How Vaccine Adjuvants Affect Your Brain

Reposted from Dr. Mercola

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By Dr. Mercola

Vaccine safety is certainly a highly controversial topic this year, and in this interview, Dr. Lucija Tomljenovic helps shed light on an important aspect of this discussion, which is how vaccine adjuvants can affect your brain.
Dr. Tomljenovic is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where she works in neurosciences and the Department of Medicine.

"The reason why I got interested in this area is [because] there is a lack of research demonstrating safety," she says.
"When one reviews most of the pharma-based trials on the safety of vaccines, you will see that they either use another vaccine as a placebo or the aluminum adjuvant, and neither of those constitutes a proper placebo.
It's very easy to claim that the product is safe if you're using a comparator that inherently might be toxic."

Another factor that triggered her skepticism about what was being reported in the peer-reviewed literature was her coming face to face with scientific corruption. A former boss actually asked her to falsify data on an experiment they were doing with statin drugs.
They were testing a cholesterol-lowering medication in mice, and more mice were dying from the statin treatment than from the placebo treatment, which in this case was plain water.

"When the result came, my boss told me to ignore the dead mice from the statistics, because it wouldn't look good on the drug. I thought to myself, 'I didn't get a PhD degree to lie to earn money,' so I quit my job," she says.
“I started questioning what else have we been sold in sciences that were dodgy data...My boss was receiving money from the drug companies, and obviously they would have not given more money to a lab that published unfavorable reports about their drugs.”

Aluminum Adjuvants Are Falsely Assumed Safe

When asked about why researchers (and the peer-reviewed journals who review these studies) allow the use of improper placebos—meaning placebos that may be toxic rather than inert—when testing vaccines, she suggests increasing their sales as a primary motivating factor.

It's sobering to realize that when the aluminum adjuvant was first approved for use in vaccines, some 90 years ago, it was approved because of efficacy. It was never actually tested for safety. Even the total allowable limit was based on efficacy data, not safety data. They just assumed it was safe.

"I have a document from 2002 from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)... discussing the assessment of vaccine ingredients... and testing specifically in animal models," she says.

Back then, the FDA stated that the routine toxicity studies in animals with vaccine ingredients have not been conducted because it was assumed that these ingredients are safe. When I read that I was kind of pulling my hairs out [thinking] ‘So, this is your indisputable evidence of safety?’ 

These documents never made it to mainstream media. It's just a lie perpetuated over and over again; that we've been using these things for over nine decades and it's been proven safe. No, it's been assumed safe."
This document is readily available. On pages 11 and 12 of this document, titled: Workshop on Non-Clinical Safety Evaluation of Preventive Vaccines: Recent Advances and Regulatory Considerations,¹ it says: “Historically, the non-clinical safety assessment for preventive vaccines has often not included toxicity studies in animal models. This is because vaccines have not been viewed as inherently toxic

In contrast to most drugs and biological products that are predominantly developed to treat ill patients, vaccines primarily are given to large numbers of healthy people, oftentimes predominantly healthy infants and children. And this places significant emphasis on their safety.”

So we see it is just empty talk. They say safety is of great importance, but then they go ahead licensing products that have not been adequately tested.

Why Are Aluminum Adjuvants Used in Vaccines?

You might wonder why aluminum is used in vaccines as an adjuvant in the first place. An adjuvant is an agent or compound designed to increase your immune response.
Now, your immune response is subdivided into two immune responses: the humoral immune response and the cellular innate immune response. The adjuvant only increases your humoral immunity. It does not affect your cellular innate immunity.

The challenge is that there's really no good testing system for the innate immune system, but they technically can measure antibody response. So that's what's being used.
Aluminum is very effectively able to increase antibodies. But that doesn't appear to actually improve long-term immune responses to infections and disease, which is what most people imagine vaccines will do.

What many fail to realize is that vaccines only work short-term for one aspect of the immune system, not the total immune system.

When you get a wild, acquired infection, it does stimulate the innate immune system, which is how you end up with permanent life-long immunity once you've recovered. This never happens with a vaccine.

"The problem is that people are being brainwashed into this idea that high antibody titers equal protection against diseases, and it's simply not true," Dr. Tomljenovic says.

"Proof of that are cases where you get outbreaks of infectious diseases in fully vaccinated populations, where over 95 percent are vaccinated, and they still get the disease.

The other side will always say, “We need to increase the boosters.” Does it ever occur to these people that these disease outbreaks might be [happening] because [the vaccine] is not doing what they think it should be doing?” 

Rates of Autism Have Risen in Tandem with Vaccine Burden

Together with Christopher Shaw, a professor in the department of ophthalmology and visual sciences at UBC who also chairs the CMSRI's scientific advisory board, Dr. Tomljenovic has published a number of papers^2,3,4,5,6 that suggest aluminum-containing vaccines may be unsafe.

Not surprisingly, their work has been heavily criticized. The UBC, however, has defended and stands behind Shaw's and Tomljenovic's work on aluminum toxicity.⁷ So what does their research show that has everyone in such a tizzy?

"In the original study we gathered data that's available from the US Department of Education about autism rates in the last couple of decades. We have done a similar analysis looking at autism rates in various other countries like UK and the Scandinavian countries.
We found that the countries that have the heaviest vaccines schedule (the children are vaccinated with a great number of vaccines) have higher autism rates compared to countries that do not vaccinate children with as many vaccines.

If you look at the temporal trend in the US, you see a significant correlation over the last three decades between the number of vaccines and autism rates. The autism numbers have been skyrocketing. They always say it's only because the diagnosis of autism is better. But that's a bogus argument because just in the last five years there's been about a 70 percent increase in autism. This is not due to better diagnostic criteria, and it sure isn't a genetic epidemic, because genes in a population do not change in a five-year span. These arguments are just silly," she says.

Correlations such as these do not prove causation, however. To prove a plausible theory, you have to actually test it, to see if the theory holds. At present, the animal model is the best way to do this, as large-scale testing of toxic substances on humans is unethical. This kind of toxicity research on animals should have been done prior to approval, but it wasn't. There's also a large-enough pool of unvaccinated children that could be used to compare health outcomes. As noted by Dr. Tomljenovic, this kind of comparative research also should have been done but hasn't:

"They should've tested vaccinated versus non-vaccinated, the population of vaccinated kids versus non-vaccinated kids, and assessed the health outcomes. But that study has never been done because it has been claimed that it's unethical not to give children vaccines. Well, again, that's an assumption. If you claim that, don't call me a quack scientist, because your science is quack also, because you're putting out assumptions. They're untested. The same goes for safety."

Animal Study Demonstrates Harm of Aluminum Adjuvant

In one of their studies,⁸ Shaw and Tomljenovic injected mice with aluminum at the equivalent dose given to American children through vaccines, and they spaced out the injections based on the mice's developmental stages. (On a side note, to find out how much aluminum you or your child actually receives from various vaccines, see this vaccine excipients list.⁹) What they found was that once the mice reached adulthood (which occurs at the age of six months), the treated mice had permanent behavioral impairments.

There was a significant increase in anxiety and a reduction in exploratory behavior. There was also a reduction in social interactions between the mice. "That was a huge confirmation that our initial assumption or correlation [between the number of vaccines and rising autism rates] might be something more than just correlation," she says.
After that, the duo went on to do some gene-based studies, specifically looking at the expression of genes in the mouse brain. They selected 17 candidate genes that are involved in neural function and immune response, and looked to see if there was any change in their expression either at the gene level or the protein level. Here, they discovered:¹⁰

• A significant increase in tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) interferon gamma (IFN-gamma), and a chemokine called macrophage chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1), which is a macrophage-attracting factor. These are indicative of an inflammatory response in the adult mouse brain
• A significant decrease in a neurotransmitter called acetylcholinesterase (AChE), which is related to depression and anxiety

When You Alter Your Immune System, It Affects Your Brain Function

The changes seen at the genome level and the behavioral level are consistent with findings from studies done on deceased autistic patients, in which chronic brain inflammation was identified. It's important to realize that autism is not just a brain disorder; it's also an immune system disorder. Dr. Tomljenovic calls it an immune system brain disorder, as the two systems are connected.

"The backbone of this research was done 30 years ago. We already knew that there is a significant connection between the immune system and the central nervous system. They communicate. You cannot influence the immune system at the periphery without changing something in the brain. Most of us know that from experience, because when you get the flu, your brain doesn’t function very well. That mental fogginess and chronic fatigue, they are clear neurobehavioral changes in response to an immune stimulus [infection].

It's a neuroendocrine axis—basically, the immune system at the periphery and the central nervous system talk to each other. Again, if you increase an immune response artificially at the periphery, you are going to mess up the brain. They’ve done that artificially using what they call viral and bacterial mimics. I thought, “Oh, that spells like antigens in vaccines,” Because that’s exactly what’s being used. Commonly in this type of research strong adjuvants are added to exaggerate the immune response...

There is a huge body of research that shows that if you overstimulate the immune system at the periphery, especially in the critical stage of early development, you are going to influence the brain in a negative way, and by doing so, you can create irreversible damage. Again, this is research that is rarely discussed, because it really shows that there is reason to question the safety of the burden of vaccines given to infants.”

It’s frustrating to realize that the kind of research and the technology Dr. Tomljenovic incorporated to measure these neuroparameters, has been long available and could have been performed two or three decades ago—it’s that basic. And what the research reveals is that it is not just that aluminum is a neurotoxin, which it certainly is, but also, it is the exaggerated adjuvant-induced immune response that is causing trouble.

What this means is that even if they replaced aluminum with another adjuvant, you’d still get the same problem. This is undoubtedly a problem of enormous proportions for the vaccine industry, which explains why this kind of research isn’t done on a routine basis, and why Shaw’s and Tomljenovic’s work is under such heavy fire.

The pair has also investigated the cross-reactivity between the antibodies that are raised against vaccine antigens. As it turns out, some of them cross-react with our own tissues. Many viruses and bacteria share genetic similarities with human proteins.

For example, there may be a peptide sequence in the wall of the virus that mimics the structure of a human protein. So, the antibody that is raised against the virus will then also recognize these epitopes in your own tissues that mimic the virus. This has the potential to cause severe harm, and can significantly raise the risk of autoimmune disorders.

HPV Vaccine May Raise Your Risk of Autoimmune Disease

For example, Tomljenovic in collaboration with the team led by professor Yehuda Shoenfeld (world expert in autoimmune diseases who heads the Zabludowicz Autoimmunity Research Centre at the Sheba Hospital in Israel) has demonstrated how the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine can raise your risk of brain autoimmune disorders.

This was done by vaccinating young mice with the equivalent of three doses of Gardasil, which is what young girls are receiving. As a result of these vaccinations, the mice developed anti-HPV antibodies, which were found to preferentially bind to a protein in the mouse brain. Dr. Tomljenovic explains:

“[I]f you coat a plate with HPV antibodies and if you apply the serum [blood] from the mice to this plate, the serum from the mice that have been vaccinated with Gardasil and have concentrated antibodies in serum, you can detect the binding between the antibody fraction and the HPV fraction that’s on the plate. Now, if you apply a mouse brain protein extract, you get inhibition of binding of the anti-HPV antibodies to HPV. Why? Because they [the anti-HPV antibodies] are preferentially binding to the mouse brain protein extract. 

The presence of cross-reactive anti-HPV antibodies in the blood of vaccinated girls will increases their risk for developing immune-mediated nervous system disorders, which incidentally appear to be the most commonly reported worldwide, following Gardasil. We have done the analysis on adverse events reported following HPV vaccination. It was published it in the Annals of Medicine. We took vaccines safety databases from various countries, and then we rated the adverse effects reported based on organ system. We found the most commonly reported adverse events following HPV vaccination are nervous system disorders of immune origin.
What was interesting is that in 2013, Japan Institute of Pharmacovigilance picked up our paper. I had an email from a doctor saying, “Can you send us the raw data, because we would like to add our Japanese data to your set and see if they match,” and I said, “Yes, please do.” And the match was perfect. After that, the Japanese Institute of Pharmacovigilance and the Japanese government, and health authorities, held a hearing on concerns about the safety of HPV vaccines. Because again, they were introduced in Japan and universally recommended, and there were many adverse effects reported thereafter. Following the hearing, the Japanese government and health authorities decided to stop recommending the HPV vaccine.¹¹"

Japan No Longer Recommends Gardasil

Japan issued the first suspension of the government's recommendation to get vaccinated against HPV in June 2013. The Japanese Government and Health authorities then organized a symposium on HPV vaccines,^12,13 which occurred in February 2014. Important testimony was delivered by one doctor who had treated over 20 cases of MS after Gardasil vaccination. Pharmaceutical representatives were trying to say that such side effects are psychogenic, but how can a psychogenic disorder cause MS lesions in a person’s brain—and in a girl who was perfectly healthy prior to vaccination? “They didn’t have an answer to that,” she says.

“All these problems started in temporal association with the vaccine. Just out of precautionary principle, you would think that they would have the common sense to at least halt the use of the vaccine until more research is done. But no, they just want to force it, and they parrot that it is safe. They do not have any proof of safety other than manipulated research.”

This symposium was followed by a large press conference, attended by Dr. Tomljenovic and research colleagues from France and the US. Since then, attempts by the makers of HPV vaccines to reinstate active recommendation of HPV vaccination by the Japanese Government have all failed, and Merck—which manufactures Gardasil—warned investors that Japan's decision would have "a significant negative impact" on sales.¹⁴ GlaxoSmithKline's HPV vaccine Cervarix also saw a downturn in sales immediately following the original suspension.

French Researchers Find Link Between Aluminum Adjuvant and Alzheimer's

A team from Créteil and the INSERM Institute in France also presented data from animal experiments at the Japanese symposium, which show that if you inject the aluminum adjuvant, a portion of the aluminum is engulfed by macrophages. Some of these macrophages eventually find their way into the mouse brain.

The transport in the brain is dependent on the same chemokine, MCP-1, macrophage chemoattractant protein that Shaw and Tomljenovic found increased in their aluminum-exposed animals. Part of the problem is that the aluminum accumulates, and it stays in the brains of mice up to one year after injection because there’s no recirculation to take it out.

“This is a common problem with aluminum, because it’s got a strong positive charge, 3+,” Dr. Tomljenovic says. “What other research has found is that in Alzheimer’s patients, the chromatin fractions in the nucleus of the cell, where your genetic material is stored, accumulate aluminum. Because the DNA has a negative charge on the outside, it binds the positive aluminum.

Thus aluminum disrupts the chromatin structure and in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients it was found that aluminum binds to selective promoter areas of genes that encode proteins that are essential for neural function. In this way aluminum inhibits the expression of these genes.

Again, the problem is that once the aluminum gets into the nucleus of the cell, there is no way of getting it out. It just stays there. The finding by the French team is that even the aluminum you inject in the periphery can get into the brain, which is a concern...

The fact is that the aluminum we get from vaccines is not rapidly excreted, and most of it does remain in your body because it bypasses the gastrointestinal system. If aluminum was rapidly excreted, as the health authorities would like us to believe, then it would be a pretty lousy adjuvant.”

ANY Adjuvant Is Likely to Carry Risk of Autoimmune Disease

I want to stress the point Dr. Tomljenovic makes about the harm produced by stimulating an exaggerated immune response, which is what vaccines are designed to do—this is the function of the adjuvant. The problem is, even if aluminum is removed from vaccines, the risk of immune system brain disorder remains even if the new adjuvant is non-toxic. As she explains, by the virtue of over-stimulating your immune system, you run the risk of breaking self-tolerance. Research supporting this was also presented in Japan during its governmental hearing on HPV vaccines.

What the team of Japanese researchers led by Dr Shunichi Shiozawa found¹⁵ is that the repeated stimulation with the same antigen overcomes the genetic resistance to autoimmunity. At present, we’re giving children booster shots at regular intervals with the same antigen. And the research shows that when you do this—when you stimulate the immune system on a regular basis—you break the tolerance to autoimmunity. This is a really crucial piece of information that people need to become aware of.

How Can Safety Be Proven When Proper Safety Studies Are Lacking and Health Statistics Indicate Otherwise?

In light of these findings, it is not surprising that Shaw and Tomljenovic are under fire. However, the critics really do not have much to counter with, besides ad hominem attacks. One recent critic blasted the study saying it was irresponsible to publish this type of research because it might erode the confidence in vaccines. “I think the opposite is true because if you’re trying to enforce military measures, I think that erodes the confidence. Because a truly good product does not need military-type of enforcement,” Dr. Tomljenovic retorts.

The primary and central issue here is that no properly performed safety studies have been done, and by that I'm referring to safety studies that are not corrupted by using toxic placebos, such as another vaccine, rather than a truly inert placebo. "We're not saying stop vaccinating, but stop selling lies, [stop saying] that these things are absolutely safe and that serious adverse risks are so rare that you don't have to worry about them. It's a lie because the proper type of research to answer that question has never been done," Dr.Tomljenovic says.

I couldn't agree more, especially when you add the historical record, which Dr. Suzanne Humphries dissects in her excellent book, Dissolving Illusions. In it, she shows that most infectious diseases were nearly eradicated before the introduction of vaccines. In the end, basic nutritional and hygiene principles such as optimizing vitamin D and avoiding sugar has a far more dramatic preventative effect against illness, and with robust immune function, you can safely recover from virtually any infectious disease and come out the other side with lifelong immunity.

“There is also a research showing how exposure to certain childhood diseases like chicken pox actually has prevented certain types of gliomas [a type of brain tumor],” Dr. Tomljenovic notes. “There are some others that decreased the risk of Parkinson’s. Cancer is also in part a disease of the immune system because a healthy immune system will detect abnormal cell growth. If you compromise your immune system early in childhood, there goes your anti-cancer defense...
People need to do their own research on these things, because we have to make choices every day, and they should be informed choices. If I was to buy a new kitchen appliance I would spend some time researching, comparing prices, and looking at the quality. But when it comes to putting things into our children, we just blindly trust the medical authorities...
You cannot go back on some of these things. I get a lot of emails from parents with vaccine injured children. It must be the most horrible thing for a parent to live with that because they truly believe they did the best for their child. I know many mothers whose girls have died following HPV, and they said, “If I only haven’t listened to that campaign, my daughter would still be alive.”

Atrocious State of Cancer Treatment in the U.S.

Reposted from Dr. Mercola

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Being diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, a type of brain tumor, is considered a death sentence by modern medicine.
Despite a decades-long war on cancer, and the “most advanced” treatments known to 21st century oncologists, people who develop this aggressive, fast-growing cancer are given a prognosis of about 15 months to live — if they’re lucky.
Aggressive treatment, including surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, is often started, even though oncologists know it won’t cure the disease. If you ever find yourself in this type of nightmarish scenario, you can imagine the desperation you would feel to find something, anything, that might offer hope.
Most people turn to their oncologists or neurosurgeons with such requests for possible experimental or outside-the-box treatments, but you’re unlikely to receive any help that deviates from the hospital’s standard protocol.
It’s not that such treatment options don’t exist; they do. The problem is that the oncologist can’t, or won’t, prescribe them. To do so would risk his or her reputation and even medical license, should you decide to sue.
The film interviews a number of oncologists that carefully describe their predicament. But the problem is even larger than this. Modern cancer care is not set up to treat you, an individual. Their primary goal is to validate experimental therapies for future cancer patients many years down the road.
Due to regulatory red tape, drug-company greed, failures in the scientific process and lack of a universal will to do what’s best for each and every patient, modern cancer care fails an unacceptable percentage of the time.
As Albert Einstein said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. This describes modern cancer treatment in a nutshell.

How One Man Survived Terminal Cancer

Ben Williams, Ph.D., professor emeritus of Experimental Psychology at University of California, San Diego, shouldn’t be here today. He should be one of the statistics — 1 of the more than 15,000 people who die from glioblastoma multiforme in the U.S. every year.¹
Yet, he’s alive — 19 years after his initial glioblastoma multiforme diagnosis. His survival was brushed off as a rare fluke by his doctors, but Williams believes otherwise.
In his book “Surviving Terminal Cancer: Clinical Trials, Drug Cocktails, and Other Treatments Your Oncologist Won’t Tell You About,” he details the multi-faceted strategy he used to overcome the disease. You can hear him tell his story first-hand in the film “Surviving Terminal Cancer,” above.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that in order to outsmart cancer, you’ve got to attack it from multiple angles, especially in the case of complex brain cancer. And that’s what Williams did.
He described a mushroom extract that’s used routinely to treat cancer in Japan. It has zero toxicity, but it’s not even mentioned in the U.S.
He did his own research, finding out about the potential to use existing non-cancer medications off label to treat the deadly disease. Once a patent expires on a drug, its potential to rake in major profits plummets. As such, drug companies typically abandon them in favor of newer, more profitable pursuits.

Abandoned Drugs Show Promise but Oncologists Won’t Prescribe Them

Some of these abandoned drugs have shown promise for glioblastoma multiforme, but they’re not offered to U.S. patients. While I’m not in favor of over-prescribing medications, if you’re facing a deadly prognosis you’re probably willing to risk the side effects if it gives you a chance for survival.
High-dose tamoxifen, a breast cancer drug, is one such medication that has shown some promise in treating glioblastoma multiforme.²
The anti-malaria drug chloroquine is another.³ There’s even a good chance your neuro-oncologist may be aware of the promising studies done with these drugs, but he or she won’t offer them as a potential treatment because they’re considered experimental. As Williams said:

“It made absolutely no sense to me not to use everything that might have a benefit as long as the toxicities were acceptable. Why wouldn’t anyone want to add them? It seemed to be totally irrational that people didn’t use everything that was available.”

When Modern Medicine Fails Them, Cancer Patients Turn to Self-Medication and the Black Market

In order to survive, Williams turned to self-medicating, a dangerous prospect by any account but, again, when your life is at stake you’re willing to take the risk. And his story is not unique.
Many have traveled to other countries, forged prescriptions, feigned illnesses to get access to different medications and even traded medications and nutraceuticals on the “black market” in order to have even a chance at survival.
In Williams’ case, his daily cocktail of off-label medications and natural products worked. In just six months, his brain tumor had disappeared and it hasn’t been back since.
There are more than a handful of others who have defied odds and lived long term with glioblastoma multiforme, and they’ve taken matters into their own hands too.
Williams now spends the bulk of his time trying to help others with terminal cancer, and he makes his book, which he updates annually, free to cancer patients in need.

Natural Cancer Fighters Overlooked by Modern Medicine

Nature is an invaluable resource for fighting cancer, yet natural products, even those that have been intensely studied, are also left out of cancer patients’ treatment plans. Curcumin — one of the most well-studied bioactive ingredients in turmeric — is one glaring example.
It exhibits over 150 potentially therapeutic activities, including anti-cancer properties.
As noted by Dr. William LaValley — a leading natural medicine cancer physician whom I’ve previously interviewed on this topic — curcumin is unique in that it appears to be universally useful for just about every type of cancer.
Superficially, this appears unusual considering the fact that cancer consists of a wide variety of different nuclear genetic defects. One reason for this universal anti-cancer proclivity is curcumin’s ability to decrease the primary mitochondrial dysfunction that is likely one of the foundational causes of cancer. Once it gets into a cell, it also affects more than 100 different molecular pathways.
And, as explained by LaValley, whether the curcumin molecule causes an increase in activity of a particular molecular target or decrease/inhibition of activity, studies repeatedly show that the end result is a potent anti-cancer activity. Moreover, curcumin is virtually non-toxic, and does not adversely affect healthy cells, suggesting it selectively targets cancer cells — all of which are clear benefits in cancer treatment.
Research has even shown that it works synergistically with certain chemotherapy drugs, enhancing the elimination of cancer cells. If you have cancer, curcumin is one substance you should be taking, but your oncologist won’t recommend it.

To Survive Cancer, Many Must Defy Their Doctors

Should you bring up the fact that you are using approaches to fight cancer that are outside of your oncologist’s realm of experience — things like supplements, medical marijuana, herbal preparations, and more — you might be scolded, berated, threatened or even fired from the practice.
Williams never told his oncologists about his self-prescribed treatment; he knew it would fall on deaf ears. The cancer industry should be learning from the people who have beaten the odds and survived terminal cancer — studying their methods and trying to apply them to others — but instead they’re ignored.
It’s an unfortunate state of affairs when patients must actively defy their doctors in order to survive. As Williams explained, going against the advice of his doctors was initially an act of desperation, but it was necessary to save his life. This certainly applies to the majority of conventional oncologists, but there are exceptions — doctors who are blazing a new trail to find a cancer cure.
This includes Dr. Marc-Eric Halatsch, a professor and senior consultant neurosurgeon at the University of Ulm, Germany, who, along with colleagues have developed a new treatment protocol for relapsed glioblastoma.
It’s based on a combination of drugs (very similar to the early HIV treatments) “not traditionally thought of as chemotherapy agents, but that have a robust history of being well-tolerated and are already marketed and used for other non-cancer indications.”⁴ As noted in the featured film, even though the protocol uses mainstream medications, he’s put his reputation on the line to step outside the conventional cancer-treatment box.

Cancer Patients Should Have Access to the Best of Eastern and Western Medicine

Dr. Raymond Chang, who is featured in the video above, is one such pioneer in the integration of Eastern and Western medicine. He is known for his work on anti-cancer Chinese botanicals especially involving bioactive polysaccharides and medicinal mushrooms.
He and colleagues with the Institute of East-West Medicine have created the Asian Anti-Cancer Materia Database, which brings together traditional Asian medicines that have potential anti-cancer activity into one database that can be accessed by all.⁵ In his book, “Beyond the Magic Bullet ― The Anti-Cancer Cocktail,” Dr. Chang explained:

“While scientists win occasional skirmishes in the battle against cancer, the overall war continues to go badly. Stories abound about revolutionary drugs that may be available in the future, but offer no real help to those who have cancer today. At present, conventional approaches continue to rely on a narrowly focused strategy of treatments, with doctors using, at best, only one or two drugs or other therapies at a time.
While this may be acceptable in a laboratory setting or a clinical trial, it has done little to diminish the number of people who die each year from this dread disease. Recently, however, conventional medicine’s core strategy has been re-examined, and a new, potentially more effective approach has emerged ― one that combines the best of Eastern wisdom with Western science.”

More Than Half a Million People Expected to Die From Cancer in 2016

In 2016, nearly 1.7 million new cases of cancer are expected to be diagnosed in the U.S., while nearly 600,000 will die from the disease.⁶  That is nearly 1,650 people dying EVERY DAY in the U.S. alone. Public health agencies claim that we are winning the war against cancer, but from 2003 to 2012 death rates from cancer decreased by only 1.8 percent per year among men and 1.4 percent per year among women.⁷
Meanwhile, the 2014 World Cancer Report issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) predicted worldwide cancer rates to rise by 57 percent in the next two decades.⁸
The report refers to the prediction as "an imminent human disaster," noting countries around the world need to renew their focus on prevention rather than treatment only. Christopher Wild, Ph.D., director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, told CNN:⁹

"We cannot treat our way out of the cancer problem. More commitment to prevention and early detection is desperately needed in order to complement improved treatments and address the alarming rise in cancer burden globally."

There is so much you can do to lower your risk for cancer, but please don't wait until you get the diagnosis — you have to take preventative steps now. Cancer doesn’t typically develop overnight, which means you have a chance to make changes that can potentially prevent cancer from developing in the first place. Most of us carry around microscopic cancer cell clusters in our bodies all the time.
The reason why we all don't develop cancer is because as long as your body has the ability to balance angiogenesis properly, it will prevent blood vessels from forming to feed these microscopic tumors. Trouble will only arise if, and when, the cancer cells manage to get their own blood supply, at which point they can transform from harmless to deadly. It's much easier to prevent cancer than to treat it once it takes hold.

Top Cancer Prevention Strategies

I believe you can virtually eliminate your risk of cancer and chronic disease and significantly improve your chances of recovering from cancer if you currently have it, by following these relatively simple strategies.

1. Eat REAL Food: Seek to eliminate all processed food in your diet. Eat at least one-third of your food raw. Avoid frying or charbroiling; boil, poach or steam your foods instead. Consider adding cancer-fighting whole foods, herbs, spices and supplements to your diet, such as broccoli sprouts, curcumin and resveratrol.
2. Carbohydrates and Sugar: Sugar/fructose and grain-based foods from your diet need to be reduced and eventually eliminated. This applies to whole unprocessed organic grains as well, as they tend to rapidly break down and drive up your insulin level.  
The evidence is quite clear that if you want to avoid cancer, or you currently have cancer, you absolutely MUST avoid all forms of sugar, especially fructose, which are dirty fuels generating excessive free radicals and secondary mitochondrial damage.

3. Protein and Fat: Consider reducing your protein levels to 1 gram of protein for every kilogram of lean body mass, or one-half gram of protein per pound of lean body mass. Replace excess protein with high-quality fats, such as organic eggs from pastured hens, high-quality grass-fed meats, raw pastured butter, avocados, pecans, macadamias, and coconut oil.
4. GMOs: Avoid genetically engineered foods as they are typically treated with herbicides such as Roundup (glyphosate), and are likely to be carcinogenic and contribute to mitochondrial dysfunction. Choose fresh, organic, and preferably locally grown foods.
5. Animal-Based Omega-3 Fats: Normalize your ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats by consuming anchovies, sardines, wild Alaskan salmon or taking a high-quality krill oil and reducing your intake of processed vegetable oils.
6. Optimize Your Gut Flora: This will reduce inflammation and strengthen your immune response. Researchers have found a microbe-dependent mechanism through which some cancers mount an inflammatory response that fuels their development and growth.
They suggest that inhibiting inflammatory cytokines might slow cancer progression and improve the response to chemotherapy. Fermented foods are especially beneficial for gut health, and the fermentation process involved in creating sauerkraut produces cancer-fighting compounds such as isothiocyanates, indoles and sulforaphane.

7. Exercise and Move More: Sit less, move around more and try to take 10,000 steps a day.  Exercise also lowers insulin levels, which creates a low-sugar environment that discourages the growth and spread of cancer cells. In a three-month study, exercise was found to alter immune cells into a more potent disease-fighting form in cancer survivors who had just completed chemotherapy.
Researchers and cancer organizations increasingly recommend making regular exercise a priority in order to reduce your risk of cancer and help improve cancer outcomes. Exercise may also help trigger apoptosis (programmed cell death) in cancer cells. Ideally, your exercise program should include balance, strength, flexibility, and high-intensity interval training (HIIT). For help getting started, refer to my Peak Fitness Program.

8. Vitamin D: There is scientific evidence you can decrease your risk of cancer by more than half simply by optimizing your vitamin D levels with appropriate sun exposure. Your serum level should hold steady at 50 to 70 ng/ml, but if you are being treated for cancer, it should be closer to 80 to 90 ng/ml for optimal benefit.
If you take oral vitamin D and have cancer, it would be very prudent to monitor your vitamin D blood levels regularly, as well as supplementing with vitamin K2, as K2 deficiency is actually what produces the symptoms of vitamin D toxicity.

9. Sleep: Make sure you are getting enough restorative sleep. Poor sleep can interfere with your melatonin production, which is associated with an increased risk of insulin resistance and weight gain, both of which contribute to cancer's virility.
10. Exposure to Toxins: Reduce your exposure to environmental toxins like pesticides, herbicides, household chemical cleaners, plastics chemicals, synthetic air fresheners and toxic cosmetics.
11. Exposure to Radiation: Limit your exposure and protect yourself from radiation produced by cell phones, towers, base stations, and Wi-Fi stations, as well as minimizing your exposure from radiation-based medical scans, including dental x-rays, CT scans, and mammograms.
12. Stress Management: Stress from all causes is a major contributor to disease. It is likely that stress and unresolved emotional issues may be more important than the physical ones, so make sure this is addressed. My favorite tool for resolving emotional challenges is the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT).

Have You Been Diagnosed With Cancer?

One of the most essential strategies I know of to treat cancer is to starve the cells by depriving them of their food source. Unlike your body cells, which can burn carbs or fat for fuel, cancer cells have lost that metabolic flexibility. Dr. Otto Warburg was given a Nobel Prize over 75 years ago for figuring this out, but virtually no oncologist actually uses this information.
You can review my interview with Dominic D'Agostino, Ph.D. below for more details. Integrating a ketogenic diet with hyperbaric oxygen therapy is deadly to cancer cells. It debilitates them by starving them of their fuel source. This would be the strategy I would recommend to my family members if they were diagnosed with cancer.

Don’t EVER Use Turmeric If You’re on any of the Following Medications

Reposted from Health & Love Page

http://www.healthandlovepage.com/dont-ever-use-turmeric-if-youre-on-any-of-the-following-medications/

Turmeric is usually considered as a natural cure-all for a lot of common illnesses. Since it is a natural ingredient and has fewer negative effects, it is most often recommended as a natural alternative to pharmaceuticals and many other medications.

It is true that these are all real facts, but they make a lot of people underestimate the turmeric effects on the body. According to a research, turmeric can have severe negative effects if combined with other drugs or if taken in higher doses.

What Is Turmeric?

People usually think of the ground-up root of the plant when referring to turmeric. Turmeric has been initially used for over 4,000 years ago in India as a culinary space and as well in ceremonial and medicinal situations.


Even though many of turmeric’s claimed benefits aren’t scientifically backed-up, a lot of studies have confirmed that it offers an array of health benefits.

Majority of the health benefits of turmeric come from curcumin, the active ingredient in turmeric.
Throughout the numerous studies on curcumin, it was discovered that it possesses anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-thrombotic, and anti-carcinogenic properties.

Because of these beneficial attributes, most people use turmeric in combinations with other drugs, or as an alternative to drugs in the treatment of their ailments.

The common reason for this is to avoid the side effects and complications which appear when they take pharmaceutical drugs in high doses.

Nevertheless, turmeric’s beneficial properties make it at the same time dangerous when taken in combinations with other pharmaceutical drugs, since it can lead to various harmful and unpleasant side effects.

Side Effects of Turmeric

The very components of turmeric which make it beneficial, are the ones with also make turmeric dangerous when taken in combination with specific medicines. In that way, the anti-thrombotic property of turmeric which gives its ability to reduce blood clots, makes it hazardous to be combined with blood thinning medicines.

This harmful combination actually strengthens the effects of the blood thinning medicines and elevate your risk of bleeding. Such blood thinning medications are aspirin, clopidogrel (Plavix), and warfarin (Coumadin).

Moreover, turmeric interacts with drugs which lower stomach acid. If you combine it with this type of drugs, your body will in fact increase its production of stomach acid, which can result in bloating, nausea, stomach pain and esophagus damage. The drugs with a purpose to lower the stomach acid are Famotidine (Pepcid), Omeprazole, Ranitidine (Zantac), and Cimetidine (Tagamet).

Furthermore, turmeric has potential to be dangerous in combinations with drugs which reduce the blood sugar (for diabetes). What turmeric does is strengthening the effects of diabetes drugs, thus increasing the risk of low blood sugar. The results can include number of side effects like anxiety, blurred vision, shakiness, delirium, and decreased cognitive function.

Another side effect of consuming turmeric is allergic reactions, including outbreaks like rashes or hives, and een anaphylaxis and shortness of breath.

When you take turmeric simultaneously with some medication or drug, or you notice some allergic reactions when consuming it, it is recommended to either decrease the turmeric amount you take, or to find another natural alternative.


 

Reverse Cavities Naturally and Heal Tooth Decay with THIS Powerful Tooth Mask

Reposted from Health & Love Page

http://www.healthandlovepage.com/reverse-cavities-naturally-and-heal-tooth-decay-with-tooth-mask/

In this article we will show you how simple tooth masks can stop the process of tooth decay and make problematic teeth healthy again in a completely natural way.
On top of that, you will also be able to perform natural teeth whitening and you won’t need the help of a dentist to do that.



Keep in mind that none of these things is possible in case you don’t implement certain changes in your lifestyle like:

• Eating more foods packed with vitamin K2 and vitamin D. Some good examples of foods like this include ghee, grass fed butter, cream, chicken and full fat dairy products.
• Oil pulling performed in the morning. Perform this procedure at least three times a week for about 15 minutes.
• Stay away from processed white sugar.
• Flossing before bedtime.

[Note from One Percent Health:  Also avoid eating all wheat and wheat products such as bread and pasta.  It is also a good idea to supplement your diet with Cod Liver Oil]

The following tooth masks have proven to be very beneficial in teeth whitening, getting rid of tooth stains and curing early tooth decays.

1. Tooth Mask Based on Clove Oil, Turmeric and Coconut Oil

Ingredients:

• ¼ teaspoon of organic coconut oil
• ¼ teaspoon of turmeric powder
• Two drops of clove oil
• A small amount of sea salt.

Instructions:

Take all the ingredients, put them in a bowl and mix them. After that, put this mixture directly on the toothbrush and start brushing the teeth in a regular way. Wait for 3-5 minutes before you brush your teeth again (this time with toothpaste). Finally, rinse your mouth with lukewarm water.

2. Whitening Your Teeth with Mint and Baking Soda

Ingredients:

• Two drops of lemon juice
• ½ teaspoon of baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon of mint powder.

Instructions:

Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix them. Next, take the toothbrush and pick up the mixture with it. Use it directly on the teeth and wait for about 3-5 minutes. After this time has passed, spit the mixture and use your toothbrush and toothpaste to brush the teeth.


 

Neurologist Speaks Out About the Importance of Gut Health for Prevention and Treatment of “Incurable” Neurological Disorders

Reposted from Dr. Mercola

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/05/17/gut-bacteria-brain-health.aspx?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=facebookmercola_ranart&utm_campaign=20160424_gut-bacteria-brain-health

By Dr. Mercola
The quality, quantity, and composition of the bacteria in your gut have enormous influence on your brain. Dr. David Perlmutter explores this phenomenon in great detail in his new book, Brain Maker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain-for Life.
Dr. Perlmutter is a board-certified neurologist and a fellow of the American College of Nutrition (ACN). He also has a clinic in Naples, Florida, and he's been very active in publishing his findings in peer-reviewed medical journals.
His previous book, Grain Brain, topped the New York Times bestseller list for 54 weeks. In my view, Dr. Perlmutter is probably the leading natural medicine neurologist in the US.
Certainly, most neurologists fail to consider how lifestyle impacts the neurological disorders they diagnose and treat every day, and prevention is an area of utmost importance as we still do not have effective treatments for many of the most common brain disorders.

"We're now recognizing from research at our most well-respected institutions from around the globe that the gut bacteria are wielding this very powerful sword of Damocles," he says.

They determine whether we're going to have a healthy brain or not, whether our brain is going to function well or not, and whether our brain is going to become diseased or not. Who knew that we'd be referring back to the gut?"

Microbiome Research Shreds Notion of Reductionism

It turns out that this notion of reductionism—where your body is reduced to its individual parts—is completely nonsensical and grossly flawed. As explained by Dr. Perlmutter, every system in your body interrelates in a way that ultimately causes the manifestation of either health or disease.
In a previous interview, Dr. Perlmutter discussed specific dietary factors that influence your brain health, but one of the primary mechanisms of action that explains how a healthy diet "works" is that it upregulates, modifies, and improves the quality of your gut microbiome.

"These hundred trillion bacteria that live within your gut are so intimately involved in your brain at a number of levels. They manufacture neurochemicals, for example. Things like dopamine and serotonin.

They manufacture important vitamins that are important to keep your brain healthy. They also maintain the integrity of the lining of your gut," he explains.

The latter is important because when your gut lining becomes compromised, you end up with permeability or leakiness of the gut. This increases inflammation, which is a cornerstone of virtually all brain disorders, from Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis (MS), to Parkinson's and autism.

"We've got to really deal with it on a preventive basis," Dr. Perlmutter says. "[We must] understand what in our Western culture, especially from a dietary perspective, is threatening the health of our commensals.

We call these bacteria 'commensals' because they share the table with us. We eat together with the bacteria. Basically, they eat what we eat. Our food choices have a dramatic effect on the health viability and even the diversity of those gut bacteria."

Research Shows Swapping Gut Bacteria Can Reverse Type 2 Diabetes and Other Diseases

A researcher in Amsterdam, Dr. Max Nieuwdorp, has published a number of studies looking at changes in the microbiome that are characteristic of type 2 diabetes.
In one trial, he was able to reverse type 2 diabetes in all of the 250 study participants by doing fecal transplantations on them. Remarkable as it may sound, by changing the makeup of the gut bacteria, the diabetes was resolved.
Dr. Perlmutter has embraced this new information full force, and has even helped develop a peer-reviewed scientific journal, Medicus, that focuses on this kind of research. They're also holding an annual conference to which the leading microbiome researchers in the world are invited.
In his view, and in mine, the understanding and practical adjustment and modification of the microbiome is an important part of the future of medicine. Fifteen years ago, we thought that the Human Genome Project (HGP) would allow modern medicine to leapfrog into new gene-based therapies that would solve all our ills.
That didn't happen, as HGP discovered that genetics are only responsible for only about 10 percent of human disease,¹ the rest—90 percent—are induced by environmental factors. Now we're coming to realize that your microbiome is actually a driver of genetic expression, turning genes on and off depending on which microbes are present.

"The gut microbiome is 99 percent of the DNA in your body, and it is highly responsive and changeable based upon lifestyle choices, most importantly our food choices," Dr. Perlmutter says.

"There's this beautiful dance that happens between the gut bacteria and your own DNA. The gut bacteria actually influenced the expression of our 23,000 genes. Think about that. The bugs that live within us are changing our genome expression moment to moment.

Our genome has not changed over thousands of years. But now, suddenly, because we're changing our gut bacteria, we are changing the signals that are going to our own DNA; coding now for increasing things like free radicals, oxidative stress, and inflammation. That is a powerful player in terms of so many disease processes...

Being a brain specialist dealing with brain disorders, my whole career I've been stymied by not having really powerful tools to implement to bring about changes in individuals who have these issues. Now we're beginning to get those tools, and they are in the gut. Who knew?

In neurology school, we didn't study the makeup of the gut bacteria and how that would ever influence the brain, and yet, this is leading-edge science.

This is what our most well-respected researchers and peer-reviewed journals are talking about: not only are the gut bacteria fundamentally involved in brain health, but you can change the gut bacteria by interventions – taking probiotics and choosing to eat foods that are rich in prebiotics and to enhance the growth of good bacteria – and even more aggressive therapies [such as fecal transplants]"

Nourish Your Microbiome, and It Will Nourish You

Two key strategies to nourish and protect your microbiome are to limit your consumption of antibiotics to when they're absolutely necessary, and be judicious in terms of the foods you eat. Ideally, opt for whole, raw organic, non-genetically modified (GM) foods, along with traditionally fermented and cultured foods. Good examples include fermented vegetables of all kinds, including sauerkraut and kimchi, kombucha (a fermented drink), and fiber-rich prebiotic foods like jicama (Mexican yam), Jerusalem artichoke, garlic, and dandelion greens.
Avoiding confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) meats is also important, as the animals raised in these factory farms are raised on antibiotics, which changes their microbiome as well. This routine practice also promotes antibiotic-resistant bacteria that now threaten the lives of tens of thousands of Americans each year. Pesticides have also been shown to alter gut bacteria and foster drug-resist bacteria in the soil and food, so organically-grown and raised foods are really your best bet.

"These are all very relevant lifestyle choices that we can make to enhance the health and the diversity of the gut bacteria. That's going to give us a lifelong advantage in terms of being resistant to the very diseases that we dread the most," Dr. Perlmutter says.

"The true definition of symbiosis: we're supporting their health and they are supporting our health. We do that by the foods that we eat. They are, as I said, commensals. We're sharing this meal. We treat them right by eating fermented foods that are rich in probiotic bacteria and prebiotic foods that contain prebiotic types of fiber like inulin and fructooligosaccharides (FOS).

These are nutrients that enhance the growth of good bacteria with multitudes of studies indicating things like weight loss, a better control of blood sugar, and reduction of inflammation... One study came out just last month showing how children with allergic rhinitis and breathing issues have improvements by just giving them fiber to enhance the growth of healthy bacteria."

The Link Between the Microbiome and Autoimmune Disease

Inflammation is a hallmark of autoimmune diseases such as MS, Lou Gehrig's disease, Crohn's, and inflammatory bowel disease, just to name a few. As explained by Dr. Perlmutter, many of the factors that affect permeability of the blood-brain barrier are similar to those that affect the gut, which is why leaky gut can lead to neurological diseases as easily as it can manifest as some other form of autoimmune disorder.
The permeability of your gut lining can be measured by looking at a chemical called lipopolysaccharide (LPS), which is the covering over certain groups of bacteria in your gut. When you have higher levels of antibodies against LPS in the bloodstream, it's a marker of leaky gut.
LPS is also in and of itself a powerful instigator of the inflammatory cascade. Higher levels of LPS in the blood dramatically increase inflammation throughout your body, including your brain. Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig's disease, for example, are both correlated with dramatically elevated levels of LPS.

"In Brain Maker I present pretty aggressive treatments for maintaining and restoring gut health using a variety of techniques – from using probiotic enemas to even going as far as having people get fecal transplantation. And do we see success? We sure do," Dr. Perlmutter says.

"I have a case history in Brain Maker of a young man with MS who couldn't walk without two canes and who underwent a series of fecal transplantations in Europe, and came back and walks without any assistance whatsoever. His videotape is linked to the book and is on our site. I use the video of this man walking when I do lectures to physicians. They look at this with their jaws hanging, because again, for you and me, this was never even a consideration in medical school...

If you did pay any attention to the gut you'd become a gastroenterologist, otherwise there'd be no interest in looking at it. But it turns out that it's relevant whether you're a gastroenterologist, a neurologist, a psychiatrist, a joint specialist, a skin specialist, or even a cancer specialist. We've got to pay attention to nurturing these bacteria if we're going to keep people healthy."

Seven Essential Keys to Rehabilitate Your Gut, from Birth to Death

In his book, Dr. Perlmutter delves into seven essential keys for rehabilitating your gut, starting at birth.

1. Vaginal birth	Do everything you can to avoid a Caesarian section. When you elect to deliver a child via Caesarian section – and there are times when it needs to be done to save the life of the mother or the baby—understand that by and large, you're tripling the risk for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and doubling the risk for autism in your child. You're also dramatically increasing the risk that your child will struggle with obesity, type 1 diabetes, and allergies. These are all inflammatory issues that are dramatically increased in children born via Caesarian section. Dr. Perlmutter describes a simple and elegant technique developed by researchers at Yale University, whereby an organic gauze sponge is placed in the birth canal before the mother who is going to have a C-section is given the IV antibiotics. The sponge is then removed, the antibiotics are given, and as soon as the baby is born, the sponge is placed over the baby's face, inoculating the child with its mother's bacteria. This could be a good adjunct anytime a Caesarian is required. Unfortunately, at present it's unlikely you'd be able to get your doctor to do it.
2. Breastfeeding	Aside from providing the most appropriate nutrients, breast feeding also affects your child's microbiome via bacterial transfer from skin contact.
3. Antibiotics	When you change your microbiome, certain groups of bacteria tend to be favored, such as the Firmicutes group. When present in excess, Firmicutes increase your risk of obesity. Animal research shows that when you change the animals' microbiome using antibiotics, they gain weight. We also give antibiotics to cattle to make them fatter, faster. The same thing occurs in your body, which is why avoiding unnecessary antibiotics is so important. Disinfectant products like antibacterial soaps and hand gels also fall into this category and should be avoided as much as possible.
4. Refined sugar and processed fructose	Sugar and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) preferentially increases the growth of pathogenic disease-causing bacteria, fungi, and yeast, so limiting the amount of refined and processed sugars in your diet is a key dietary principle for gut health. According to Dr. Perlmutter, fructose in particular promotes gut dysbiosis, and there's also a good correlation between fructose consumption and the levels of LPS, the inflammatory marker that shows your gut is leaking. Fructose is also far more aggressive in terms of causing glycation of protein than other sugars, meaning high levels of sugar in your blood that bind to proteins. This too is correlated with leaky gut, and may explain why fructose consumption is related to increased gut permeability, and inflammatory diseases like obesity.
5. Genetically engineered foods and pesticides	Avoid genetically engineered foods. As noted by Dr. Perlmutter: "Yes, there is a clear and present danger in the notion of genetically modifying the food that we share with our gut bacteria. The gut bacteria are expecting the type of food that they have been provided for a couple of million years. Suddenly, we're introducing foods that are genetically unlike anything the human microbiome has ever seen. The research that allows the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow genetically modified food has not even considered looking at the effects of GMOs on the human microbiome." Glyphosate, which is liberally used on genetically engineered Roundup Ready crops, and many non-organic non-GMO crops as well, has also been found to alter the human microbiome, so genetically engineered foods deliver a double assault on your gut bacteria every time you eat it. "We're poisoning the food that we eat. If that's not bad enough, that's the food we're feeding our microbiome, which are going to determine whether we live or die," Dr. Perlmutter says. "It's a bit of a worry."
6. Probiotic foods	Focus on eating probiotic foods, such as fermented vegetables, sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, and kombucha (a fermented drink). A broad-spectrum probiotic supplements may also be advisable—especially if you have to take a course of antibiotics.
7. Prebiotic fiber	Consume plenty of prebiotic fiber. Not all fibers are prebiotic, so not any old fiber will do the job here. Whole foods are the best. Examples include dandelion greens, which can be lightly sautéd, Mexican yam or jicama that can be chopped up raw and put in your salad. Onions and leeks are also excellent choices. These kinds of foods will allow your gut bacteria to flourish, which is the key to health, disease resistance, and longevity.

Optimal Health and Disease Prevention Begins in Your Gut

By making new choices, following the recommendations outlined above—which are not excessively complex by any means—you can rehabilitate your gut bacteria so that they will do "the heavy lifting" of preventing disease and promoting the healthy function of your body and mind.
To learn more, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Dr. Perlmutter's NY Times bestselling book, Brain Maker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain-for Life. In it you will also find plenty of references from well-respected medical journals that you can use to make more empowered choices.

Saturated Fat Finally Vindicated in Long Buried Study

Reposted from Dr. Mercola

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/04/25/saturated-fat-finally-vindicated.aspx?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=facebookmercola_lead&utm_campaign=20160425_saturated-fat-finally-vindicated

By Dr. Mercola
In all likelihood your doctor and nearly every public health authority has told you to stay away from saturated fats, warning you it will raise your LDL cholesterol and clog your arteries, putting you at increased risk for heart disease.
The 2015 USDA dietary guidelines also still advise limiting saturated fats to a maximum of 10 percent of your daily calories, warning of similar dangers.
Such recommendations are in fact based on an unproven hypothesis, and a large number of studies that have reexamined the theory have shown that saturated fat do not increase your risk of heart disease.
Interestingly, the latest study^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8} to emerge showing conventional wisdom on saturated fat has been completely wrong was buried, and is actually four decades old.
One of the original researchers was Ancel Keys—the man who initially proposed the link between saturated fat and heart disease—and it’s believed he was  largely responsible for suppressing and not disclosing this damning study, as it doesn’t support his original hypothesis.

Failure to Publish Clinical Research Can Undermine Truth

Only parts of the trial’s results were ever published, leaving out the controversial finding that replacing saturated fats with vegetable oil had NO benefit on mortality. The study was unearthed by Christopher Ramsden, who discovered the missing research data among the possessions of a deceased scientist. As reported by STAT:⁹

“Ramsden, of the National Institutes of Health, unearthed raw data from a 40-year-old study, which challenges the dogma that eating vegetable fats instead of animal fats is good for the heart.

The study, the largest gold-standard experiment testing that idea, found the opposite, Ramsden and his colleagues reported...in BMJ¹⁰... [H]is discovery and analysis of long-lost data underline how the failure to publish the results of clinical trials can undermine truth.”

Largest Most Rigorous Trial of Its Kind Finally Vindicates Saturated Fat

The study,¹¹ conducted from 1968 to 1973, included 9,423 participants between the ages of 20 and 97, making it the largest trial of its kind. All participants were also residents of state mental hospitals and a nursing home in which all meals were prepared for them, making it one of the most rigorously detailed studies.
Many nutritional studies have the drawback of relying on self-reported consumption based on food questionnaires. Oftentimes people simply cannot remember what or how much they ate on any given day.
Here, the meals of every person were carefully logged. On the average, each patient was followed for about 15 months. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups, receiving either:

1. A then-standard diet containing 18.5 percent saturated fat from animal fats such as milk, cheese, beef and shortening, and 5 percent unsaturated fat, based on total calories
2. A diet in which 50 percent of the saturated fats were replaced with vegetable oil (a mainstay in today’s processed foods) and corn oil margarine (total 9 percent saturated fat and 13 percent unsaturated fat)

After analyzing the data, Ramsden and his team found that vegetable oils lowered total cholesterol levels by an average of 14 percent after one year. However, this lower cholesterol did NOT result in improved health and longevity, which is the conventional belief.
Instead, the research showed that the lower the cholesterol, the higher the risk of dying.
For every 30 point drop in total cholesterol there was a 22 percent increased chance of death. In the 65 and older category, those who received vegetable oil experienced roughly 15 percent more deaths compared to seniors in the saturated fat group.

Vegetable Oil Nearly Doubled Rates of Heart Attack

The vegetable oil also did not result in fewer cases of atherosclerosis or heart attacks.
On the contrary, autopsies revealed both groups had similar levels of arterial plaque, but 41 percent of the vegetable oil group showed signs of at least one heart attack compared to just 22 percent of those in the saturated fat group. According to the authors:

“Available evidence from randomized controlled trials shows that replacement of saturated fat in the diet with linoleic acid [vegetable oil] effectively lowers serum cholesterol but does not support the hypothesis that this translates to a lower risk of death from coronary heart disease or all causes.

Findings from the Minnesota Coronary Experiment add to growing evidence that incomplete publication has contributed to overestimation of the benefits of replacing saturated fat with vegetable oils rich in linoleic acid.”

Why Vegetable Oils Would Be Expected to Increase Disease

If you understand molecular biology, the reason why vegetable oils cause these kinds of observations are clear, and hold true even if they’re organically grown and pristinely processed. In fact it would be precisely what you’d expect.
Why? Because these omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, when taken in large amounts, cannot be burned for fuel. Instead, they’re incorporated into cellular and mitochondrial membranes where they are highly susceptible to oxidative damage, which damages the metabolic machinery.
And that’s in the BEST case scenario. The reality is far worse as most of these vegetable oils are highly processed and grown as GMO crops, loaded with toxic herbicide residues like Roundup. 
Most of these chemicals were not even invented when this BMJ study was done, so if it was repeated today with modern vegetable oils I’m highly confident the adverse effects of vegetable oils would be even  more pronounced.
In addition, while your body does need some omega-6, most get far too much of it compared to omega-3, and this lopsided ratio can also have adverse health consequences.
As noted in the Huffington Post,¹² “this nuance isn’t reflected in the most up-to-date nutritional advice in the federal dietary guidelines, which state simply we should eat less saturated fat and more polyunsaturated fat without mention of omega-6 acids.”
Thirdly, when heated, vegetable oils tend to oxidize. According to Dr. Fred Kummerow¹³, who has researched lipids and heart disease for eight decades, oxidized cholesterol is the real culprit that causes heart disease. By triggering inflammation, they promote the clogging of arteries and associated cardiovascular problems, including heart attacks.

Four Similar Trials Fail to Show Benefit of Vegetable Oil

The researchers also analyzed four other trials¹⁴ looking at the effects of replacing saturated fats with vegetable oils. They too failed to show any benefit. In fact, replacing saturated fats with linoleic acid-rich vegetable oils increased mortality risk from all causes, including coronary heart disease and cardiovascular disease.
According to the authors:

“An updated meta-analysis of linoleic acid intervention trials showed no evidence of cardiovascular benefit. These findings could have important implications for worldwide dietary advice to substitute omega 6 linoleic acid, or polyunsaturated fats in general, for saturated fats.”

In short, vegetable oils do not reduce your risk of dying from heart disease. Put another way, saturated fats do not increase your risk of dying from heart disease either. Moreover, reducing cholesterol is not necessarily a sign of improved health; it may actually raise your risk of death. As noted by Ramsden:¹⁵

 “One would expect that the more you lowered cholesterol, the better the outcome. But in this case the opposite association was found. The greater degree of cholesterol-lowering was associated with a higher, rather than a lower, risk of death.”

Other Studies Debunking Saturated Fat Myth  

Other studies discrediting the notion that cutting saturated fat will help you live longer include the following. All of these studies used “hard endpoints,” which are considered the most reliable measurements. While the benefits for cardiovascular mortality and risk-factor reduction were mixed, none of these trials showed that restricting saturated fats reduced total mortality.

• The Oslo Study (1968): A study of 412 men, aged 30-64 years, found eating a diet low in saturated fats and high in polyunsaturated fats had no influence on rates of sudden death.¹⁶
• L.A. Veterans Study (1969): A study of 850 elderly men that lasted for six years and is widely used to support the diet-heart hypothesis. No significant difference was found in rates of sudden death or heart attack among men eating a mostly animal-foods diet and those eating a high-vegetable-oil diet. However, more non-cardiac deaths, including from cancer, were seen in the vegetable-oil group.¹⁷
• London Soybean Oil Trial (1968): A study of nearly 400 men that lasted for two to seven years. No difference in heart attack rate was found between men following a diet low in saturated fats and high in soybean oil and those following an ordinary diet.¹⁸

• The U.S. Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MRFIT): Sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, this is another study that is highly misleading.  It compared mortality rates and eating habits of over 12,000 men, and the finding that was widely publicized was that people who ate a low saturated fat and low-cholesterol diet had a marginal reduction in coronary heart disease. However, their mortality from all causes was higher.¹⁹

Saturated Fats Provide Many Important Health Benefits and Few Risks

A 2015 meta-analysis²⁰ published in the British Medical Journal also found no association between high levels of saturated fat in the diet and heart disease. Nor did they find an association between saturated fat consumption and other life-threatening diseases like stroke or type 2 diabetes.
Yet another meta-analysis²¹ that pooled data from 21 studies and included nearly 348,000 adults found no difference in the risks of heart disease and stroke between people with the lowest and highest intakes of saturated fat. Indeed, far from posing a risk, it’s known that saturated fats provide a number of important health benefits, including the following:

✓ Providing building blocks for cell membranes, hormones, and hormone-like substances	✓ Mineral absorption, such as calcium	✓ Carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K
✓ Conversion of carotene into vitamin A	✓ Helping to lower cholesterol levels (palmitic and stearic acids)	✓ Acts as antiviral agent (caprylic acid)
✓ Optimal “clean” fuel for your brain and mitochondria	✓ Provides satiety	✓ Modulates genetic regulation and helps prevent cancer (butyric acid)

Sugar, Not Fat, is the Root of Ill Health

The fear of healthy dietary fat is actually part of why we’re currently struggling with obesity, diabetes, and heart disease of epidemic proportions. As noted by Dr. Mark Hyman,²² director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine and author of “Eat Fat, Get Thin”: “For 35 years we’ve been told to eat low fat, but the result is that we’ve cut fat and eaten a ton of carbs and sugar, which accounts for the corresponding surge in obesity, diabetes and other related ills over the same time period.”
Indeed, to improve our health, we really need to change how we think about dietary fat, and stop treating it like an enemy. Journalist Nina Teicholz, author of “The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet,” has also stated that when researchers went back and analyzed²³ some of the original data from Dr. Ancel Keys’ Seven Countries Study ²⁴ (which was the basis for the saturated fat phobia) they found that heart disease was most correlated with sugar intake, not saturated fat as Keys claimed.

How Saturated Fat May Offer Protection Against Heart Disease

Despite all this evidence, some still like to refer to studies showing that reducing saturated fat can lower your levels of LDL cholesterol (often referred to as "bad" cholesterol). However, confusion has crept in here as well. The terms LDL and HDL refer to lipoproteins, i.e. proteins that carry cholesterol. LDL stands for low-density lipoprotein while HDL stands for high-density lipoprotein, and more important than their overall level is the size of these particles.

• HDL cholesterol is actually linked to a lower risk of heart disease, which is why measurements of total cholesterol are useless when it comes to measuring such risk. If your total cholesterol is “high” because you have a lot of HDL, it’s no indication of increased heart risks; rather, it’s likely protective.
• Large, fluffy LDL particles do not contribute to heart disease, and eating saturated fat may actually change the small, dense LDL in your body into the healthier large, fluffy LDL, thereby providing a protective effect.^25,26
• Small, dense LDL particles are easily oxidized, which may trigger heart disease. People with high levels of small, dense LDL have triple the risk of heart disease as people with high levels of large, fluffy LDL.²⁷ Besides harmful trans fats, small, dense LDL particles are increased by eating refined sugar and carbohydrates, such as bread, bagels and soda.²⁸ Together, trans fats and refined carbs do far more harm to your body than saturated fat ever could.

In 2013, an editorial in the British Medical Journal described how the avoidance of saturated fat actually promotes poor health in a number of ways, including through their association with LDL cholesterol.²⁹ As stated by the author Aseem Malhotra, an interventional cardiology specialist registrar at Croydon University Hospital in London:

"The aspect of dietary saturated fat that is believed to have the greatest influence on cardiovascular risk is elevated concentrations of low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol.

Yet the reduction in LDL cholesterol from reducing saturated fat intake seems to be specific to large, buoyant (type A) LDL particles, when in factit is the small, dense (type B) particles (responsive to carbohydrate intake) that are implicated in cardiovascular disease.Indeed, recent prospective cohort studies have not supported any significant association between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular risk Instead, saturated fat has been found to be protective."

Saturated Fats Are Important for Optimal Health

Dietary fat serves as fuel and is a foundational structural component of your biology. Moreover, if you’re trying to lose weight, training your body to access your body fat is key (or else you cannot shed it), and supplying your body with dietary fat is an important part of this process. In order to make this conversion to allow your body to burn fat rather than sugar as its primary fuel, you need to:

1. Restrict net carbohydrates (total carbs minus fiber) to under 50 grams per day
2. Limit protein to 1 gram per kilo of lean body mass, and
3. Only consume high quality fat sources. Most Americans consume harmful fats like processed vegetable oils, which will invariably make your health worse.
So when we’re talking about healthy dietary fats, we’re referring to natural, unprocessed fat, found in real foods like raw grassfed dairy, meats, pastured eggs, seeds, nuts, butter, olives, avocado, coconut oil and raw cacao (a phenomenal source of healthy saturated fats and many beneficial polyphenols).

So, in summary, saturated fats:

• Increase your LDL levels, but they increase the large fluffy particles that are NOT associated with an increased risk of heart disease.
• Increase your HDL levels, which also compensates for any increase in LDL.
• Do NOT cause heart disease as made clear in all the above referenced studies.
• Do not damage as easily as other fats because they do not have double bonds that can be damaged through oxidation.
• Serves as a “clean-burning fuel” for your brain and mitochondria, producing far less damaging free radicals than sugars and nonfiber carbs.