Natural Communities Magazine A magazine devoted to the local natural wellness culture.

In the United States, one of our favorite slogans comes from our national anthem: “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.” Most Americans don’t seem to realize that this statement is no longer relevant to our nation and its people. We have become the land of the diseased and the home of the wholly owned subsidiary.

Through control of the government, gained by usurping the People, large corporations have used the power of the regulatory to control who can and who cannot compete and profit in their markets. Big Agriculture and their industrialized minions have completely taken over the United States Department of Agriculture, the Congress, and the Food and Drug Administration and awarded themselves billions in subsidies for their efforts.

Every year, these corporate giants of agriculture reap rewards in the form of government (taxpayer) largesse, which they use to artificially lower food prices and edge out the little man who might compete. When a new trend, such as organic foods, emerges as a consumer preference in the marketplace, they move quickly to gain control of what is and isn’t allowed to be labeled, working the rules to their favor, and to profit even more.

Pharmaceuticals play a similar game, controlling the FDA - the very agency meant to regulate them - and thus pushing any alternatives out of the market. Despite whatever a Doctor or health expert might say about a product, if it’s not approved by the FDA (and thus Big Pharma), it’s not allowed to say anything relating to its benefits beyond the overly-general.

Through these tactics, both the Big Ag and Big Pharma cartels have managed to not only gain near-total control of the food and drug markets in the United States, but they’ve managed to generally give their competition (the alternatives) a bad name in the process by wreaking total ruination on the terms that used to mean “good” and “healthy.”

No longer is “organic” anything more than a marketing buzz word with little or no meaning. “Alternative medicine” now virtually means “quackery” to most people.

Big Pharma Owns Medicine

In his documentary film Big Bucks, Big Pharma: Marketing Disease and Pushing Drugs, Ronit Ridberg1 manages to outline how the pharmaceutical companies have accomplished their iron fisted control of the American health care industry.

In this film, you see how total control of the industry, whose goal is supposedly to put patient care and your health needs above all else, is primarily controlled, instead, by pharmaceutical profits. What’s more, the pharmaceutical companies promote propaganda that’s so effective that Goebbels himself would be impressed - from virtually unheard-of diseases made mainstream (ala “Restless Leg Syndrome”) to diseases whose definitions are so vague that they could include nearly anyone (the “disorders”).

By controlling patent law and what can and can’t be labeled as a “medicine,” the pharmaceutical giants own the market. Then you look at who “regulates” them and you see the rest of the picture. The FDA is made up of two basic arms: scientific and managerial. The management arm ultimately makes the decisions and thus national policies on the drugs allowed to be sold on the market. Time and time again, management routinely ignores the science and sides with the pharmaceutical company.

The Vioxx scandal was a glaring example of this in action. Even after Merck, the makers of Vioxx, pulled it from shelves as being dangerously deadly, the FDA stood behind the drug anyway, even claiming before Congress that it was “safe.”2, 3

Big Agra Rules Your Dinner Plate

The giant agricultural conglomerates and their regulatory arms (the USDA and the FDA) are no better off. Currently, in the U.S., genetically modified seed crops make up 91% of our soybean crops and 68% of corn.4 That’s just two crops. They’re working on sugar beets, wheat, and others now as well.

That is just one facet of the game. Working the other end of the stick, the big agricultural conglomerates have managed to reap up to $9 billion per year in corn subsidies.5 Then comes the corn as fuel subsidies, or corn ethanol payoffs from our tax dollars. This amounts to another $1.3 billion (in 2007) on top of the other subsidies the agricultural giants already receive.6

These subsidies don’t go to the happy family farm with a couple of milk cows out to pasture, a few crops on a hundred acres, and mom and pop working together with their teenaged son to grow healthy food. The tens and even hundred of billions in total farm bill subsidies the government throws around every year largely go to the single-crop, big agricultural conglomerates rather than to Farmer Dan and his family.

Those farmers who use traditional methods (aka “organic” or “sustainable” methods) versus the new, industrialized way of using synthetic fertilizers cannot sell their produce as “organic” or with “organic” on the label without submitting to heavy regulatory requirements and filings with the FDA.7 Yep, it’s illegal to use a word to describe your product without government approval.

These are just a few of the means by which Big Agra controls your food. You are fed corn syrup from genetically modified corn, sugar from over-processed cane and beets (which could also be GMO), and worse. Your milk, meat, and even your table salt are all controlled and manipulated to profit them and potentially kill you. One needs only to read a few days’ worth of headlines here at Natural News to see these concepts in action.

The Final Control
New legislation makes it basically illegal to sell naturally-sourced supplements as anything more than their scientific name and to force small, artisan and local farms and food producers out of business by adding odious requirements to their overhead and costs. These bills are brought before either of the houses of Congress every year - usually more than once per session.

Often, regulatory changes at the FDA and USDA will just slightly alter one thing or another, always to the detriment of small business and natural production.

It’s time Americans stopped being the victims and once again become the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Fight back against these infringements on your health. They’re working on taking over your well-being at the most fundamental of levels with food and medicine and on controlling what those things are and what you can have access to.

We need to take control back now, before it’s too late.

About the author
Aaron Turpen is a professional writer living in Wyoming in the USA. He is also the Director of Gateway’s Needy Animals, a local animal shelter and rescue in the eastern Wyoming area. His blog covers organic/sustainable living and environmental considerations at AaronsEnvironMental.com.

Source: www.naturalnews.com

This is a continuation of the interview with Greg Marsh.  Greg Marsh teaches Natural Vision Improvement to people worldwide, including the Bates Method. Greg came across the Bates Method when he was extremely nearsighted in his 20’s. He learned that poor eyesight is a well-established part of how we “see” the world, and his progress was slow until he began to learn from other Natural Vision Teachers about the subtleties and “secrets” of regaining your vision naturally. 25-years of studying martial arts, meditation, and other natural healing approaches combined with the holistic notion of “letting go” have culminated in his creation of the Vision Improvement Center.

David: So we’ve talked a bit about the psychological elements; can you please tell me more about the work you do in that respect?

Greg: The workshops are really fun, and in a group there’s a synergy among people that happens. When one person has an “Aha” it affects everybody else. But then sometimes working with people individually is more helpful. I work sometimes with people that are going blind and they’re very scared, and it’s weird… you don’t always know which is the cause and which is the effect because at some point, the fear feeds the blindness, the blindness feeds the fear, and the Bates Model would say this makes things even worse.

Let go and get life force back

It usually works much better to work with somebody like that individually. And again I have to be very careful to say I’m not a doctor. I have people sign a waiver to acknowledge this is an educational, not medical, approach and that they need to see appropriate medical practitioners for medical prescriptions and advice. I feel that what I’m teaching them is more like yoga, it’s more like meditation. We do a lot of guided visualizations. It’s just taking a part of your body and mind that is very strained, and it’s helping that part relax and let go and get life force back.

David: It sounds like if you can bring someone to meditate they can really transcend their consciousness of the problem or their identity as a having a problem

Greg: I fully believe that. I studied and taught martial art and meditation for many years, and subtle martial art and meditation is so interesting. When you take a western culture, American culture, and people try to meditate often they try to do that the hard way too. And you probably know this, a lot of times when people start to meditate they’ll say, “Oh! I don’t like this; it makes my mind really noisy.” The exciting thing for that person to discover is that they are finally becoming aware of mental chatter that’s always been there. And the meditation now can help them erase some of that noisy mind, and the visual strain along with it. In my view that is what this whole natural vision approach is about. You can do a little bit through willpower, but really the tremendous tool is awareness. To become more and more and more aware of when you’re straining or when you’re relaxing, and then all day long you can keep letting go and keep remembering to move your vision and relax your vision. Most people come in just through the doorway of vision improvement, but most people that spend some time with it really change their lives.

David: And I also wanted to ask, although my prescription is negative 4, I was told I have 20/15 vision. What does that mean?

Greg: Well… did they tell you that with your glasses you have that?

David: Yes

Greg: Okay, well first of all you may want to get some weaker glasses, but that’s a great question that raises some key points. Let’s say a person is in sixth grade (like you were) or 3rd grade (like I was) or maybe they’re an adult… but whatever their age they’re starting to “need” glasses. Their vision is starting to get blurry. Maybe they used to have 20/10 vision which means they can see twice as well as this arbitrary standard called 20/20. Or maybe they even had 20/5 which is rare. Dr. Bates was quite taken and fascinated by one little girl who had the ability to see the moons around Jupiter with her naked eye, and who knows, that might have been 20/2 or 20/1 vision. So anyway 20/20 is kind of arbitrary and what a lot of people don’t realize is that the vision changes constantly.

Consider this… Let’s say you’ve been studying hard; you’ve been frantically trying to get something done, or you’re feeling a little sick and now your eyesight gets blurry. Is this a good time to visit the eye doctor for a new prescription? Maybe not. Because you may get a new higher prescription that is only relevant while you were stressed or sick. If you get used to these new glasses, they are going to tend to hold your eyes and your nervous system at this higher level of strain. That is a key premise of the Bates Method. A year later maybe you’ve had more stress; your eyes have been straining blurry again, and you go to the eye doctor and now you need a still-stronger prescription.

When I was a kid I had what was called progressive myopia, where my prescription went higher every single time I ever went to the eye doctor. Today I just know clear as can be I didn’t need to get those strong glasses. What happened was I was a little kid; I was shy. I think my vision was fine. And every time I went to the eye doctor I got test anxiety. And there’s a name for that… It’s well recognized in the medical world. It’s called “white coat syndrome”. People go into the doctor and their blood pressure goes up. It seems more and more evident to me that when people go to the eye doctor… not everybody, but some people put strain in their eyes in a way that makes them, while they’re there, need a stronger prescription. So they get that stronger prescription and then a few days later when they try on the new glasses they feel really weird. And the eye doctor tells them they’ll get used to it. Sound familiar?

So this whole thing with glasses, they could be a key agent of strain once you get into them. I’ve met so many people who’ve lost their glasses and just said screw it; I’m just going to go without them. And their vision improved just on its own. So, your eye doctor corrected you to an extra-sharp 20/15 with a prescription of minus 4. If he had corrected you to 20/20 your prescription would have been lower, maybe minus 3.5. Eye doctors differ greatly on whether to exceed 20/20 correction. Some avoid it because they think it will cause strain. From the paradigm of Natural Vision Improvement, the higher prescription is just putting your eyesight into a smaller and smaller cage.

So, one of the key things as you’re starting to improve your eyesight, is to find an eye doctor who will help you reduce your prescription as much and as quickly as possible. Ideally you would also spend some time without your glasses because that’s going to give your eyes the most natural and true relationship with the world, and it’s going to give you the most exciting flashes of clarity. But in the real world sometimes we need to see what we’re doing, especially driving. So you have to be legal and safe, and you find what works for you. But a key aim for anyone who gets into improving their eyesight is to start reducing their glasses prescription. Many people use two or more pairs of glasses so they can choose the lowest strength to enjoyably do the task at hand. It’s good to know something about glasses prescriptions to help you work better with your eye doctor.

David: I’d like to ask about pinhole eyeglasses.

Greg: Yeah. For starters, try this… Roll up your index finger real tight until you can just see a little pinhole of light through it. Now look through that pinhole, bring it right up against your eye. If necessary keep making that hole smaller until you have much clearer vision through it, without glasses. Most people with nearsighted, farsighted, astigmatism, or nearsighted conditions can experience this clarity looking through the tiny hole. So the pinhole glasses are that same principle, but now with a lot of holes all across the visual field. Some people have a dogmatic belief that pinhole glasses cannot help improve vision. I would say they definitely can help, for some people at least. I have known a lot of people who felt that pinhole glasses were a big part of what helped them. Maybe that gets into the whole placebo question. Well if they’re a placebo who cares. So much about vision is tied into what we believe we can see, or how easily we believe we can see. Pinhole glasses can help with that belief.

David: I’ve used pinhole glasses and I noticed that I relax. I relax and it’s a whole body thing I think. Once my awareness sees myself relaxing I think allow myself to affirm this and say I am relaxing, and I think that there’s a snowball effect with those types of observations.

Greg: Exactly, and you’ve just explained why pinhole glasses are really valuable tool. I had one person come to see me who had been doing Bates techniques in the way I’d done it when I was younger, the hard way, for many years. There are a lot of books and programs out there that are into the “eye exercise” approach, and these approaches often lead to more strain. So this fellow believed in the Bates approach but he’d never really made it work. He came for an individual session and tried on pinhole glasses for the first time ever. And he started running around the room weeping. He was sort of euphoric and sad at the same time, and it put him in an amazing state of mind. He wasn’t just reacting to the sharp vision. Somehow for him it released something that he’d been holding for a long time.

David: That’s such a fundamental part of our being. It’s kind of like your hearing. You realized that everything you hear is like part of a symphony or something; it’s such a huge change.

Greg: Cool. I like that. I like that. In fact let me read you a quote…, a quote from Margaret Corbett who was one of the key early Bates instructors: “Vision should come to the eye as effortlessly as scent to the nostrils, music to the ear, or a touch of velvet to the fingertips.” And that’s just such an elegant way of saying let it happen. Don’t try to make it happen; it’s just this beautiful grand design and let it happen.

David: That’s great!

David: Thank you so much Greg. It’s been a pleasure.

Greg: Thank you David, you raised wonderful questions.

David Hestrin is an Ayurvedic Practitioner specializing in Eyesight Improvement and Deep Relaxation.
Contact him by phone (650)265-1776 or e-mail david.hestrin@gmail.com

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/026….

Research is continually showing that meditation is beneficial to our life and our health. Meditation helps us to take a distance from what is going on in our mind and our life rather than constantly being immersed and controlled by it. It helps us to be more focused and reduces stress. Opening your heart is a simple step you can take towards accepting things as they are and being more open to others and the blessings of life. This is a meditation that can be used each morning to center yourself and to open your awareness in a positive way.

Start by quietly sitting and focusing on your breathing. Relax and allow your breath to come naturally in and out. Begin by focusing your breathing toward the area of the heart. This means that your mental focus as well as your breathing focus is in the area of your heart behind your breast bone. Take ten minutes to sit and focus your heart breathing while you let your mind experience the feelings that arise when you allow your heart to be open and activated by your breath.

You may experience a variety of feelings as you practice this breathing meditation. Because you are breathing, this meditation is active and the awareness of your feelings may wash over you in waves. You may feel relaxed, or you may get excited and ready to meet the world. If you start to feel sad or have melancholy feelings, this is ok too. Allow yourself to feel them and then let your breath cleanse your heart of those feelings and allow them to be blown away. As you release those feelings your heart will be left feeling open, warm, and energized.

The more you practice this meditation on a daily basis, the more you will find that you feel lighter, happier and more open to the universe. Your meditative practice will continue to deepen as you experience feelings of elation and joy throughout your day. As your heart becomes purified and free, your spirit will soar. Focusing on your heart through meditation allows the tightness with which the body holds the emotions to relax, and your mind and body become freer.

Meditation can sometimes be a difficult concept for people to grasp. It is sometimes nearly impossible to free your mind from everyday thoughts. This Heart Meditation is an excellent tool to practice focus and relaxation with a particular goal in mind. By breathing into and freeing your heart, your mind, body and soul will follow. Then you will have found a path to greater health and well being through the release of your heart and spirit.

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/0270…

For those not familiar with the term, integrative medicine signifies the joining of conventional medical practice with alternative methods utilizing a complementary approach. Due to rapidly growing interest among the general population in treatments other than conventional drugs and surgery, many in mainstream medicine are adopting this dual modus operandi when it comes to prescribing treatment options to their patients. In other words, with alternative medicine on the rise, conventional medicine is quickly becoming an outmoded remnant of the past.

According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), roughly 38 percent of adults and 12 percent of children utilize some form of alternative medicine or treatment. According to a 2007 survey conducted by NCCAM, adults in the U.S. spent nearly $34 billion in out-of-pocket expenses in order to obtain alternative treatments. This figure does not take into account alternative services covered by insurance reimbursement, signifying an even greater unknown amount expended for alternative treatments.

Of the roughly $34 billion spent, 65 percent was for “self-care” treatment in the form of natural products and supplements, homeopathic medicine, and various exercise and physical fitness classes. The other 35 percent comprised general alternative practitioner costs.

Despite a ruinous economy, dietary supplement sales in particular have seen continued growth over the past several years. According to research conducted by Nutrition Business Journal, dietary supplement sales increased 6 percent to $25.2 billion in 2008. The year prior also saw a 6 percent increase, despite slowing growth in most other product sectors.

Meanwhile, growth in prescription drug sales has been rapidly declining for the past eight years, slowing by 52 percent in 2007 over 2006 figures, and plunging a whopping 65 percent in 2008. Overall, growth in pharmaceutical drug sales has been dwindling since 2001, a sign that the tides may definitively be turning in favor of alternative and natural remedies.

Many insurance companies are also now covering alternative therapies including chiropractic care, acupuncture, massages, biofeedback, and herbal remedies. Some even offer discounted memberships to health clubs and other wellness incentive programs to encourage disease prevention and healthy living. After all, prevention is the best medicine as far as insurance companies are concerned as it saves them money in the long run.

Integrating medicine is proving to serve as an amiable catalyst for educating the public about the legitimacy and superiority of a natural, preventive approach to health care. It is guiding public thought away from the reactional symptom management paradigm towards natural disease remediation and prevention. As a result, what was once considered alternative is quickly becoming the new conventional.

Your appendix is a slimy sac that hangs between your small and large intestines. It has long been thought of as a worthless evolutionary artifact, good for nothing except a potentially lethal case of inflammation. But now researchers suggest that your appendix is a lot more than a useless remnant.

The appendix appears in nature much more often than previously acknowledged. It appears in Australian marsupials such as the wombat and in rats, lemmings, meadow voles, and other rodents, as well as humans and certain primates.

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

Appendicitis, or an infected appendix, can be fatal. According to the CDC, over 320,000 people are hospitalized each year, and up to 400 Americans die due to appendicitis.

Until recently, the appendix was believed to be nothing more than an ancient remnant; a useless organ that served no purpose in your body, and for this reason alone, surgeons have routinely removed them.

However, recent research has discovered that this is not true.

As common sense dictates, there is a purpose for every organ in your body, even the ones that modern medicine can’t figure out, and your appendix is one of them.

How Does Your Appendix Promote Health?

A previous study published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology found that your appendix serves as a “backup factory” for beneficial commensal bacteria, the symbiotic germs that aid digestion and help protect your body against disease-causing germs.

If the good bacteria in your colon dies, which could happen as a result of cholera or dysentery for instance, it appears your appendix steps up to help recolonize your gut with good bacteria.

Modern society has become so hypervigilant against bacteria that many forget a very important point — The bacteria in your body actually outnumber your cells by about ten to one, and without them you would die.

For example, the friendly bacteria that reside in your gut have a number of very important functions, such as:

• Digesting and absorbing certain carbohydrates. Without good gut bacteria, your body cannot absorb certain undigested starches, fiber, and sugars. The friendly bacteria in your digestive tract convert these carbohydrates into primary sources of important energy and nutrients.
• Producing vitamins, absorbing minerals and eliminating toxins. Probiotics help in the production of both vitamin K and B vitamins, and promote mineral absorption. They also aid in metabolism and the breakdown of toxins.
• Keeping bad bacteria under control. A large part of the influence of the “bad” bacteria is on your intestinal lining (mucousal barrier). Simply stated, friendly bacteria compete with the bad guys for room and board, but since beneficial bacteria are more at home there, they win most of the battles for nutrition and attachment sites within your colon. The good bacteria tell your body how much nutrition they need and your body responds by supplying just that much and no more - so that any excess bad bacteria are starved out. The helpful bacteria also produce a substance that kills harmful microbes.
• Preventing allergies.  Friendly bacteria train your immune system to distinguish between pathogens and non-harmful antigens, and to respond appropriately. This important function prevents your immune system from overreacting to non-harmful antigens, which is the genesis of allergies.
• Providing vital support to your immune system.  Beneficial bacteria have a lifelong, powerful effect on your gut’s immune system and your systemic immune system as well. The bacteria play a crucial role in the development and operation of the mucosal immune system in your digestive tract. They also aid in the production of antibodies to pathogens.

It’s also important to remember that 80 percent of your immune system is located in your digestive system, making a healthy gut a major focal point if you want to maintain optimal health.

A robust immune system is your number one defense system against disease.

Modern Lifestyle Does Not Negate the Need for Your Appendix

Researchers have speculated that despite the beneficial influence of the appendix, most people living in the modern world don’t need it because you can easily repopulate the good bacteria in your gut.

I do not agree with this assessment because your good bacteria is constantly being assaulted by antibiotics, chlorinated water, birth control pills, stress, sugar, and a host of other environmental factors.

Gastrointestinal problems are in fact a very common concern for a majority of Americans.

Ideally, your gut should contain a ratio of 85 percent good bacteria to 15 percent non-beneficial bacteria, but the factors I listed above have actually caused this ratio to reverse in many people.

This is why I often recommend that you use a high-quality probiotic as an “insurance policy” to make sure your body remains balanced with good strains of bacteria, particularly if you don’t lead a perfectly healthy lifestyle.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that this is still just the beginning as far as what scientists know about the appendix. It may turn out to have other far-reaching but subtle effects on your body function than what is currently known.

After all, scientists have now discovered that more than 70 percent of all primate and rodent groups contain certain species with an appendix. If its purpose was so inconsequential, why would so many different species have it?

So far, at least one negative side effect of having your appendix removed (called an appendectomy) has been uncovered — an increased risk of Crohn’s disease. So please, don’t fall for the advice to have your appendix removed simply because “it has no purpose.”

When Should You Agree to Have Your Appendix Removed?

Naturally, there are times when an appendectomy is warranted. If your appendix becomes infected or inflamed, failing to remove it could be fatal.

Just don’t agree to have your appendix removed for no other reason than you’re having an unrelated abdominal surgery performed, which happens more frequently than you might think.

Major warning signs that your appendix might be a problem include:

• You have absolutely no appetite, even for your most favorite foods.
• You have pain that started around your belly button and has moved to your lower right abdominal area.
• You have pain when jumping up and down. First, jump up and down gently. If there is no pain, try jumping higher. This will move your peritoneal cavity and if it is irritated with an inflamed appendix, the movement will cause considerable pain.

If you have all of the above symptoms you should be evaluated at your nearest emergency room.

If you are a woman, you may benefit from receiving a CT scan or ultrasound prior to having an appendectomy. A study published in the journal Radiology found that in women who had this done prior to surgery, a healthy appendix was removed 7 percent of the time, compared with 28 percent of the time when no scan was done.

www.mercola.com

While Washington, drug companies, insurance companies, doctors, and many Americans believe not having medical insurance negatively impacts your health, there are actually a number of reasons not having medical insurance can actually improve your health. In truth, it should also be noted that medical insurance is often called health insurance, but it’s really not insurance for your health.

True health insurance would be having an organic, natural diet while routinely and consciously avoiding as many of the common chemical pollutants in this world as possible. In any case, here are just four ways not having medical insurance can actually improve your health…

Reduced Radiation Exposure

If you don’t have medical insurance, you’ll be far less likely to be continually exposed to cancer causing radiation from x-rays, cat scans and other medical imaging procedures.

A new report found “younger Americans are being exposed to worrisome amounts of radiation from medical scans that increase their risk of cancer.” In March it was uncovered that Americans are exposed to seven times more radiation now, than in 1980, and solely from these diagnostic scans.

If you’re overweight or obese, it was made public in June, that doctors regularly use up to 40 times more radiation on you to get an accurate image.

Slim Chance of Taking Vioxx

If you didn’t have medical insurance, you probably wouldn’t have been one of over 27,000 people that had heart attacks and sudden cardiac death while taking this FDA approved drug.

When Merck finally pulled the drug from the shelves, the company said they were “putting patient safety first,” but it’s been widely reported, even by the Wall Street Journal, that the drug giant fought tooth and nail to keep it’s profitable drug on the shelves and its damaging effects on health a secret.

It’s impossible to estimate how many other drugs drug companies are currently fighting to maintain secrecy about their damaging effects. When the effects are known, they destroy the drug’s profitability.

Skip Being Killed or “Seriously Harmed” by Drugs and Doctors

If you didn’t have medical insurance, you likely wouldn’t have been one of the 195,000 deaths in America each year that’s caused by preventable hospital errors. You also would have skipped over a bunch of the “bad reactions” to prescription and over-the-counter drugs that “kill more than 100,000 Americans and seriously injure an additional 2.1 million” more each and every year.

Simply by not having medical insurance, you might have avoided these problems.

Pass On Antibiotics That Destroy Your Immune System

If you didn’t have health insurance, you’d be far less likely to run to a doctor every time you didn’t feel well for an antibiotic prescription.

Because antibiotics kill our healthy bacteria, which are our first line of immune defense and protect us from innumerable problems, you might still have this important part of your immune system intact.

If you didn’t have a medical doctor telling you that natural foods and nature’s alternatives were ineffective, you might also be far more likely to learn about and use powerful natural antibacterial agents, like coconut oil and garlic. You might use them to fight your bacterial infections without destroying your immune system and thereby setting yourself up for numerous problems later in life that you’ll likely never understand the direct connection.

Summing it Up

Especially if you’re paying for insurance out of pocket, it can be far less expensive to invest that money in organic, unprocessed, plant-based foods and consistently to use natural, non-toxic personal and household effects, while avoiding common toxins, like pesticides in your yard and smoking cigarettes. In doing this, you can avoid many of the problems that people “need” insurance for, and believe they need drugs for.

If you already have health problems, which are common because most people don’t consistently do the above, deep cleansing and detoxification can work wonders to eliminate many problems, essentially by getting your body back to its natural and unpolluted state.

To be fair, there are a few occasions that medical insurance would come in handy. If you broke a bone, were crushed in a car accident, or received a gunshot wound, medical insurance would be extremely helpful. But for chronic diseases, often it is not.

Even your doctor will often tell you that the drugs you’re taking will not cure your problem, and they will only reduce your symptoms. If the drugs did actually cure the problem, the problem would go away, and taking the drugs long term would be unnecessary. However, most of the time, this not the case.

Author: Kim Evans is a natural health writer and author of Cleaning Up! The Ultimate Body Cleanse. Deep cleansing has helped her, personally, eliminate over a dozen problems in her own body - including several that medical professionals had said there were no solutions for, except long-term drugs.

www.naturalnews.com

If you insist on using chemical laden insect repellents containing DEET, you may be getting more than you bargained for — including damage to your central nervous system. In fact, scientists writing in the open access journal BMC Biology don’t just say that more studies should be done to confirm DEET’s potential neurotoxicity to humans. The researchers are calling for more investigations of the chemical to be conducted on an urgent basis. The reason? They suspect that the potential brain cell damaging effects of DEET could be particularly harmful if used in combination with other neurotoxic insecticides. And that’s exactly the way DEET is normally used in products applied to both adults and kids in order to prevent mosquito bites.

French scientists Vincent Corbel from the Institut de Recherche pour le Developement in Montpellier and Bruno Lapied from the University of Angers headed a team of researchers who studied the mode of action and toxicity of DEET, also known by the chemical name N,N-Diethyl-3-methylbenzamide. “We’ve found that DEET is not simply a behavior-modifying chemical but also inhibits the activity of a key central nervous system enzyme, acetycholinesterase, in both insects and mammals,” Corbel said in a statement to the media.

DEET has been in use since its discover in l953 and is now the most common ingredient found in insect repellent preparations. It is primarily hyped as a way to keep mosquitoes at bay and doctors and insect repellant manufacturers promote DEET’s use through scare tactics, suggesting you are likely to get West Nile fever from mosquito bites unless you use the chemical.

Of course, not every mosquito bite spreads any kind of infection and West Nile fever is not always serious. What’s more, a host of natural strategies, from wearing long sleeves and pants in areas plagued by mosquitoes to using a variety of herbal extracts and essential oils topically, can help you avoid bug bites and stings without chemicals. Yet DEET remains promoted by the mainstream media and medical establishment as the ingredient that protects adequately against mosquito bites and disease.

Consider this worrisome statistic: each year approximately one-third of all Americans spray and slather on insect repellents containing central nervous system toxin DEET. And this is in spite of the fact that previous studies have warned of DEET’s dangers. For example, earlier research by Duke University Medical Center pharmacologist Mohamed Abou-Donia, who has spent 30 years studying the effects of pesticides, found that prolonged exposure to DEET can impair functioning in parts of the brain and could result in problems with muscle coordination, muscle weakness, walking or even memory and cognition.

In the new study, Corbel and his colleagues discovered that DEET inhibits the acetylcholinesterase enzyme. This is the exact effect organophosphate and carbamate insecticides have on the body, too. Alarmingly, these insecticides are often combined in products with DEET — and the scientists found that DEET interacts especially well with carbamate insecticides, magnifying their toxicity. “These findings question the safety of DEET, particularly in combination with other chemicals, and they highlight the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to the development of safer insect repellents for use in public health,” Corbel stated.

Another study published earlier this summer in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, showed that a natural substance, cinnamon oil, shows promise as a great-smelling, environmentally friendly pesticide, with the ability to kill mosquito larvae. The researchers also believe that cinnamon oil could be a good mosquito repellant, though they have not yet tested it against adult mosquitoes. Historically, however, cinnamon oil has been used by natural health practitioners and traditional healers to repel mosquitoes and prevent their bites.

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FDA food labeling rules make it possible for consumers to exceed their maximum recommended daily intake of trans fats even if they eat only foods labeled “zero trans fats” per serving.

Trans fats, also known as hydrogenated oils, are synthetically produced by adding hydrogen atoms to unsaturated vegetable oils. Unlike natural unsaturated or saturated fats, trans fats have no nutritional value. They have been overwhelmingly shown to increase the risk of death from cardiovascular disease, such that several large cities and the state of California have banned their use in restaurants.

The fats are favored by food producers because they have a longer shelf life than natural fats. But growing consumer awareness over the dangers of trans fats has led more and more people to avoid them. According to a recent survey by Greenfield Online, 72 percent of U.S. residents read nutritional labels to make food purchasing decisions, and 61 percent believe that “zero trans fats” is the most important claim for a heart-healthy food.

Yet because the FDA allows nutrient content to be rounded to the nearest half gram, all food producers need to do to make a “zero trans fats” claim is set the serving size low enough that it contains no more than 0.49 grams of trans fats.

According to Steve Hughes, chief executive officer of Smart Balance, even consumers looking out for trans fats on nutritional labels “could exceed the daily limit before they even sit down to dinner.”

The FDA recommends a maximum daily trans fat intake of two grams.

Consumers can still avoid trans fats by reading ingredient labels. Any food that contains “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated” oils actually contains trans fats, regardless of what it might say on the label or in the nutritional information box.

“The good news is Americans are making healthier food choices a priority and they clearly recognize the dangers of trans fat,” said dietitian Alyse Levine. “But unfortunately reading the fine print is necessary to ensure they’re not getting more trans fat and putting their health at greater risk than they bargained for.”

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Bacteria present naturally in your body and sometimes found in food could keep cold and flu viruses at bay.

According to a study, young children who drank a mixture of such bacteria, known as probiotics, had fewer colds, needed fewer antibiotics, and missed fewer days of school. Researchers have already shown that probiotics can benefit those who are ill, and the bacteria are thought to boost the immune system’s response to invaders.

For most of you reading this, cold and flu season is right around the corner, and with it will come the yearly push urging you to get a flu vaccine to stay healthy.

This year the push will be even more magnified with the exaggerated swine flu risks … and the dangerous vaccine solution … being heavily promoted.

If you take nothing else away from this article, let it be this: you have at your disposal tools to bolster your immune system and drastically reduce your risk of colds and the flu. You do not need a vaccine to do this. In fact, a vaccine could easily make your health worse.

And one of these “tools” that I urge you to look into right away is good bacteria, or probiotics.

Eighty percent of your immune system is located in your digestive system, so—it makes perfect sense that probiotics would be very effective at warding off cold and flu viruses

Remember, a robust immune system is your number one defense system against ALL disease, and in order to keep your immune system in top working order you must have a healthy balance of good to bad bacteria in your gut (the optimal balance is about 85 percent “good bacteria” and 15 percent “bad”).

The researchers in this new study actually found quite significant benefits among 3- to 5-year-old children who received either a single strain or combination of probiotics twice a day for six months.

Compared to the placebo group, the single and combination probiotic groups had reduced fever by 53 percent and 73 percent respectively, decreased coughing by 41 percent and 62 percent, and reduced runny noses by 28 percent and 59 percent.

Antibiotic use was also 68 percent and 84 percent lower, respectively, which is a major gain in and of itself because antibiotics are vastly overused in children and contribute to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Why are Probiotics so Important?

Probiotics are one of only two supplements that are recommended to all new patients who come to the Natural Health Center that I stared in 1985 (the other being an omega-3 fat supplement). It’s also one of the few supplements that I personally take every day.

In many cultures, probiotic-rich food and drinks, such as the fermented superfoods natto, kefir, lassi (an Indian yogurt drink) and sauerkraut, are an integral part of the daily diet.

If you eat a diet rich in fermented foods like these that have NOT been pasteurized (pasteurization will kill the probiotics), then you will likely enjoy great digestive, and immune system, health.

However, if you find yourself strongly drawn to processed foods or rely on mostly cooked foods, as is commonplace in the United States, the balance of bacteria in your digestive tract will have a hard time staying optimal.

This is most unfortunate because this ratio between the “good” bacteria and the other bacteria is one of the critical factors determining your optimal health, as the good bacteria are essential for:\

• The proper development of your immune system
• Protection against over-growth of other microorganisms that could cause disease
• Digestion of food and absorption of nutrients

The probiotics in your gut also play a role in helping numerous bodily functions, such as:

• Digesting and absorbing certain carbohydrates.
• Producing vitamins, absorbing minerals and eliminating toxins.
• Keeping bad bacteria under control.
• Preventing allergies. Friendly bacteria train your immune system to distinguish between pathogens and non-harmful antigens, and to respond appropriately.
• Providing vital support to your immune system. Beneficial bacteria have a lifelong, powerful effect on your gut’s immune system and your systemic immune system as well.

Sugar is also an incredibly efficient fertilizer for growing bad bacteria and yeast in your gut, so if you indulge in a lot of it you’re fueling the bad bacteria rather than the good.

Likewise, stress, pollution, and taking antibiotics can further upset the balance in a negative way.

Since helpful bacteria are increasingly absent in most people’s diets, it is important to purposely include foods that contain live probiotic bacteria in your diet, or take a probiotic supplement — especially since flu season is just around the corner.

Here’s What You Need to Know to Avoid the Flu This Year

Now is the time to start making healthy changes that will keep you virtually immune to cold and flu viruses. If you follow the tips I recommend, you can easily sail through each and every winter (and fall, spring and summer) without so much as a case of the sniffles.

How do I know this?

Because I have not caught the flu in over 20 years, and you can avoid it too — without getting vaccinated — by following these simple guidelines.

• Optimize your vitamin D levels. Vitamin D deficiency is the likely cause of seasonal flu viruses. Getting an optimal level of vitamin D will help you fight infections of all kinds. In fact, the largest study yet of the association between vitamin D and respiratory infections found people with the lowest blood vitamin D levels reported having significantly more recent colds or cases of the flu.
• Eat plenty of probiotic-rich fermented foods, or take a high-quality probiotic supplement to support your digestive and immune system health.
• Avoid or Limit Sugar. Sugar decreases the function of your immune system almost immediately and a strong immune system is key to fighting off viruses and other illness.
• Get Enough Rest. Just like it becomes harder for you to get your daily tasks done if you’re tired, if your body is overly fatigued it will be harder for it to fight off cold and flu viruses.
• Have Tools to Address Stress. We all face some stress every day, but if stress becomes overwhelming then your body will be less able to fight off the flu and other illness.

If you feel that stress is taking a toll on your health, consider using an energy psychology tool such as the Meridian Tapping Technique (MTT), which is remarkably effective in relieving stress associated with all kinds of events, from work to family to trauma

• Exercise. When you exercise, you increase your circulation and your blood flow throughout your body. The components of your immune system are also better circulated, which means your immune system has a better chance of finding an illness before it spreads.
• Take a good source of animal based omega-3 fats like Krill Oil, which is crucial for maintaining health.
• Wash Your Hands. Washing your hands will decrease your likelihood of spreading a virus to your nose, mouth or other people. Be sure you don’t use antibacterial soap for this — antibacterial soaps are completely unnecessary, and they cause far more harm than good. Instead, identify a simple chemical-free soap that you can switch your family to.

Also, be careful not to overdo it. Washing your hands too much can actually remove much of the protective layer on your skin and increase your chances of acquiring an infection.

www.mercola.com

Let’s not beat around the bush on this issue: The swine flu vaccines now being prepared for mass injection into infants, children, teens and adults have never been tested and won’t be tested before the injections begin. In Europe, where flu vaccines are typically tested on hundreds (or thousands) of people before being unleashed on the masses, the European Medicines Agency is allowing companies to skip the testing process entirely.

And yet, amazingly, people are lining up to take the vaccine, absent any safety testing whatsoever. When the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. announced a swine flu vaccine trial beginning in early August, it was inundated with phone calls and emails from people desperate to play the role of human guinea pigs. The power of fear to herd sheeple into vaccine injections is simply amazing…

Back in Europe, of course, everybody gets to be a guinea pig since no testing will be done on the vaccine at all. Even worse, the European vaccines will be using adjuvants — chemicals used to multiply the potency of the active ingredients in vaccines.

Notably, there is absolutely no safety data on the use of adjuvants in infants and expectant mothers — the two groups being most aggressively targeted by the swine flu vaccine pushers. This leads us to the disturbing conclusion that the swine flu vaccine could be a modern medical disaster. It’s untested and un-tried. Its ingredients are potentially quite dangerous, and the adjuvants being used in the European vaccines are suspected of causing neurological disorders.

Paralyzed by vaccines
I probably don’t need to remind you that in 1976, a failed swine flu vaccine caused irreparable damage to the nervous systems of hundreds of people, paralyzing many. Medical doctors gave the problem a name, of course, to make it sound like they knew what they were talking about: Guillain-Barre syndrome. (Notably, they never called it “Toxic Vaccine Syndrome” because that would be too informative.)

But the fact remains that doctors never knew how the vaccines caused these severe problems, and if the same event played out today, all the doctors and vaccine pushers would undoubtedly deny any link between the vaccines and paralysis altogether. (That’s what’s happening today with the debate over vaccines and autism: Complete denial.)

In fact, there are a whole lot of things you’ll never be told by health authorities about the upcoming swine flu vaccine. For your amusement, I’ve written down the eight most obvious ones and published them below.

Eight things you’re not supposed to know about the swine flu vaccine
(At least, not by anyone in authority…)

#1 - The vaccine production was “rushed” and the vaccine has never been tested on humans. Do you like to play guinea pig for Big Pharma? If so, line up for your swine flu vaccine this fall…

#2 - Swine flu vaccines contain dangerous adjuvants that cause an inflammatory response in the body. This is why they are suspected of causing autism and other neurological disorders.

#3 - The swine flu vaccine could actually increase your risk of death from swine flu by altering (or suppressing) your immune system response. There is zero evidence that even seasonal flu shots offer any meaningful protection for people who take the jabs. Vaccines are the snake oil of modern medicine.

#4 - Doctors still don’t know why the 1976 swine flu vaccines paralyzed so many people. And that means they really have no clue whether the upcoming vaccine might cause the same devastating side effects. (And they’re not testing it, either…)

#5 - Even if the swine flu vaccine kills you, the drug companies aren’t responsible. The U.S. government has granted drug companies complete immunity against vaccine product liability. Thanks to that blanket immunity, drug companies have no incentive to make safe vaccines, because they only get paid based on quantity, not safety (zero liability).

#6 - No swine flu vaccine works as well as vitamin D to protect you from influenza. That’s an inconvenient scientific fact that the U.S. government, the FDA and Big Pharma hope the people never realize.

#7 - Drug companies are making billions of dollars from the production of swine flu vaccines. That money comes out of your pocket — even if you don’t get the jab — because it’s all paid by the taxpayers.

#8 - When people start dying in larger numbers from the swine flu, rest assured that many of them will be the very people who got the swine flu vaccine. Doctors will explain this away with their typical Big Pharma logic: “The number saved is far greater than the number lost.” Of course, the number “saved” is entirely fictional… imaginary.

Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles.

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