup) are heavily subsidized by taxpayers. Moreover, as noted by The Washington Post last year:13
“The [sugar] industry used to boast that its government protection does not cost taxpayers anything directly, but that claim has been exploded due to recent market developments that forced the federal government to, in effect, buy up tons and tons of sugar and sell it to ethanol refiners at a loss — so as to prop up prices. Taxpayers took a hit of some $258 million in fiscal 2014.”
Billions of dollars go to corn farmers who have driven down the price of corn so deeply that HFCS is now the number one source of calories in the standard American diet, simply because it’s so cheap. Meanwhile, very few farm subsidies are being doled out to the farmers who grow your produce.
Between 1995 and 2012, the amount gifted to corn growers was $84,427,099,356. Compare this with the amount that went to apple growers: $242,064,005.14 In a 2012 report entitled “Apples to Twinkies,” it was determined that each year your tax dollars (in the form of subsidies) would allow you to buy 19 Twinkies but less than a quarter of one red delicious apple.
There can be little doubt that the U.S. government’s decision to subsidize junk food ingredients rather than real food, such as fresh produce, plays a major role in American’s eating habits, since people will typically eat that which is available and that which they can afford.
At present, most Americans spend upwards of 90 percent of their food budgets on processed foods, which are typically loaded with added sugars/fructose, and offer little in terms of nutritional value. Obesity is a result of such eating habits, and making real food more readily available at lower prices could go a long way toward reversing this trend.
Study: Reducing Sugar Content and Taxing Soda May Greatly Reduce Obesity
The suggestion of a soda tax has been flouted for a number of years now, both in the U.S. and Great Britain,15 and elsewhere. The vast majority have failed due to intensive lobbying and local anti-tax campaigns by the sugar industry. It did succeed in one place however. In Mexico, where a 10 percent tax on sugary beverages was enacted as of January 1, 2014, sales of such beverages shrunk by 12 percent in one year.16 As reported by Newsweek,17
“The decline in consumption was greatest amongst those who earned the least, and appears to be going up over time as people’s habits change … Frank Chaloupka, an economist at the University of Illinois at Chicago who wasn’t involved in the study, says that the tax ought to be applied elsewhere, and would improve health by encouraging a lower consumption of sugar.
‘I think sugary beverage taxes should be an important part of a comprehensive approach to promoting healthier diets and reducing obesity,’ he says. ‘The experiences in Mexico are demonstrating their effectiveness in altering consumer behavior, which will almost certainly eventually show up” as a decline in obesity, he adds.'”
Other investigations suggest simply lowering the sugar content of sodas may do the trick. A British study,18 which assessed the potential health benefits of gradually lowering sugar content in beverages over a 5-year period, suggests such a strategy might prevent 1 million cases of obesity over 20 years.
While the impact on any given individual would be quite small, reducing the average person’s calorie consumption by a mere 38 calories a day by the end of the 5th year (equating to a weight loss of just 1.2 pounds), the grand societal effect could still be pronounced.
By reducing people’s weight even slightly, an estimated 274,000 to 309,000 cases of type 2 diabetes could be prevented over the following two decades. Still, when you consider that the sugar and corn industries are fighting to receive the largest subsidies and market share to give you cancer, it would make sense to stop subsidizing sugar and corn before you start taxing sugary products.
Cancer Screening Does Not Save Lives
Cancer screening is conventionally touted as being an important part of “cancer prevention,” even though it does no such thing. Now, researchers question the validity of public service announcements claiming that “cancer screening saves lives.” According to a recent analysis,19 it’s “unclear” whether screening actually saves lives, and the researchers warn that claiming it does is “misleading.”
“The problem, they say, is that the ubiquitous adage is based on the fact that deaths from the target disease may decline but fails to take into account deaths linked to factors related to the screening itself. Sure, screening for prostate cancer might reduce the incidence of death from that specific disease, but does it reduce overall mortality for the person who got the screening? Maybe not.
For example, prostate cancer screening is known to return ‘numerous’ false positives … and contributes to over 1 million prostate biopsies a year. The procedure is ‘associated with serious harms, including admission to hospital and death.’ What’s more, men diagnosed with prostate cancer are ‘more likely to have a heart attack or commit suicide in the year after diagnosis’ … In both cases, the deaths aren’t due to the cancer itself but rather are linked to the screening.”
The same goes for breast cancer screening and colorectal cancer screening:
• 60 percent of women who undergo regular mammography screening for 10 years receive a false positive at some point, leading to unnecessary distress and treatment, which can have serious side effects. Studies have also shown that routine mammograms have no effect on death rates.
“[T]hese tests avert just 1 breast cancer death for every 1,000 women screened. ‘There used to be ads saying if a woman hadn’t had a mammogram, she needed more than her breasts examined,’ Prasad said. ‘The fact that the medical profession promoted screening so strongly, when it was always a balancing act, when it was always a personal choice, is really shameful.'”
• A study22 looking at colorectal cancer screening found 128 cancer deaths among every 10,000 people who received screening, compared to 192 cancer deaths among every 10,000 individuals who didn’t get screened.
While there were fewer cancer deaths among those screened, this link completely disappeared when they looked at all-cause mortality. When death from all causes was included, there was no meaningful difference between the two groups.
It’s Time to Change the Discussion About Cancer Screening
According to the authors, in order to determine whether cancer screening truly saves lives, “statistically robust studies based on millions of people are needed.” This would be a costly venture, they admit, “but no more so than supporting mass population screening programs with unproven benefits.”
In an accompanying editorial,23 Gerd Gigerenzer, director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development notes that:
“Rather than pouring resources into ‘megatrials’ with a small chance of detecting a minimal overall mortality reduction, at the additional cost of harming large numbers of patients, we should invest in transparent information in the first place. It is time to change communication about cancer screening from dodgy persuasion into something straightforward.”
To do so, she suggests patients should be given pamphlets with fact boxes that clearly present the available data, such as the Risk Literacy fact sheet for mammography below,24 which shows that while mammograms reduce cancer specific mortality in 1 out of 1,000 women, this difference is not reflected in overall mortality.
And, that as many as 10 women out of 1,000 women screened will undergo unnecessary breast removal as a result of a false positive.
Presented with such data, patients would be better able to make a personal decision about whether or not screening in their particular instance might be worth the risk. She also notes that while some may benefit from screening, doctors should not overstate the value of the tests. In an email to Reuters, Gigerenzer says:
“The take-home message is after decades of research we have not found clear evidence that screening saves lives, but clear evidence that screening harms many.”
Cancer Prevention Begins with Your Lifestyle Choices
Cancer screening is portrayed as the best form of “prevention” you can get against various forms of cancer. But early diagnosis is not the same as prevention. And cancer screening that does more harm than good can hardly qualify as the best you can hope for … I believe the vast majority of all cancers could be prevented by strictly applying basic, common-sense healthy lifestyle strategies, which includes the following:
Eat REAL food; avoid processed foods and sugars, especially processed fructose
All forms of sugar are detrimental to health in general and promote cancer. Fructose, however, is clearly one of the most harmful and should be avoided as much as possible.
Reduce non-fiber carbs but have large volumes of fresh organic veggies along with loads of fat from high quality sources such as avocados, raw butter, seeds, nuts, and raw cacao nibs.
Stop eating AT LEAST three hours before going to bed
There is quite compelling evidence showing that when you supply fuel to the mitochondria in your cells at a time when they don’t need it, they will leak a large number of electrons that will liberate reactive oxygen species (free radicals), which damage mitochondrial and eventually nuclear DNA.
There is also evidence to indicate that cancer cells uniformly have damaged mitochondria, so the last thing you want to do is eat before you go to bed. Personally I strive for 6 hours of fasting before bedtime.
Optimize your vitamin D
Vitamin D influences virtually every cell in your body and is one of nature’s most potent cancer fighters. Vitamin D is actually able to enter cancer cells and trigger apoptosis (cell death).
If you have cancer, your vitamin D level should be between 70 to 100 ng/ml. Vitamin D works synergistically with every cancer treatment I’m aware of, with no adverse effects.
Limit your protein
Newer research has emphasized the importance of the mTOR pathways. When these are active, cancer growth is accelerated.
To quiet this pathway, I believe it may be wise to limit your protein to one gram of protein per kilogram of lean body mass, or roughly a bit less than half a gram of protein per every pound of lean body weight.
That is roughly 40 to 70 grams per day for most. It would be unusual for most to need more than this.
Avoid unfermented soy products
Unfermented soy is high in plant estrogens, or phytoestrogens, also known as isoflavones. In some studies, soy appears to work in concert with human estrogen to increase breast cell proliferation, which increases the chances for mutations and cancerous cells.
Improve your insulin and leptin receptor sensitivity
The best way to do this is by avoiding sugar and grains and restricting non-fiber carbs to to under 100 grams per day. Also making sure you are exercising, especially with high-intensity interval training.
Exercise regularly
One of the primary reasons exercise works to lower your cancer risk is because it drives your insulin levels down, and controlling your insulin levels is one of the most powerful ways to reduce your cancer risks.
It’s also been suggested that apoptosis (programmed cell death) is triggered by exercise, causing cancer cells to die.
Studies have also found that the number of tumors decrease along with body fat, which may be an additional factor.
This is because exercise helps lower your estrogen levels, which explains why exercise appears to be particularly potent against breast cancer.
Finally, exercise increases mitochondrial biogenesis, which is essential to fight cancer.
Maintain a healthy body weight
This will come naturally when you begin eating right for your nutritional type and exercising. It’s important to lose excess body fat because fat produces estrogen.
Drink a pint to a quart of organic green vegetable juice daily
This is the active ingredient in turmeric and in high concentrations can be very useful adjunct in the treatment of cancer.
For example, it has demonstrated major therapeutic potential in preventing breast cancer metastasis.25
It’s important to know that curcumin is generally not absorbed that well, so I’ve provided several absorption tips here.
Avoid drinking alcohol
At minimum, limit your alcoholic drinks to one per day.
Avoid electromagnetic fields as much as possible
Even electric blankets can increase your cancer risk.
Avoid synthetic hormone replacement therapy, especially if you have risk factors for breast cancer
Breast cancer is an estrogen-related cancer, and according to a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, breast cancer rates for women dropped in tandem with decreased use of hormone replacement therapy.
(There are similar risks for younger women who use oral contraceptives. Birth control pills, which are also comprised of synthetic hormones, have been linked to cervical and breast cancers.)
If you are experiencing excessive menopausal symptoms, you may want to consider bioidentical hormone replacement therapy instead, which uses hormones that are molecularly identical to the ones your body produces and do not wreak havoc on your system. This is a much safer alternative.
Avoid BPA, phthalates and other xenoestrogens
These are estrogen-like compounds that have been linked to increased breast cancer risk.
Make sure you’re not iodine deficient
There’s compelling evidence linking iodine deficiency with certain forms of cancer. Dr. David Brownstein,26 author of the book “Iodine: Why You Need it, Why You Can’t Live Without it,” is a proponent of iodine for breast cancer.
It actually has potent anticancer properties and has been shown to cause cell death in breast and thyroid cancer cells.
For more information, I recommend reading Dr. Brownstein’s book. I have been researching iodine for some time ever since I interviewed Dr. Brownstein as I do believe that the bulk of what he states is spot on.
However, I am not convinced that his dosage recommendations are ideal. I believe they are 5 to 6 times higher than optimal.
Avoid charring your meats
Charcoal or flame broiled meat is linked with increased breast cancer risk. Acrylamide — a carcinogen created when starchy foods are baked, roasted or fried — has been found to increase cancer risk as well.
Glycine is a neurotransmitter, but glyphosate fools the receptor and then doesn’t behave as expected.
Glyphosate wreaks havoc on human physiology in multiple ways, leading to a nearly complete explanation for the strong correlations between the rise in glyphosate usage on crops and the increased incidence in a host of chronic modern diseases, including diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, adrenal insufficiency, anemia, spina bifida and autism.
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the pervasive herbicide, Roundup. Glyphosate’s inventor, Monsanto, has assured us that glyphosate is nearly nontoxic to humans. This is blatantly untrue. Glyphosate’s toxicity is insidious, and it comes about mainly because glyphosate is a synthetic amino acid. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. When you replace glycine, an amino acid, with glyphosate, a synthetic amino acid, in a protein, often the protein no longer works as intended. Sometimes it can’t be broken down and it accumulates in the brain, causing neurological disease. Other times, it is inactivated as an enzyme or it can’t attach to a membrane. Glyphosate also pretends to be glycine at glycine receptors. Glycine is a neurotransmitter, but glyphosate fools the receptor and then doesn’t behave as expected. This wreaks havoc on human physiology in multiple ways, leading to a nearly complete explanation for the strong correlations between the rise in glyphosate usage on crops and the increased incidence in a host of chronic modern diseases, including diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, adrenal insufficiency, anemia, spina bifida and autism. In this talk, I will try to keep the scientific jargon as simple as possible, while presenting an amazing story about biochemistry gone awry.
What we’ve learned is that the attack hasn’t just taken down personal computers, but core government and business networks affecting everything from health care systems and transportation in Europe, to ATM withdrawals in China.
It’s massive, to be sure. But in the grand scheme of things, up to this point, it has been a fairly minor inconvenience.
But as Joe Joseph warns in his latest news report at The Daily Sheeple, this is just the tip of the iceberg, because now that we’ve seen how quickly such an attack can spread, it’s only a matter of time before rogue groups or state-sponsored players make a direct attempt at taking down core systems that keep millions of people in America alive. As we’ve previously noted, U.S. cyber command has warned that power grids, physical infrastructure and commerce systems will be a major target of future cyber attacks, and the latest Ransomware attack utilizing NSA-created exploits proves just how serious the damage could be:
Experts are saying this is just the tip of the iceberg… what the NSA has done and the damage they have caused as the result of coming up with these exploits in the first place is criminal… but it’s beyond criminal… in our society we have become so dependent on technology.. our computers… our cell phone…
We’ve become so hooked on it that if something happens and it looks like it can very easily happen… where some of these hacks are exploited… we could see an instantaneous change in the way that we live… to the point where you could see upwards of 80% or 90% of the population just in the United States dying as a result of a prolonged power outage because the grid gets hacked…
Joseph’s figure of a 90% die off in the event of a grid failure is based on the work of EMP researcher Dr. Peter Pry, who recently testified before a Congressional panel on the dangers of “grid down” scenarios resulting from electro-magnetic pulse attack. Though Pry’s research is primarily based on the threat of a nuclear device being detonated a couple hundred miles above the central United States taking out the entirety of the domestic power grid, the end result of a grid-down scenario, whether initiated by a cyber attack or something else, is very much the same.
Without the grid, all life in America would come to a standstill. Gas station pumps wouldn’t work, which means trucks couldn’t deliver food to grocery stores. And even if your local store still had food on the shelves, cash registers and bank payment verification systems would be unavailable, making hard currency like gold and silver the only means of transacting. As we’ve seen in China over the weekend, ATM’s would likely be inaccessible. So, too, would be your access to clean water, as most utility plants are tied to the power grid.
3-5 days following a disaster is the bewitching hour. During this short amount of time, the population slowly becomes a powder keg full of angry, desperate citizens. A good example is the chaos that ensued in New Orleans following the absence of action from the local government or a timely effective federal response in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In such troubled times, people were forced to fend for themselves and their families, by any means necessary. This timeline of Hurricane Katrina effectively illustrates “the breakdown,” and within three days, the citizens of New Orleans descended into anarchy, looting and murder.
If the crisis extends for any more than about a week, you can expect full-out war on the streets of America as people race to acquire the last remaining resources.
It may sound incredible, but if you consider the reality of our dependence on technology, a multi-week or multi-month hiccup in the system will be enough to bring the entire thing crashing down.
Even the Department of Homeland Security recently warned about the potential for devastating cyber attacks, going so far as to recommend that families need to prepare at least two weeks of food and emergency supplies because the federal government may be overwhelmed and unable to provide assistance.
“If you are 40 years old now, you’d have to eat even less and exercise more than if you were a 40 year old in 1971, to prevent gaining weight.”
“Experts report that up to 25 percent of people who take antidepressants can expect to put on an extra 10 pounds or more.” (source)
“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.” – (source)(source) Arnold Seymour Relman (1923-2014), Harvard Professor of Medicine and Former Editor-in-Chief of the New England Medical Journal
“If you are 40 years old now, you’d have to eat even less and exercise more than if you were a 40 year old in 1971, to prevent gaining weight.” York University Press Release (source)
Please keep in mind, we are raising awareness here about obesity and why it can be harmful to your health. We believe addressing core issues around weight challenges is a key solution here.
In order to do this they evaluated dietary data of approximately 40,000 Americans between 1971 and 2008, as well as exercise data of approximately 15,000 individuals between 1998 and 2006. They found that when all three factors were equal, a person in 2006 would still have a body mass index that was approximately 10 percent higher than that of a person eight years prior. This means that a person eating the same amount of macronutrients, like fat and protein, eating the same amount of calories and exercising the same amount as a person did in 1988 (of the same age), would still be heavier today.
“Our study results suggest that if you are 40 years old now, you’d have to eat even less and exercise more than if you were a 40 year old in 1971, to prevent gaining weight. . . . [and[ it also indicates there may be other specific changes contributing to the rise in obesity beyond just diet and exercise.” (source)
A press release from York university points out how weight management is much more complex than the average person realizes. According to the lead author of the study, Professor Jennifer Kuk, it is “actually much more complex than just ‘energy in’ versus ‘energy out.’ That’s similar to saying your investment account balance is simply your deposits subtracting your withdrawals and not accounting for all the other things that affect your balance like stock market fluctuations, bank fees or currency exchange rates.”
Kuk explains how our body weight is impacted by our lifestyle and environment, and lists a number of reasons why “ultimately, maintaining a healthy body weight is now more challenging than ever.”
Studies like this are important, especially given the fact that the past several decades have seen a very dramatic increase in the prevalence of obesity in both developed and developing nations.
Although Professor Kuk and her colleagues did not come to any firm conclusions, they did suggest some possible contributing factors we might want to take a look at.
Pharmaceutical Prescription Drugs
“Additional novel factors that may be contributing to the obesity epidemic include increases in pharmaceutical prescriptions associated with weight gain, higher maternal age, reduction in variability of ambient temperature, decreased prevalence of smoking, inadequate amount of sleep and low calcium.” (source, pg 8)
This is definitely a big possibility, and several studies have come to this conclusion. This study cites four. (Source 1)(Source 2)(Source 3)(Source 4)
Experts report that up to 25 percent of people who take antidepressants can expect to put on an extra 10 pounds or more. (source)
It’s no secret that prescription drug use has been associated with weight gain and other unhealthy side effects. Despite the fact that governments around the world market them as completely safe, death by medicine is a 21st century epidemic. You might not know it, but prescription drugs actually kill far more people than do illegal drugs.
In June 2010, a report published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that of 62 million death certificates, almost a quarter of a million deaths were labelled as having occurred in a hospital setting due to medication errors. Approximately half a million preventable medication-related adverse events occur in the U.S. every year.
The latest example of this comes from an independent review that found that the commonly prescribed antidepressant drug Paxil (paroxetine) is not safe for teenagers, despite the fact that a large amount of literature already previously suggested this. The 2001 drug trial that took place, funded by GlaxoSmithKline, found that these drugs were completely safe, and used that ‘science’ to market Paxil as safe for teenagers. You can read more about that here.
All this is because prescription drugs really aren’t as safe as they are marketed to be, and alternative means for medicating oneself are not even made known to the patient or studied by most doctors. If it isn’t a pharmaceutical grade, manufactured, chemical based drug, it is most often ignored.
“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.” – (source)(source) Arnold Seymour Relman (1923-2014), Harvard Professor of Medicine and Former Editor-in-Chief of the New England Medical Journal
So when it comes to these prescription drugs, there is a lot more to look out for than just weight gain, and it’s important to take all these factors into consideration when looking honestly at our health.
Chemical Exposure
“Recent studies have observed that persistent organic pollutants, chemicals that can be found in food and everyday products, are associated with higher BMI and waist circumference and may be partially attributable to the rise in obesity rates. As well, the majority of agricultural beef cattle are given exogenous sex steroids in order to increase weight gain and feeding efficiency. Although there are concerns that this may influence human health, more research in this area is needed.” (source, pg 8)
Many common household products contain endocrine disruptors, some of which are structurally similar to hormones such as estrogen and therefore can affect a person’s normal bodily functions. Examples include bisphenol-A (BPA), PCBs, phthalates, triclosan, agricultural pesticides, and fire retardants.
Research also suggests that antibiotic-ridden meat has the same weight gaining effect on humans who consume it as it does on animals.
Billions of pounds of chemicals are sprayed in the United States alone every single year. Recent studies have shown how several of these chemicals, like Glyphosate (active ingredient in Monsanto’s RoundUp Herbicide), are detrimental to human health, so it comes as no surprise that they could be considered a factor for weight gain.
