Sunbathing Boosting Testosterone in Men
February 5, 2010
BBC News
The bulk of this essential nutrient is made by the skin on exposure to sunlight. The rest comes from the diet.
A study in Clinical Endocrinology journal of 2,299 men found those with enough of the vitamin had more of the male sex hormone than those with less.
Blood levels of both dipped in the winter and peaked in the summer.
Low testosterone levels can impact on a man’s libido as well as zap energy levels.
It also performs essential functions in both men and women such as maintaining muscle strength and bone density.The researchers from the Medical University of Graz, Austria, found men with at least 30 nanograms of vitamin D per millilitre of blood had much more testosterone circulating than those lacking in vitamin D.
Across the 2,299 men studied, testosterone and vitamin D levels appeared to peak in the month of August, and drop off in the winter, hitting their lowest levels in March.
Professor Winfried Marz and colleagues, who ran the study, said scientists should now look at whether vitamin D supplements would have the same effect on testosterone.
Ad Brand of the Sunlight Research Forum in The Netherlands, a non-profit organisation set up to inform the general public on latest medical research on sun and health, said: “Men who ensure that their body is at least sufficiently supplied with vitamin D are doing good for their testosterone levels and their libido among other things.”
Cancer experts warn that too much sun exposure is damaging for the health.
Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in Andrology at the University of Sheffield, said: “We know that medically we can increase the libido and general well-being of men who have low levels of testosterone by giving them testosterone replacement therapy.
“However, this is for a defined set of medical circumstances where testosterone production is low.
“Whether healthy men notice a significant changes throughout the year is less clear and I would urge men to be sensible about using sunbeds in the winter months given the known risks of using them excessively.”
Jessica Harris of Cancer Research UK said: “Enjoying the sun safely while taking care not to burn should help people strike a balance between making enough vitamin D and avoiding a higher risk of skin cancer.
“People can also top up their levels of vitamin D by eating more foods like oily fish such as salmon, trout or mackerel.”
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Fast Food Linked to Diabetes
February 5, 2010
Natural News
By Ethan A. Huff
A report recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that black women who consume fried chicken or fast food burgers at least twice a week are between 40 and 70 percent more prone to develop type 2 diabetes over the course of a decade than those who do not. Not only black women but all people who consume high calorie, low nutrient fast foods on even a moderate basis are susceptible to developing the disease.
Dr. Julie Palmer and her colleagues from Boston University analyzed over 44,000 black women who were instructed to complete questionnaires that they were given beginning back in 1995. Once concluded, researchers compared the results with another group of women who claimed never to eat fast food. The result was that not only were the women who ate fast food more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than the non-fast food group, they also were generally heavier with many falling into the overweight range.
The standard measuring tool for determining healthy body weight is the Body Mass Index (BMI). A healthy BMI is somewhere between 18.5 and 24.9. Most of the participants in the fast food group were somewhere between 28 and 29 when they started the study, which according the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is overweight. Those in this group also continued to gain more weight during the course of the study.
Interestingly, the two foods that played the largest role in blood sugar disorder were fast food hamburgers and fried chicken. These foods were implicated in causing the most weight gain which resulted in more cases of diabetes. Nearly 3,000 women in the fast food eating group developed type 2 diabetes by the time the study concluded.
A previous fast food study conducted in 2004 by researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital found similar results. After tracking more than 3,000 young adults for over 15 years, researchers found that people who ate at fast food restaurants more than twice a week gained an average of almost 10 pounds more than those who went only once a week. The twice a week group also had a 200 percent increase in insulin resistance compared to the once a week group.
Experts also concluded that those who ate the most fast food lived the most unhealthy lifestyles in general and were the most prone to developing other serious diseases throughout the course of their lives.
While some experts suggest consuming smaller portion sizes and less overall calories, a better option would be to make better food choices. Eating less fast food is good, but changing one’s lifestyle to include whole, living foods is even better.
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Heal Yourself in 15 Days (Part 2)
February 1, 2010
Natural News
By Mike Adams
This article continues our 15-part article series called Heal Yourself in 15 Days. In part one, we looked at why the real secret to rapid healing is to remove the barriers to healing. In part two, we look at why your healing potential is so powerful that you can’t even turn it off!
When you scrape your elbow, a bit of blood oozes out to clean the wound and wash away bacteria. It then forms a protective scab that keeps out invading microorganisms while your skin has a chance to heal underneath. There, some real magic takes place: Your skin cells innately recognize the need to divide and grow to fill the wound. A cancer-like process is unleashed at the cellular level, activating nearby cells to divide and grow. Your DNA is replicated in the nucleus of each cell with the help of some of the most astounding nanotechnology every witnessed in human civilization. (The best scientists in the world can’t even come close to recreating it.)
As your cells multiply, nutrients and building blocks are carried to them through a blood supply that adapts to the particular size and shape of the wound. If a blood vessel was destroyed in your accident, the growth of new blood vessels is spontaneously initiated to take their place, and they grow into the tissues within mere hours.
As your skin cells fill in the previous wound, the replication effort is delicately turned off, one by one, so that replicating skin cells don’t keep replicating beyond what they need to — a process that would cause the creation of a skin tumor. Your body’s cells know exactly when to grow and exactly when to turn off, and when it’s all said and done, you’re left with a perfect replacement for the skin you previously lost.
Completely automatic healing
The truly amazing part of all this is not the cancer-like processes that are delicately controlled by your body wisdom; it’s not even the fact that your body has the ability to re-grow lost cells — it’s the fact that all this takes place without any conscious involvement on your part.
Healing yourself is automatic, in other words. You don’t have to direct blood to the wound, direct the cells to start replicating, direct the molecular waste products to be carried away and decide when cell replication should be stopped. All this happens without your involvement — even without your awareness! Much of it happens while you sleep, in fact. While your conscious mind is dreaming, your innate body wisdom is working the biochemistry and energetic transformations necessary to repair your tissues.
You can’t stop this process even if you wanted to. You could try to focus all your mental power on your skin not healing, and yet your skin would heal itself anyway.
That’s because your body is a powerful self-healing organism. It heals itself automatically, innately, without your conscious awareness or involvement. Your ability to heal yourself is so powerful that you can’t stop yourself from healing!
Why we don’t always heal
If this is true, then why aren’t you healing everything else? Why aren’t you always in perfect health? The answer, as you’ve seen throughout this article series, is because we tend to erect barriers to our own healing. And we often misread the symptoms of sickness that are asking for help, “treating” them in a way that makes the situation worse.
Click here for the full report
Processed Soy Products Are Bad for You
January 13, 2010
Natural News
By Mike Adams
One of the strangest behaviors I’ve ever seen in the natural health crowd is something I call “Soy Rage.” It’s an angry reaction that wells up in some people every time they hear me recommend natural, non-GMO, home-made soy milk.
People get angry about it. Downright nasty at times. They insist all soy is bad for you and there’s no such thing as “healthy soy.” To that, I say stop blaming the plant.
Blame the processing. (And the slash-and-burn farming…)
Processed soy is atrociously bad for you
Based on everything I’ve learned over the last decades or soy, I believe that processed soy products are atrociously bad for you. I wouldn’t touch a carton of Silk with a ten-foot straw. Processed tofu is a nutritious joke, and when it comes to soy protein, I’ve already published numerous articles exposing the toxins found in conventional processed soy protein.
Processed soy, like lots of processed things, is quite bad for your health.
But natural soy, grown organically (and locally, where possible), can actually be quite good for you. Natural soy milk, made right at home, has been part of the healthy traditional Chinese diet for thousands of years. Some of its plant-based nutrients have very powerful anti-cancer elements that can help prevent both prostate and breast cancers. Natural, non-GMO soy has some very positive properties and can play an important role in a healthy disease-preventing diet.
But the Soy Rage people don’t see it that way. To them, all soy is bad for you, end of discussion.
It’s an ignorant belief. It’s like saying “all sugar is bad for you.”
Well, not really. When I take a machete and cut some living sugar cane stalks here in Ecuador, and I take them to a sugar cane juicing machine and squeeze out all the green juice, with all its minerals and phytonutrients, and then I enjoy that amazing beverage, it’s very good for me! Drinking raw sugar cane juice is a lot like drinking wheat grass juice (sugar cane is actually a grass) except it tastes way better.
Study Pushes Baby Formula For Profit Over Natural Breast Feeding
January 8, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
A recent study lauding the benefits of fortified infant formula has been greeted with skepticism by child development specialists, who suspect that the study is only the first part of an attempt to promote formula over breast milk.
“It is clear that the food industry fascination with nutraceuticals (strategically fortified food products) is now spreading into infant formula,” said Barbara Moore of Shape Up America! “This is a disturbing new development. We have parents thinking that sticking their tiny infants in front of a Baby Einstein video will improve their child’s mental development when the data suggest that parent-child interactions (and plenty of them) are the most critical factor for such development. Now parents will be encouraged to forego breastfeeding — which is optimal for both mothers and babies — in favor of a hyped up infant formula.”
A recent study concluded that children who consumed infant formula fortified with the omega-3 fatty acid DHA had higher cognitive function than children who consumed unfortified formula. Breastmilk was not included in the study, and the formula used in the study was provided for free by a manufacturer.
Miriam Labbok of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill said she was doubtful about the study’s findings.
“It might be reasonable from these industry-funded studies to consider that this would be a good additive to formula if you are forced to stop breastfeeding,” she said. “However, 1) none of these studies compare to continued breastfeeding, 2) you could also get these [nutrients] from other sources if you stop breastfeeding, and 3) there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other components in human milk that cannot be replaced.”
Pediatrician Lori Feldman-Winter of New Jersey noted that many mothers come to her believing that DHA-fortified milk is healthier for their infants than breastmilk.
“The marketing has actually dissuaded mothers from choosing exclusive breastfeeding, which is preferred from all the outcomes that we understand,” she said.
All major health and pediatric associations recommend exclusive breastfeeding for at least the first six months of life, if not longer.
Click here for the full report
Processed Soy Products Are Bad for You
January 06, 2010
Naural News
By Mike Adams
One of the strangest behaviors I’ve ever seen in the natural health crowd is something I call “Soy Rage.” It’s an angry reaction that wells up in some people every time they hear me recommend natural, non-GMO, home-made soy milk.
People get angry about it. Downright nasty at times. They insist all soy is bad for you and there’s no such thing as “healthy soy.” To that, I say stop blaming the plant.
Blame the processing. (And the slash-and-burn farming…)
Processed soy is atrociously bad for you
Based on everything I’ve learned over the last decades or soy, I believe that processed soy products are atrociously bad for you. I wouldn’t touch a carton of Silk with a ten-foot straw. Processed tofu is a nutritious joke, and when it comes to soy protein, I’ve already published numerous articles exposing the toxins found in conventional processed soy protein.
Processed soy, like lots of processed things, is quite bad for your health.
But natural soy, grown organically (and locally, where possible), can actually be quite good for you. Natural soy milk, made right at home, has been part of the healthy traditional Chinese diet for thousands of years. Some of its plant-based nutrients have very powerful anti-cancer elements that can help prevent both prostate and breast cancers. Natural, non-GMO soy has some very positive properties and can play an important role in a healthy disease-preventing diet.
But the Soy Rage people don’t see it that way. To them, all soy is bad for you, end of discussion.
It’s an ignorant belief. It’s like saying “all sugar is bad for you.”
Well, not really. When I take a machete and cut some living sugar cane stalks here in Ecuador, and I take them to a sugar cane juicing machine and squeeze out all the green juice, with all its minerals and phytonutrients, and then I enjoy that amazing beverage, it’s very good for me! Drinking raw sugar cane juice is a lot like drinking wheat grass juice (sugar cane is actually a grass) except it tastes way better.
Sugar is a lot like soy: When it’s unprocessed and natural, it’s quite good for you. When it’s processed and modified, it’s bad!
Lots of things are good for you BEFORE they’re processed
Many people in the natural health arena need a better understanding of this: There are lots of things that are quite good for you in their unprocessed form. It’s the processing that makes them bad for you.
For example:
Processed sugar cane is bad. Raw sugar cane is good.
Processed salt is bad. Unprocessed, full-spectrum sea salt is good.
Processed cow’s milk is bad. Fresh, raw cow’s milk is good.
Processed chocolate can be a junk food. Raw, natural cacao is a superfood!
Processed wheat is bad for you. Stone-ground whole wheat can be good for you.
Processed soy milk is bad. Natural, home-made soy milk is good.
Processed cheese is bad. Natural, home-made cheese is far less so.
Processed (canned) fruits are bad. Raw, fresh fruits are good for you.
You see, it’s not the food itself that’s good or bad — it’s the processing! And sadly, virtually all the foods consumed by most consumers today are highly processed.
What happens when you “process” food
So what’s the problem with processing food anyway? When you process food, five very bad things happen:
#1 – Minerals are stripped out, such as 98% of the magnesium being stripped out of wheat when it’s milled and bleached into white flour.
#2 – Phytonutrients are destroyed. As much as 90% of the phytonutrient content is lost during processing. (And remember, phytonutrients are the disease-fighting medicines found in foods.)
#3 – The physical properties of foods are artificially altered in a way that makes them dangerous. The homogenization of milk, for example, alters the fat molecules in milk, giving them properties that contribute to heart disease and clogged arteries. Partially-hydrogenated oils are also the result of a physical alteration that makes food dangerous for your health.
Crestor the latest in Drugs Approved for People With no Health Prolems
December 30, 2009
Natural News
By Mike Adams
Big Pharma has been trending this direction for a long time: marketing medicines to people who don’t need them and who have nothing wrong with their health. It’s all part of a ploy to position prescription drugs as nutrients — things you need to take on a regular basis in order to prevent disease.
The FDA recently gave its nod of approval on the matter, announcing that Crestor can now be advertised and prescribed as a “preventive” medicine. No longer does a patient need to have anything wrong with them to warrant this expensive prescription medication: They only need to remember the brand name of the drug from television ads.
This FDA approval for the marketing of Crestor to healthy people is a breakthrough for wealthy drug companies. Selling drugs only to people who are sick is, by definition, a limited market. Expanding drug revenues requires reaching people who have nothing wrong with them and convincing them that taking a cocktail of daily pharmaceuticals will somehow keep them healthy.
All this is, of course, the greatest quackery we’ve yet seen from Big Pharma, because once this floodgate of “preventive pharmaceuticals” is unleashed, the drug companies will be positioned to promote a bewildering array of other preventive chemicals you’re supposed to take at the same time. Did you take your anti-cancer pill today? How about your anti-diabetes pill? Anti-cholesterol pill? Don’t forget your anti-Alzheimer’s pill, too.
Meditation Helps Reduce Heart Disease Deaths
December 28, 2009
Natural News
By E. Huff
The Medical College of Wisconsin in conjunction with Maharishi University in Iowa funded a study about the effects of transcendental meditation on health. Researchers discovered that over the course of nine years, the group assigned to meditate saw a 47 percent reduction in strokes, heart attacks and deaths.
Two groups of African-Americans were assigned either to meditate or to make certain lifestyle changes. The group told to meditate was instructed to do so twice a day for 20 minutes. The other group was given instruction on traditional methods to reduce the risk of heart disease. After nine years, 20 incidences of stroke, heart attack, or death occurred in the meditation group while 31 incidences occurred in the health education group.
Dr. Robert Schneider, lead author of the study and the director of the Centre for Natural Medicine and Prevention at Maharishi University, stated that the meditation group experienced an overall reduction in blood pressure as well as a significant reduction in psychological stress. Supporters of transcendental meditation claim that the study proves the long-term positive effects of the practice on those who participate in it.
Researchers noted, however, that among those in the health education group, very few followed the instructions and made any sort of significant changes in their lifestyles. Such lifestyle changes may have proven more effective if group participants would have followed the instructions in the same way as those in the meditation group did. For this reason, the study does not accurately capture the positive benefits of lifestyle changes apart from meditation.
Because transcendental meditation involves spiritual practices that conflict with the beliefs of various other faiths, some may wish to pursue other avenues of achieving better health and preventing the onset of heart disease without violating their convictions.
CoQ10, omega-3 essential fatty acids (EFAs), vitamin C, B vitamins, and vitamin D are a few of the many vitamins and nutrients that work to maintain heart health. Blueberries are an excellent source of pterostilebene, a compound identified by the U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) to help prevent heart disease and type-2 diabetes.
Resveratrol, another powerful antioxidant found in the skins of both grapes and blueberries has received a lot of attention recently for its powerful effects in bolstering cardiovascular health. A Harvard Medical School study showed that high doses of resveratrol given to obese mice allowed them to live long, healthy lives despite eating diets high in fat.
Click here for the full report
Boost Your Foods by Making Sure You Have Right Nutrients
November 24, 2009
Wall Street Journal
by Laura Landro
While many people are still waiting for swine-flu vaccine to become available in their area, there is a lot they can do in their own kitchens to help fight off disease and build a strong immune system.
Scientists in the growing field of nutritional immunology are unveiling new evidence of the complex role that nutrition plays in fighting off infectious diseases like influenza. A diet rich in nutrients such as vitamin A, found in colorful fruits and vegetables, and zinc, found in seafood, nuts and whole grains, can provide the critical fuel the body needs to fight off disease, heal injuries, and survive illness when it does strike, experts say.
Scientists are still studying all the complex ways in which nutrients interact with the immune system. There is still much that they don’t know about minerals such as zinc, for instance, including how they are absorbed and all the roles they play in the body. But scientists do know that certain vitamins and minerals can improve the body’s ability to fight off infection: Studies in healthy elderly adults, for example, have shown an improved immune response to vaccination and fewer infections after receiving extra doses of vitamin E.
To create immune cells to fight off a specific infection, the body has to rapidly draw nutrients from the bloodstream, says Anuraj Shankar, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health. “If you don’t have an adequate intake of vitamins and minerals, you won’t be able to produce the number of immune cells you need, and the immune cells you do produce may be compromised,” Dr. Shankar says. That makes it impossible to mount an effective response to infection, he says.
The benefits of good nutrition may have been recognized first by Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician who declared “let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.” An 18th century naval surgeon’s discovery that citrus fruits could cure scurvy in sailors was later recognized as a vitamin C deficiency, and after the 1930s, when dairies began to fortify milk with vitamin D, the disease known as rickets was virtually eliminated in the U.S.
Researchers warn that malnourished people may be a breeding ground for more dangerous infectious diseases. Animal studies at the University of North Carolina show that in a host with poor nutrition, viruses mutate in the face of a weak immune response to become more powerful. And once those mutations occur, even well-nourished hosts are susceptible to the newly virulent virus. “A lot of people may think malnutrition on the other side of the world isn’t their problem,” says Melinda A. Beck, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. But malnutrition “is a driving force in emerging infectious diseases that are spreading around the world,” she says.
The human body doesn’t have to be starving to suffer from malnutrition. Studies show that obesity, in addition to its other health risks, may also make people more susceptible to infections like the flu. A diet heavy on processed and fast foods may be low in the vitamins and minerals important for health. And diets that are high in saturated fat appear to actually depress the body’s immune response, increasing the risk of infections.
The Best Way to Cook and Eat Carrots
November 12, 2009
NaturalNews
by David Gutierrez, staff writer
Carrots may contain 25 percent more cancer-fighting power when they are cooked whole and then chopped, rather than being chopped up before cooking, according to a study conducted by researchers from Newcastle University.
Carrots are known to contain a number of important nutrients, including fiber, beta-carotene and other vitamins. Previous studies have also shown that they contain high levels of a chemical known as falcarinol, which has been shown to significantly decrease the risk of tumor developments in rats. As with many nutrients, however, the falcarinol content of carrots appears to decrease with cooking.
In the current study, researchers compared the falcarinol content of carrots that were cut up and then boiled with carrots that were boiled and then cut up. They found that the carrots that have been cooked whole contained 25 percent higher levels of falcarinol.
The researchers then had nearly 100 participants perform taste test on the two batches of carrots. Nearly 80 percent preferred to taste of the carrots had been cooked whole.
Researchers believe that like falcarinol, the naturally occurring sugars in carrots pass more readily through cell membranes that have been weakened by heat. Both the anti-cancer chemical and the sugars fare better in the whole carrots because there is less surface area available through which molecules can exit the vegetable.
“The great thing about this is it’s a simple way for people to increase their uptake of a compound we know is good for you,” said researcher Kirsten Brandt. “All you need is a bigger saucepan.”
Nutritionist Carrie Ruxton greeted the study as beneficial, even while noting that carrots are probably healthiest when eaten raw.
“This is good news as boiling them whole appears to help them keep more of the nutrients,” she said. “This could apply to other vegetables, such as parsnips which are from the same family and have a roughly similar size and texture.”
