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

You have read Paul Chek’s articles in Natural Communities magazine. Now check out the C.H.E.K Institute website. It’s packed with different programs to help you on your path to wellness.

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This long-awaited book reveals techniques and secrets previously available only to Paul Chek’s clients and students. In How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! Chek shares his approach to achieving a healthy, balanced lifestyle while dropping pounds and reshaping your body.This book will help you identify your individual needs and explain how to address issues that may be preventing you from looking and feeling your best. Paul reveals fascinating research and airs controversial topics while providing practical suggestions for achieving peak vitality.
“How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy!” contains a proven four-step program that has helped thousands of people achieve their health and fitness goals.

Step 1 Complete the questionnaires to determine YOUR metabolic needs.
Step 2 Develop an eating plan that’s right for YOU.
Step 3 Build a personalized exercise program that fits YOUR needs.
Step 4 Fine-tune a healthier lifestyle that fits YOUR routine.

This book need not be read from cover to cover! Just as each of us is unique, each reader will use this book in different ways. The Questionnaires in Section 1 will guide you through the rest of the book so you can select and read the chapters that are most applicable and interesting to you. This will result in a customized plan of action, and show you how to eat and move to attain and maintain your optimal level of health and performance.
Order Eat, Move and Be Healthy now.

Autism is on the rise, both in prevalence and incidence, and there is growing evidence that environmental insults, such as pesticides, are linked to this developmental disability. According to the latest study, published in the October issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, children born to mothers living near fields where pesticides are applied are more likely to develop autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). The authors ofMaternal Residence Near Agricultural Pesticide Applications and Autism Spectrum Disorders among Children in the California Central Valley compared maternal pesticide exposure for 465 children with ASDs and 6,975 children without ASDs living in the same area. The research reveals that mothers who lived within 500 meters of fields sprayed with organochlorine pesticides, specifically endosulfan and dicofol, during their first trimester of pregnancy had a six times higher chance of having children with autism compared to mothers who did not live near the fields. Mark Horton, M.D., director of the California Department of Health, said the findings are exploratory and indicate that more research of the relationship between organochlorines and ASDs is needed. (See Daily News Blog posting from July 31, 2007 for further reactions from health care officials and more details about this study.)

ASDs include a range of developmental disabilities that are characterized by substantial impairments in social interaction and communication and the presence of unusual behaviors and interests. The symptoms range from mild to very severe, appearing before the age of 3 and lasting throughout a person’s life. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one of every 150 eight-year old children has an ASD, a prevalence rate of almost 7 per 1,000 children that is the same across multiple areas of the US. ASD prevalence shot up in 1990s, reaching levels of 2.0-7.0 per 1,000 children, greater than a tenfold increase from the prevalence rates identified in the 1980s, 0.1-0.4 per 1,000 children. There are indications that the rates, while still rising, may be leveling off at present, but this may reflect improvements in diagnostic screening and increased parental awareness as much as changes in the underlying factors. ASDs were first identified as a specific disorder in 1943, and since then the criteria for diagnoses have changed many times. Comparisons of rates over time may not be entirely consistent or thoroughly systematic, but the prevalence has reached a point where it is a condition of concern for parents and school officials.

Federal health authorities believe that ASDs probably result as an interaction between genetics and environmental factors. Despite the high degree of heritability of ASDs, genetic factors cannot completely account for the incidence of autism. After extensive genetic testing, researchers have not been able to pinpoint a specific genetic locus or set of genes linked to autism. Among identical twins, if one child has autism, there is a 75% chance that the other child is affected, but there can be significant differences in the symptoms displayed in twins. Because the concordance rate among identical twins is not 100% and the number of autism cases is rising, it seems likely that environmental causes are key factors. A 2000 report by the National Academy of Sciences indicates that as many as 25 percent of all developmental disabilities in children may be caused by environmental factors.

The relative rarity of autism in the Amish community around Middlefield, Ohio, where only one per 15,000 children has an ASD, provides promise for uncovering environmental factors that cause the disorder. One explanation for the lower prevalence was that Amish children, who are religiously exempt from immunizations, were not exposed to thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative in vaccines. While the CDC acknowledges the possibility of a link between thimerosal and autism, they point out that there have been studies that discredit this causal relationship. (See Daily News from June 13, 2005 for more on Amish rates of autism).

Other substances that have been implicated as risk factors for autism include viruses, industrial chemicals and electromagnetic radiation. A few individual cases of ASDs have been linked to prenatal exposure to valproic acid, as well as to infectious agents such as the rubella and influenza viruses. Some drugs taken by mothers during pregnancy are also linked to a higher risk of autism in children, especially the prescription drug thalidomide, which in the past was administered as a sleeping pill and used to treat morning sickness. Yet, for all these factors, there is less than perfect concordance, which suggests that a genetic predisposition is necessary for the chemical or microbial factors to lead to autism.

However, the role of environmental insults in the development of autism has been documented and cannot be ignored in future research. Research of autistic children in the San Francisco Bay area,Autism spectrum disorders in relation to distribution of hazardous air pollutants in the San Francisco bay area, found a potential association between autism and concentrations of mercury, cadmium, nickel, trichloroethylene, and vinyl chloride in ambient air around birth residence. A 1998 article in Toxicology and Industrial Health,Autism: xenobiotic influences, looked at 18 autistic children and found that 16 of these children had levels of toxic chemicals in their blood that exceeded the adult maximum tolerance. Similarly, the authors ofPorphyrinuria in childhood autistic disorder: implications for environmental toxicity describe how urninary levels of porphyrin, a biomarker of environmental toxicity, were elevated in autistic children relative to control groups. Porphyrin levels were not significantly different in children with Asperger’s disorder, distinguishing it from autism.

Men, Boys and Environmental Threats, a 2007 report by the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment, highlights how boys are more susceptible to environmental risks than girls, which is especially relevant to autism. Boys are four times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with autism, in addition to outnumbering girls in the incidence of learning disabilities overall, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Tourette’s syndrome, cerebral palsy and dyslexia. For several reasons, boys brains may be more vulnerable during development to damaging substances found in the environment, including lead, mercury, arsenic, radiation, dioxins, PCBs, solvents and some pesticides, and (See Daily News from July 16, 2007 for more information on why boys are more prone to environmentally related health conditions.)

Gustavo C. Roman, M.D., suggests that substances that interfere with thyroidal activity may produce morphological brain changes leading to autism, in a 2007 article,Autism: transient in utero hypothyroxinemia related to maternal flavonoid ingestion during pregnancy and to other environmental antithyroid agents. Scientists have identified specific changes to brain cells during development that are particular to autism, and these processes are regulated by hormones produced by the mother’s thyroid gland. Dr. Roman notes that environmental contaminants interfere with thyroid function, including 60% of all herbicides, in particular 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), acetochlor, aminotriazole, amitrole, bromoxynil, pendamethalin, mancozeb, and thioureas. Other antithyroid agents include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), perchlorates, mercury, and coal derivatives such as resorcinol, phthalates, and anthracenes. Mercury acts as an antithyroid substance by causing inhibition of deiodinases and thyroid peroxidase. A leading ecological study in Texas,Environmental mercury release, special education rates, and autism disorder: an ecological study of Texas, correlated higher rates of autism in school districts affected by large environmental releases of mercury from industrial sources.

Warren Porter, Ph.D. argues that the connections among the nervous, endocrine and immune systems need to be looked at when asking how do pesticides affect learning and behavior.Studies show that pesticides can function as nerve poisons and as pseudo hormones, modify hormone levels, and/or impact immune system function, he writes. Learning is dependent on immune system processes & hormonal changes, so any changes to these systems could lead to developmental disabilities. Dr. Porter was first drawn to the relationship between pesticides and learning when he looked at a 1997 survey of student disabilities in the Madison Metropolitan School District (WI). From 1990-1995, the number of children in Madison with learning disabilities increased 70%, children that were emotionally disturbed increased 87%, and children with birth defects increased 83%. Dr. Porter writes that similar changes are seen globally, and that the data from Madison are indicative of a worldwide phenomenon of increasing behavioral and learning disabilities among children, who face more and more contaminants and toxic chemicals in the environment.

To address the public health concern that autism has become and explore the potential environmental factors related to the developmental disorder, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) created four new children’s environmental health research centers in 2001. Over the past five years, twelve such research centers nationwide were funded $1 million a year. Additionally, CDC’s Centers for Autism and Developmental Disabilities Research and Epidemiology (CADDRE) have teamed up on a large, population-based study, the Study to Explore Early Development (SEED), to uncover the risk factors for and causes of autism. If successful, researchers will better know how to develop strategies to prevent this complex disorder.

Irva Hertz-Picciotto, epidemiologist at the University of California, Davis, and a member of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) panel, believes that the government’s proposed projects can provide some answers, but not a definite cause for autism. I’m optimistic that we will have identified some environmental risk factors, and may have excluded a few others, between 2008 and 2010, but by no means will we have the final word. The genetics and the gene environment interactions may be even tougher. Unfortunately, I don’t see enough groups working on the environmental contribution to autism, so it may be slower than projected, she says. Mark Blaxill, vice president of SafeMinds, a parent-led advocacy group, also thinks that more attention should be paid to environmental risk factors.The CDC has not addressed the crisis in autism responsibly, he says.They should be raising the alarm, and they have failed to do so. They should be asking why so many children are sick. Instead, they’ve tried to suggest a degree of doubt about the increases, and that diverts attention and funding from environmental causes.
 www.beyondpesticides.org

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There’s no doubt that pesticides and chemicals like benzene are harmful to our health. Water contamination cases have been filed all over the country, and have caused serious health problems in their wake. There are many lawyers, from personal injury attorneys to mesothelioma attorneys, who can handle cases such as these and help victims receive compensation.

Earlier analyses, including an NIA-supported study suggests America’s obesity epidemic, which is contributing to higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension, could be threatening the decline of our health. Furthermore, some of the today’s common diseases didn’t even exist 40 years ago. In this same time frame, we have made enormous advances in medical technology: we have more doctors, more pharmaceutical drugs, and more hospitals. In conclusion, all we have to show for all this is the sickliest generation of Americans in history with ever increasing disease rates.

In the United States, our modern society is so preoccupied and overwhelmed with every day activities of living we have lost contact with what is important. Have you ever contemplated the miracle of the human body functioning in harmony with lungs breathing, heart beating, senses sensing, muscles moving, healing and regenerating itself? Few have the time to think about this until problems develop.

Up until recently people believed each subsequent generation entering into its retirement years would be in better physical shape than the preceding generation. Then in March 2007, Health and Retirement Study research published by the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), revealed the disturbing trend of Americans in their early to mid-50s reporting poorer health, more pain, and more trouble doing every day physical tasks than their older peers reported when they were the same age in recent years.

How can American pre-retirees be reaching retirement age in not as good health as their predecessors? Regrettably, the public is not educated enough about how our food and medical systems work together to keep us ill, thereby making money for themselves at our expense. Undesirable ingredients used in processed foods are part of the reason toward declining health in America. Disappointingly, the pharmaceuticals the medical system uses are no longer fully tested and many times contribute to further health decline instead of curing us while they become wealthy at our expense.

www.newstarget.com

The U.S. government is once again working closely with powerful corporations to knowingly deliver a nutritionally deficient food supply to the American people. This most recent example concerns the new rules by the Almond Board of California (ABC) and backed by the USDA to mandate the pasteurization of all commercially-grown almonds in California with substances that include highly toxic propylene oxide (PPO). As reported by the Health Freedom Foundation, propylene oxide is so toxic that it was “…banned by both the National Hot Rod and American Motorcycle Racing Associations, where it had been used as a fuel before being deemed too dangerous.”

NewsTarget has reported on this story for several months, urging consumers to help stop the ruling from going into place, but corporations won the initial round. Since September 1st, all the almonds commercially grown in California have been pasteurized or sanitized through either heat treatments or toxic chemical treatments.

Both the Organic Consumers Association (www.OrganicConsumers.org) and the Cornucopia Institute (www.Cornucopia.org) have strongly opposed this almond pasteurization requirement. Today, the Health Freedom Foundation (www.HealthFreedom.net) announced a grassroots consumer action campaign to petition the USDA to suspend these almond pasteurization rules for 180 days. NewsTarget supports this petition and urges all American consumers to support this 180-day suspension of the killing of California almonds by clicking HERE to send an online message to your legislative representatives in Washington.

NewsTarget has published a CounterThink cartoon on this subject called The Killing of California Almonds. Feel free to share the cartoon or post it on your website (along with a link back to NewsTarget).

Today NewsTarget has also posted an exclusive video interview on the subject of almond pasteurization fraud. In the video, we interview Seth Leaf, co-founder of LivingNutz (www.LivingNutz.com), a small manufacturer of hand-made raw, sprouted nut products that has been caught up in the chaos of this bewildering decision by the Almond Board of California. Click here to view this video interview on YouTube.

Fraudulent marketing, illegal labeling

The Almond Board of California is right now conspiring with the USDA to allow the fraudulent labeling of almonds that are being sold to consumers. How? Pasteurized, fumigated or cooked almonds will be openly labeled as “raw” almonds. As you can see from previous stories published by NewsTarget on this issue, the Almond Board of California recognizes no substantial difference between cooked and raw almonds, and thus does not see any need to distinguish between them on product packaging.

I believe this position is an example of outright consumer marketing fraud designed to misinform consumers and protect the sales of pasteurized almonds by intentionally mislabeling them as “raw.” No reasonable person would dare say that cooked eggs are the same as raw eggs, or that cooked lettuce is the same as raw, fresh lettuce, but somehow the Almond Board of California continues to pretend that cooked almonds are virtually identical to raw almonds. The advocating of this position is, in my opinion, a violation of truth in labeling laws and nothing short of a corporate-masterminded conspiracy to intentionally hoodwink consumers by selling them an inferior (cooked) product that is knowingly mislabeled.

Raw almonds, for the record, are vastly superior to cooked almonds in terms of nutrition. They contain more anti-cancer phytonutrients, more usable protein and healthier fats. Once these elements are exposed to high temperatures (through pasteurization or other methods), these nutritional qualities are irreversibly degraded, rendering the almond deficient in the nutrients it had when it was first harvested. This degradation of health-enhancing nutrients has the result of contributing to nutritional deficiencies and imbalances in North American consumers — people who are already in a state of chronic nutritional deficiency due to the consumption of other processed foods.

It also sets a precedent for the intentional mislabeling of food products being purchased by North American consumers. The FDA is already on record stating that irradiated foods should not be truthfully labeled as such since the label might “confuse” and “misinform” consumers (who are apparently too stupid to understand what irradiation really means, the FDA believes). Now, with the USDA backing this fraudulent labeling decision by the Almond Board of California, we have two dominant government agencies (the FDA and USDA) who are both in favor of the blatant mislabeling of food products in order to keep consumers ignorant of how their foods are really being processed and degraded.

Two issues need to be reversed

There are really two important issues here that need to be reversed in order for the almond industry to regain any real credibility with consumers:

1) The ruling requiring the mandatory pasteurization or fumigation of all almonds needs to be rescinded. Raw almonds represent no legitimate health risk whatsoever to consumers. (There’s far more e.coli in meat products, and you don’t see the U.S. government banning raw meat, do you?)

2) The labeling of pasteurized almonds as “raw” needs to be stopped. This is fraudulent, misleading labeling and it has the effect of causing consumers to realize they cannot trust ANY almonds, regardless of what the package says. After all, if pasteurized is labeled as “raw” then what does “organic” mean on the package? What does anything mean? The words on the package apparently have no meaning at all; at least not one that regular people would understand and agree to. This will ultimately lead to devastating financial losses among U.S. almond growers. In my interview with Seth Leaf, for example, we learn that Seth’s company, Living Nutz (www.LivingNutz.com), now has to purchase raw almonds from Spain!

The Almond Board of California has, in my opinion, lost its marbles. Can we interject some sanity into this issue and pressure the ABC and USDA to restore integrity to the U.S. almond industry? We’ll know soon enough. In the mean time, you can play an important role in these three ways:

Action items

1) Contact your representatives in Washington and call, write or fax them a letter telling them strongly oppose this fraudulent action by the ABC and USDA.

2) Share the cartoon: The Killing of California Almonds.

3) Share the video interview: Seth Leaf speaks out about pasteurized “raw” almonds.

Thank you for your effort. Together, we have a legitimate shot at bringing the almond industry back to its senses and restoring truly raw almonds to the marketplace. And if this doesn’t fly, NewsTarget will be announcing a global boycott of almonds grown in the United States (and asking you to join along…)

www.newstarget.com

507 S. Main St.
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On September 16, 2007, researchers from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences presented findings to the European Respiratory Society Annual Congress in Stockholm showing that exposure to several commonly used pesticides increases the risk of asthma in farmers. Pesticide exposure is a “potential risk factor for asthma and respiratory symptoms among farmers,” lead author Dr. Jane A. Hoppin told Reuters Health. “Because grains and animals are more common exposures in agricultural settings, pesticides may be overlooked. Better education and training of farmers and pesticide handlers may help to reduce asthma risk.”The study consisted of 19,704 farmers, 441 of which had asthma. Farmers who have experienced high pesticide exposure were twice as likely to have asthma. Sixteen of the pesticides studied were associated with asthma. Coumaphos, EPTC, lindane, parathion, heptachlor, 2,4,5-TP, DDT, malathion, and phorate had the strongest effect.“This is the first study with sufficient power to evaluate individual pesticides and adult asthma among individuals who routinely apply pesticides,” Dr. Hoppin said.

Asthma is a serious chronic disorder of the lungs characterized by recurrent attacks of bronchial constriction, which cause breathlessness, wheezing, and coughing. Asthma is a dangerous, and in some cases life-threatening disease. Researchers have found that pesticide exposure can induce a poisoning effect linked to asthma in both adults and children.

In the U.S. alone, around 16 million people suffer from asthma. Since the mid-1980s, asthma rates in the United States have skyrocketed to epidemic levels, particularly in young children. Nearly 1 in 8 school-aged children have asthma and is the leading cause of school absenteeism due to chronic illness. Every year, asthma accounts for 14 million lost days of school. The rate is rising most rapidly in pre-school aged children.

The number of children dying from asthma increased almost threefold from 1979 to 1996. The estimated cost of treating asthma in those younger than 18 years is $3.2 billion per year. Low-income populations, minorities, and children living in inner-cities experience disproportionately high morbidity and mortality due to asthma.

www.beyondpesticides.org

The mainstream media is amusingly irrational when it comes to reporting scare stories. The latest example involves the lead content of Mattel toys made in China. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a third recall of Mattel toys involving over 700,000 toys containing unacceptably high levels of lead paint (over .06 percent lead). Irrational parents are rushing back to retailers in droves, turning in their Mattel toys to “save their children” from the dangers of lead paint. Mattel, for its part, is being rightly blasted in the media for selling shoddy products made with toxic heavy metals.

But here’s the interesting part in all this: Parents directly poison their children every day with products far more dangerous than Mattel toys. Don’t believe me? I’ll name twenty things in this article that are far more dangerous to children than Mattel toys. It doesn’t mean Mattel toys are safe, of course. They apparently do contain unacceptably high levels of lead, and there’s no question about the toxicity of lead. But children don’t eat toys nearly as often as they eat some other toxic substances given to them by their parents, and even as parents are herding back into retailers to refund their toxic lead-laden toys, they’re returning home and poisoning their children with many other products that are far worse.

The press, of course, reports nothing about these other toxic products. And why? Because they’re made in America.

American products poisoning American children

American products, you see, are often given blanket immunity by the U.S. press. While the media is happy to jump on toxic lead found in Chinese products, they completely ignore (for example) the toxic mercury that dentists continue to place into the mouths of young children all across the country. Why is it considered highly dangerous for a child to merely touch a toy with .06 percent lead paint while it is considered perfectly safe for a child to chew on a filling made with 40 percent mercury? Mercury is far more toxic than lead in many ways, yet the media has nothing to say about the mass poisoning of children through the outmoded dental work still being performed on children today. Mercury fillings were invented before the Civil War, and they’re just as toxic now as they were then!

Of course, if dental fillings were made in China, the U.S. press would be screaming about their toxicity! But since they’re installed by crazed U.S. dentists — many of whom still manage to seem convincingly sane — there’s zero coverage in the mainstream media.

Reporting the truth about dangerous chemicals, heavy metals and other threats to children is extremely selective. The public never hears the real truth about what’s dangerous — they only hear what the media want them to think is dangerous!

But I’ve had it with popular media distortions. Here, I’m going to reveal the top 20 things that are more dangerous to children than the lead paint in Mattel toys. Interestingly, most of these are things that parents intentionally give their children (or feed to them!). If you’re worried about lead paint, you should be far more worried about these 20 things…

The top 20 things that are more dangerous to children than lead paint in Mattel toys

1. Mercury fillings
Often called “silver fillings” to hide the fact that they’re made from mercury, these highly toxic fillings are placed directly into the mouths of children where they are inhaled (mercury vapor) and swallowed, causing systemic mercury poisoning to the child and leading to long-term neurological damage. Visit www.IAOMT.org and watch the “Smoking Teeth = Poison Gas” video to learn more.

2. Vaccines
Think vaccines are safe? You’ve been hoodwinked by the popular media parroting drug company propaganda. Vaccines are preserved with methyl mercury, one of the most dangerous chemical forms of the toxic heavy metal. This mercury is injected directly into the bodies of children where it causes severe neurological damage. And yes, it does cause Autism, despite what you’ve read in the dumbed-down press.
3. Hot dogs
Hot dogs are made with horrifying processed meat parts (click here to see shocking photos of processed meat products, then preserved with a cancer-causing ingredient called sodium nitrite. As detailed in my book Grocery Warning, this ingredient causes brain tumors in children, not to mention leukemia, pancreatic cancer, colon cancer and other cancers. Hot dogs are far more dangerous to a child’s health than lead paint in my opinion, and yet parents keep feeding them to their children!

4. Antibacterial soap
How about a little nerve toxin in your soap? That’s what’s found in antibacterial soap. It’s a toxic cocktail of chemicals designed to kill life. That’s how it kills bacteria. The problem is that it also harms people — especially infants and children who are trying to develop healthy nervous systems. Avoid all products claiming to be “antibacterial.” You’re better off using natural soap (like Dr. Bronner’s soap, www.DrBronner.com ) and letting your child’s immune system fight off common bacteria. The world isn’t sterile, after all. You can’t turn your house into a germ-free bubble.

5. ADHD drugs
Would you give your child street drugs like speed or meth? Probably not, but what if your doctor wrote you a prescription for speed and said your child needed it because he was ADHD? If you’re like most parents, you’d fall in step and start giving your child speed. But wait, you say: ADHD drugs are not speed, are they? But of course they are. They belong to a class of drugs called amphetamines. They used to be illegally sold as speed. Now they’re prescription drugs, and they’re given to children in schools all across America (and elsewhere). Psychiatrists and drug companies are making a killing dosing up kids and infants on substances that used to be considered illegal street drugs (and that have no legitimate medical use whatsoever).

6. Sports drinks
For some reason, parents irrationally believe sports drinks are healthy because they contain the word “sports.” Didn’t they notice the neon green artificial coloring? Sports drinks are, in my opinion, a nutritional joke. Made from salt water, processed sweeteners and petrochemical coloring, many of their ingredients are actually harmful. Drinking water would be smarter, and feeding your child some healthy trace minerals would be even better. Low on potassium? Eat a banana.

7. Cough syrup and over-the-counter medicines
Nearly all children’s over-the-counter medicines contain multiple toxic substances such as chemical sweeteners, preservatives and additives. Cough syrup, in particular, has been scientifically proven to be absolutely worthless in preventing coughs. Many “children’s” medicines are actually more toxic than their adult counterparts because they’re sweetened up and cosmetically enhanced with artificial colors made from petrochemicals.
8. Sunscreen
The sunscreen industry is a huge scam. Most popular sunscreen products actually cause skin cancer due to the numerous toxic chemicals they contain (which are quickly absorbed into the skin where they cause DNA mutations that lead to cancer). Even worse, sunscreen blocks the UV radiation that allows the skin to manufacture all-important vitamin D — the most powerful anti-cancer nutrient yet known to modern science. It prevents over a dozen different cancers, yet parents block it by slathering toxic sunscreen on their children, all while mistakenly believing they’re “protecting their children from cancer!” What a scam.

9. Fluoride in the water
I’ve always found it amazing that city water officials were dumb enough to actually buy a toxic waste substance and arrange to have it dripped into the public water supply where it would be ingested by infants and children. The result? Mass fluorosis and toxicity to children everywhere. Didn’t these people realize that fluoride only works topically? (That is, it only works if you rub it on your teeth, then spit it out, and even that only works if you’re using natural fluoride, not the chemicals spit out as byproducts of the fertilizer industry, which is what city water departments are buying and dripping into the water supply.)

Whoever heard of drinking a topical medication in the first place? It’s like swallowing sunscreen to prevent sunburn. Even worse, putting this into the public water supply effectively mass medicates everyone with a bioactive chemical substance that no one has been given a prescription for. This is all done with no regard for the level of natural fluoride children might already be ingesting from other sources. The situation is so crazy that it’s difficult to find a more insane example of medical tyranny than the mass fluoridation of public water supplies. The fact that doctors and dentists so vehemently support it demonstrates just how crazy they really are.

10. Processed milk
Children as young as 10 years old are now being diagnosed with heart disease and clogged arteries. Ever wonder how it happened? It’s due in part, I believe, to all the processed milk children are swallowing these days. Not only is the milk contaminated with pus, blood and detectable levels of pesticides and other chemicals, it’s also homogenized, meaning the fats are artificially modified in a way that makes them stay in suspension. This homogenization also makes milk fats dangerous to cardiovascular health. While I support the consumption of raw, unprocessed milk, I think that consuming processed, homogenized milk is dangerous to the health of infants, children and adults alike!

11. Fast food
Fast food is extremely unhealthy for children. Not only are the foods often fried, homogenized, hydrogenated and otherwise altered, they’re also laced with chemical additives, taste enhancers, processed sugars, petrochemical food coloring and other unhealthy substances. Strangely, many parents actually reward their children for good behavior by buying them unhealthy fast food meals, thereby creating a psychological association between good feelings and junk food. (Fast food restaurants further exploit this psychological link by building playgrounds and running feel-good advertisements that emphasize friends and fun, then link those good vibes to their food products.)

12. Antidepressant drugs
Children as young as six months old are now being put on psychotropic drugs such as SSRIs (antidepressants). These drugs, we now know, cause suicidal thoughts and violent behavior, especially in young boys. They imbalance brain chemistry and even alter the body’s metabolism of sugar, promoting diabetes and leading to rapid weight gain. These drugs are so dangerous that feeding them to children should be considered a crime. Every single school shooting involving a child in the United States in the last 15 years has been linked to antidepressant drug use. Need I say more?

13. Chemical laundry detergents
Parents are shown fancy ads on television depicting how wonderful and clean their clothes will be if they wash them in brand-name laundry detergent. What they’re not shown, however, is the toxicity of all the synthetic chemicals that go into most laundry detergent products. The fragrance chemicals alone are often carcinogenic, and they’re just as bad for the environment as they are children’s health. A new alternative has appeared, however: Soap berries! It’s laundry soap that grows on trees. We offer it at www.BetterLifeGoods.com

14. Flame retardant chemicals
Did you know that new mattresses for infants and children are often sprayed with extremely toxic flame retardant chemicals? These are easily absorbed through the skin of infants and children where they contribute to numerous neurological disorders and immune suppression. Many clothing products are also sprayed with flame retardants, as are some carpeting products. In the push to make everything fireproof, state regulators (who have mandated the flame retardant chemicals in states like California) have created a toxic environment for everyone. I suppose if you’re a politician, it’s always better for a million people to die of a mysterious disease that can’t be linked to you than to have one baby burning up on the evening news with fingers of blame pointed directly at you.

15. Soda
Aside from directly promoting diabetes and obesity, sodas also contain high amounts of phosphoric acid, a substance that dissolves bones and causes a loss of bone mineral density. This causes massive tooth decay as well as a shrinking jaw bone and overall skeletal fragility. Diet sodas are even worse, since they contain chemical sweeteners linked to neurological disorders and learning disabilities.

16. Air fresheners
Air fresheners contain cancer-causing chemicals. Unleashing them in the house exposes children to these chemicals, promoting asthma and other respiratory problems. If you value the health of your children, avoid air freshener products and just use essential oils or citrus peels instead. (Peel an orange and hang the peel in your kitchen.)

17. Synthetic vitamins
Many children’s vitamins are made with cheap, synthetic “vitamin” chemicals that actually harm people who take them. Plus, many are loaded up with artificial colors, sucrose and chemical sweeteners. Avoid cheap, store-bought children’s vitamins or anything containing cyanocobalamin (a toxic form of vitamin B12). Quality children’s vitamins are available through sources like Nordic Naturals (fish oils) and www.IntegratedHealth.com (also check www.WellnessResources.com for high-quality supplements).

18. Dryer sheets
Most popular dryer sheets and fabric softeners are made with toxic synthetic chemicals that are not safe to use on children’s clothing. The fragrance chemicals alone are often highly carcinogenic, and the other chemicals contribute additional toxicity to the clothing. Children’s clothes should never be washed or dried in chemicals. Only use natural detergents and fabric softeners, or avoid the fabric softeners altogether.

19. Bacon
Most bacon and sausage are processed meat products made with sodium nitrite (like the hot dogs, above) and contaminated with various chemicals lodged in the animal fats. Conventionally-raised beef, pork and chicken products are, in my opinion, extremely toxic to the human body and contribute to colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer and many other diseases and disorders. If you make meat for your children, shop for 100% organic, free-range, antibiotic-free meats that have no nitrites or nitrates.

20. Shampoo and bath products
Virtually all popular shampoo and bath products sold on the market contain cancer-causing chemicals. The ingredients read like a top-40 list of toxic chemicals. Virtually none of these chemicals have ever been tested or approved for use on humans (they are simply ignored because the FDA astonishingly believes the skin won’t absorb chemicals). If you want healthy products, use the shampoo I recommend: Pure Essentials Fragrance-Free Shampoo from Earth Science (www.TheNewES.com)

Keeping your health priorities straight

So that’s the list of 20 items that are more dangerous to the health of children than the lead paint in Mattel toys. Most parents have no concern whatsoever for any of these 20 things, but they’re going ape-shoot-crazy over the tiny amounts of lead in their Barbie toys and Elmo stuffed animals. It all just goes to show you that the sheeple will think anything the mainstream media tells them to think (and they’ll ignore everything else).

It’s classic American contradiction: Returning a Mattel toy at the local toy store while taking your child to a dentist to have mercury implanted in the cavities caused by all the soda the kid consumed at home (because the parents keep buying Coke and Pepsi). If it all weren’t so downright tragic, it would almost be funny.

Almost.

www.newstarget.com

A Minnesota disclosure law has revealed that drug companies are devoting large sums of money to many members of state advisory panels who make decisions on which drugs will be used in Medicaid programs.

The Minnesota Medicaid Drug Formulary Committee is considering a conflict-of-interest policy that requires panel members to disclose such financial relationships and refrain from voting on drugs that may pose a conflict of interest.

Without such disclosure laws — which exist only in three states, Minnesota, Vermont, and Maine — there’s no way to know whether financial ties between the drug industry and state advisers exist.

Upon examining records in Minnesota, the Associated Press found the eight-member state panel did include some ties to the industry. Namely:

John E. Simon, a Minneapolis psychiatrist, earned $354,700 from companies including Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca from 2004 to 2006 in honoraria, speaker’s and consulting fees, plus other payments ranging from $500 to $93,012.

Robert Straka, a University of Minnesota pharmacy professor, earned $78,100 in honoraria and other fees from 2000 to 2006.

Both men, and the committee chairman, maintain that the payments did not influence their committee decisions.

Still, medical ethicists say that state drug advisers should not receive money from drug companies because of their power over poor, disabled patients in the Medicaid system.

The Minnesota Medicaid Drug Formulary Committee’s recommendations to the state are usually followed. In 2006, they led $240 million in spending on drugs for 202,000 patients.

Minnesota state officials are planning to examine the Committee’s past actions for any potential bias, and will screen advisory council members for ties to the drug industry. They will also be requiring the Committee to record how each member of the panel votes.

Washington Post August 21, 2007

Dr. Mercola

The more attention that’s paid to the rampant conflicts of interest going on in local, state, and federal governments, the better. This Washington Post article clearly illustrates the kind of money being thrown around by drug companies.

The panel members in the article stated that they were not influenced by the hundreds of thousands of dollars they were collectively given. And they may very well believe this.

But there is something they have not taken into account.

Cognitive bias.

This is the term that describes your mind’s preconceived notions about reality, and its effect on the way you think and act. These panel members have received lavish gifts (money) from the drug companies, and this will impact their decisions, whether consciously or not.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is becoming infamous for its many ties to the drug industry, so it’s not at all surprising to see these types of connections on the state level too.

www.mercola.com

On August 9, Daniel Stockin, a public health professional of The Lillie Center, Inc., presented the CDC’s joint ethics panel with a detailed, formal complaint alleging unethical activities by the CDC.

According to the complaint, Oral Health Division manager William Maas and CDC Director Julie Gerberding have committed “serious and egregious” unethical actions, by not disseminating new findings about the real hazards of fluoridated water.

Stockin stated, “People with kidney disease or on dialysis should see this complaint and the report by the National Research Council on fluoride. And if you happen to be a member of the population with diabetes or HIV, you will be amazed how the NRC report contains important information you should know about – but that CDC has elected not to openly share with the public because it runs at odds with putting fluoride in drinking water.”

In a separate development, news surfaced that on the same day 600 doctors, dentists, and other professionals have signed a petition calling for a halt to water fluoridation, asking for congressional hearings on the issue.

FluorideAlert.org August 13, 2007
Organic Consumers Association August 13, 2007

Dr. Mercola’s Comments

In 2005, eleven unions within the EPA publicly called for a ban of water fluoridation, over concerns that it may cause bone cancer. And in 2006, the American Dental Association warned mothers about using fluoridated water to mix their powdered baby formula.

Now, finally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is developing software to try to assess just how much fluoride you’re ingesting, citing new findings that cumulative fluoride intake might lead to painful skeletal fluorosis.

Yet despite long-standing, ever-mounting evidence of fluoride’s hazard to human health, the CDC still clings to its outdated recommendation to add fluoride to drinking water in order to protect your oral health. Even though it was a lie, right from the start.

The Embarrassing Truth About Fluoride

Award-winning journalist Christopher Bryson, a former producer at the BBC, wrote about his shocking discoveries in his book “The Fluoride Deception,” and I also ran an exclusive interview with him, just over three years ago. His book details far more than the dangers of fluoride — it reveals a multi-tiered effort, or as Bryson says, an abuse of power by military and industry scientists, and public health officials, to shamelessly promote fluoride to the dentistry field and the American public with little regard to the implications it would have on human health.

90 percent of the fluoride added to your drinking water is hydrofluoric acid — a compound of fluorine that is a chemical byproduct of aluminum, steel, cement, phosphate, and nuclear weapons manufacturing.

Fluoride is also the active toxin in rat poisons and cockroach powder.

It is nothing but a carcinogenic industrial waste product, passed off on the public as a “nutrient” with necessary health benefits, to benefit the nuclear arms, aluminum, and phosphate manufacturers financially, to the tune of about $ 10 billion per year. Aided, of course, by your federal health agencies, controlled by political interest.

What Can Fluoride Do to Your Health?

Fluoride, contrary to popular belief, does not stop tooth decay at all, but rather causes teeth to rot and crumble – a condition called dental fluorosis.

According to the CDC itself, about 32 percent of American children have some level of dental fluorosis, characterized by mottling and pitting of the teeth. The real percentage is probably a lot higher than that. In 1993, the National Research Council reported 84 percent of the population had dental fluorosis in areas where fluoride in the water exceeded 3.7 parts per million (ppm).

What does that mean in plain English?

It means that if your water company adds a mere 3.7 drops of fluoride in every 13 gallons of water, you have an 84 percent chance of developing dental fluorosis.

The Environmental Working Group has petitioned the National Institutes of Health to list fluoride in tap water as a carcinogen. A 1991 study by the U.S. Public Health Service found a strong link between fluoride exposure and bone cancer in boys. They found there was a 79 percent increase in osteosarcoma in fluoridated communities and a 4 percent decrease in non-fluoridated communities.

Fluoride is closely linked to osteosarcoma for these reasons:

• Fifty percent of ingested fluoride is deposited in your bones.
• Fluoride is a mitogen that stimulates bone growth.
• Fluoride is known to cause human cells to mutate.

So when fluoride is deposited into the bones, it stimulates bone growth, but not the good kind. Instead, it’s growth that damages cells at the ends of bones and causes osteosarcoma.

How Can You Protect Yourself From Fluoride?

Whereas some other chemicals added to your drinking water will evaporate, fluoride is not one of them. Even cooking, food processing, regular filtration, or digestion doesn’t remove fluoride. It just keeps going right up the food chain, accumulating in fat cells.

Therefore, the best place to start is by filtering your tap water with a reverse osmosis filter. And that includes for purposes such as:

• Washing vegetables
• Making ice cubes
• Cooking, since heat does not destroy fluoride

Please don’t fool yourself by thinking you can tell whether your water is safe or not by the way it looks, tastes, or smells. If you are receiving your water from a municipal water supply in the US the odds are that your water is fluoridated, and a simple carbon filter will not remove it.

Also remember that installing a filter to purify the water in your kitchen may not be enough. You might want to also consider adding filters in your shower and your tub, since you could still be exposed to contaminated water (which can be absorbed through your skin) when you shower or bathe.

www.mercola.com

An intoxicated nation

We have become a nation of drug addicts — and I don’t mean illegal drugs. From the high-fructose corn syrup and caffeine in the food supply to all the prescription drugs people now believe they need because they saw them on TV, synthetic substances now dominate American medicine (and American tragedy). An estimated 30 percent of all traffic accidents are now caused by people on medication, and yet the drug companies are pushing even more drugs for yet more fictitious diseases — because, you know, there’s always a way to add yet one more pill to the daily chemical intake, right?

Over the last ten years alone, there has been a forty-fold increase in the number of children being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. That’s a 4000% rise in the number of children with this so-called “disease.” Gee, why isn’t the CDC involved? Any increase that large should be due to an infectious disease pandemic — if it were real, that is. But there is no pandemic, no outbreak, and no real cause for alarm. The 4000% increase is due entirely to clever marketing, disease mongering and the takeover of psychiatric medicine by Big Pharma.

Modern medicine is the cause of disease

It increasingly seems like the only real disease in this country is the sickness of believing in pharmaceutical medicine. It’s a kind of madness, actually: Thinking that a synthetic chemical can solve all your problems and put your life in perfect order like those actors shown in pharmaceutical television ads. I believe it will one day be viewed as a kind of cultural mass psychosis. When it comes to health, our modern world has lost its mind, and the so-called science backing it up has lost all touch with scientific reality. Modern medicine is a hoax. Science has been abandoned for marketing. Safety has been thrown out the window and replaced with profit potential. Ethics have surrendered to greed, and we have now become a nation of mind-numbed druggies who seem increasingly incapable of questioning the news, voting intelligently, or understanding anything that’s really going on in the world (such as the coming collapse of the real estate bubble and the inevitable hyperinflation of the U.S. dollar).

Here are the seven facts you need to remember about everything you’re seeing today in modern medicine:

Fact #1: 90 percent of all diseases (cancer, diabetes, depression, heart disease, etc.) are easily preventable through diet, nutrition, sunlight and exercise. None of these solutions are ever promoted because they make no money.

Fact #2: Nearly all the consumption of pharmaceuticals today is a direct result of marketing to the public and covertly bribing physicians to write more prescriptions. There is very little drug consumption based on scientific merit.

Fact #3: No pharmaceuticals actually cure or resolve the underlying causes of disease. Even “successful” drugs only manage symptoms, usually at the cost of interfering with other physiological functions that will cause side effects down the road. There is no such thing as a drug without a side effect.

Fact #4: There is no financial incentive for anyone in today’s system of medicine (drug companies, hospitals, doctors, etc.) to actually make patients well. Profits are found in continued sickness, not wellness or prevention.

Fact #5: Virtually all the “prevention” programs you see today (such as free mammograms or other screening programs) are little more than cleverly disguised patient recruitment schemes. They use free screenings to scare people into agreeing to expensive and often unnecessary treatments that enrich drug companies. Breast cancer mammography is a complete scam: The machines actually cause cancer!

Fact #6: Doctors know virtually nothing about nutrition and are still not taught nutrition in medical schools. Expecting a doctor to teach you about how to prevent disease is sort of like expecting a car mechanic to show you how to perform brain surgery. Although there are some exceptions (doctors who have taught themselves nutrition), most doctors remain so nutritionally illiterate that they have no familiarity with the natural plant-based medicines found in everyday fruits and vegetables.

Fact #7: Nobody has any interest in your health except you. No corporation, no doctor, and no government has any desire to actually make you well. Keeping you sick makes it easier for them to control and financially exploit you. Healthy, aware individuals are perceived as a threat to the tyrannical institutions now running this country, and they’ve figured out that the best way to keep a nation controlled and subdued is to drug ‘em all and keep the people in a constant state of brain fog from medications and fluoride. The only healthy, aware, critically thinking individuals I know are all 100% free of pharmaceuticals and processed foods (and watch no television, either).

Remember those seven facts and you’ll know more about health and disease than most people. And for your part, stay healthy! Work to safely get off all prescription drugs, eat a diet of natural, wholesome foods (and avoid processed foods), exercise regularly, avoid toxic chemicals in your home (throw out those toxic laundry detergents and switch to soap nuts), and toss those toxic personal care products (skin creams, cosmetics, shampoo, etc.). Stay natural, healthy and alert. Be well, and you’ll be the exception! And please, never be so gullible as to think that your government is going to “save you” with a new health care reform plan. Even if we switch to free health insurance for everyone, the whole system is still based on toxic treatments that cure nothing!

www.newstarget.com