The Cholesterol Myth Has Been Busted — Yet Again

Reposted from Dr. Mercola

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By Dr. Mercola
For the past four decades, the U.S. government has warned that eating cholesterol-rich foods such as eggs would raise your LDL cholesterol (inappropriately referred to as "bad" cholesterol) and promote heart disease.
Alas, decades' worth of research utterly failed to demonstrate this correlation, and the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans^1,2,3,4,5 finally addressed this scientific shortcoming, announcing "cholesterol is not considered a nutrient of concern for overconsumption."⁶
This is good news, since dietary cholesterol plays an important role in brain health and memory formation, and is indispensable for the building of cells and the production of stress and sex hormones, as well as vitamin D. (When sunlight strikes your bare skin, the cholesterol in your skin is converted into vitamin D.)
Unfortunately, the dietary guidelines still cling to outdated misinformation about saturated fat, wrongly accusing it of raising LDL and contributing to heart disease. Here, science has shown that saturated fat only raises the safe, fluffy LDL particles. It also increases HDL, which is beneficial for your heart.
The guidelines became and are still confusing because the basic premise was wrong. Dietary fat is indeed associated with heart disease, but it's the processed vegetable oils, which are loaded with trans fats and oxidized omega-6 fats, that are the problem, not saturated fats.
The introduction of industrialized, highly processed and frequently heated omega-6 vegetable oils distorted the vitally important omega 6-to-3 ratio, causing metabolic catastrophes. The problem was further exacerbated by replacing saturated fat with refined carbohydrates, which were incorrectly viewed as a healthier option, thanks to misinformation created and spread by the sugar industry.

Impairs Electrical Storage Potential of Your Cells

Nutrition and biochemistry are clearly important to your health, but so is your body's electrical system. All our membranes are made of fats that are insulators and connected through a conductor. This arrangement sets up a biological capacitor to store electrons — but only if the fats are healthy.
If you consume damaged fats, or worse, heated and hydrogenated oils, the fatty acids in the cell membrane essentially become nonfunctional and unable to store body voltage, thus increasing the risk for disease. This is one of many reasons why it is so vital to eat healthy fats.

Unpublished Research Undermines Decades of Dietary Advice

Ancel Keys was one of the most prominent nutritional researchers of the mid-20th century. He gained enormous professional and influential prominence and his views were widely adopted by professional and public health organizations. His research formed the foundation for all of the low-fat recommendations that followed. Interestingly, some of his own follow-up research actually undermined his hypotheses on cholesterol and saturated fat, but these findings were never published.
Had they been, the cholesterol and low-fat myths might never have gained the same kind of traction. The four decades' old study in question was unearthed by Dr. Christopher E. Ramsden, who specializes in digging up and reevaluating lost studies that challenge mainstream health advice.^{7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16}
Keys, who was largely funded by the sugar industry, is believed to have been responsible for suppressing this damning study, as it doesn't support his original hypothesis. 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. As reported by Scientific American:¹⁷

"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 …

Although the study is more than just another entry in the long-running nutrition wars — it is more rigorous than the vast majority of research on the topic — Ramsden makes no claims that it settles the question. Instead, he said, his discovery and analysis of long-lost data underline how the failure to publish the results of clinical trials can undermine truth."

Saturated Fat Vindicated in Largest Most Rigorous Trial of Its Kind

The study,¹⁸ conducted from 1968 to 1973, included 9,423 participants between the ages of 20 and 97, making it the largest trial of its kind. The participants were also residents of state mental hospitals and a nursing home, making it one of the most rigorously detailed studies as 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. 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."

Why Vegetable Oils Are so Bad for Your Health 

Later this year I will post my interview with Dr. Cate Shanahan, author of "Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food,"¹⁹ in which she delves into the profound harms done by processed vegetable oils in the modern diet. To learn more, keep your eyes open for that interview.
According to Shanahan, vegetable oil is your brain's worst enemy, attacking it "at seven distinct vulnerability points using seven distinct strategies. All seven strategies are at work in causing autism and other childhood neurologic disorders." This includes:

• Promoting gut inflammation and leaky gut. This inflammation often causes heartburn, which can serve as a red flag. Unfortunately, many misattribute heartburn to spicy foods rather than the more significant culprit, namely vegetable oils
• Disrupting the regulation of blood flow through the arteries in your brain and depleting your brain of antioxidants
• Turning your immune system against you by affecting your white blood cells (immune system cells), causing disease and nerve degenerating reactions
• Attacking the nerve cellular architecture. "Vegetable oils cause an overload of oxidative reactions inside the cell, leading to the accumulation of intracellular trash. When this affects our white matter, we lose our mobility. When it affects our gray matter, we lose our personalities and our connections to the world," Shanahan explains in her book²⁰
• Impairing brain development through mutagenic effects on DNA and altered epigenetic expression

Other reasons why vegetable oils cause heart disease and other health problems include the following:

• Omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, when taken in large amounts, cannot be burned for fuel. Instead, they're incorporated into your cellular and mitochondrial membranes, where they are highly susceptible to oxidative damage. As a result, your metabolic machinery is damaged. Vegetable oils made from genetically engineered (GE) crops (as most are) have additional health risks, as they tend to be loaded with toxic herbicide residues like Roundup.
• While your body needs some omega-6, most get far too much of it compared to omega-3, and this lopsided ratio can also have adverse health consequences.
• When heated, vegetable oils tend to oxidize. According to Dr. Fred Kummerow,²¹ who has researched lipids and heart disease for eight decades, oxidized cholesterol is the real culprit that causes heart disease. By triggering inflammation, it promotes the clogging of arteries and associated cardiovascular problems, including heart attacks.

Many Studies Have Debunked the Saturated Fat Myth

Several other studies have also demonstrated that replacing saturated fats with vegetable oils is a bad idea. While the benefits for cardiovascular mortality and risk-factor reduction have been mixed, none of these trials showed that restricting saturated fats reduced total mortality:

✓ Recovered data from the Sydney Diet Heart Study: In 2013, Ramsden's team analyzed four trials looking at the effects of replacing saturated fats with vegetable oils. Replacing saturated fats with linoleic acid-rich vegetable oils increased mortality risk from all causes, including coronary heart disease and cardiovascular disease22

✓ 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 death23

✓ L.A. Veterans Study (1969): A study of 850 elderly men that lasted for six years 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 group24

✓ London Soybean Oil Trial (1968): This study of nearly 400 men that lasted for two to seven years found no difference in heart attack rate between men following a diet low in saturated fats and high in soybean oil and those following an ordinary diet25

✓ 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 actually higher26

✓ A 2013 editorial published in the BMJ described how the avoidance of saturated fat actually promotes poor health in a number of ways. As stated by the author, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, an interventional cardiology specialist registrar at Croydon University Hospital in London:27 "The mantra that saturated fat must be removed to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease has dominated dietary advice and guidelines for almost four decades. Yet scientific evidence shows that this advice has, paradoxically, increased our cardiovascular risk ... 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 fact it 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."

✓ A 2014 meta-analysis published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (which included data from 76 studies and more than a half-million people) found that those who consume higher amounts of saturated fat have no more heart disease than those who consume less. Moreover, those who ate higher amounts of unsaturated fat, including both (healthy) olive oil and (unhealthy) corn oil — both of which are recommended over saturated fats — did not have lower incidence of heart disease28

✓ A 2015 meta-analysis published in the BMJ also failed to find an 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 diabetes29

In summary, industrially processed, highly refined 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 increase your risk of death. As noted by Ramsden:³⁰

"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."

Statins Revisited

The cholesterol myth has been a boon to the pharmaceutical industry, as cholesterol-lowering statins — often prescribed as a primary prevention against heart attack and stroke related to high cholesterol — have become one of the most frequently used drugs on the market. In 2012, nearly 28 percent of American adults over the age of 40 reported using a statin.³¹
Updated cholesterol treatment guidelines issued by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association (AHA) in 2013 made another 9.3 million Americans eligible candidates for the drug. However, researchers have repeatedly warned the cardiovascular risk calculator³² used may be overestimating your risk by anywhere from 75 to 150 percent.³³ This means even healthy people at low risk for heart problems are being turned to statins.
What's worse, the guideline also removed the recommendation to use the lowest drug dose possible. Instead, the sole focus is on statin-only treatment at higher dosages. The guidelines also ignore the density of the lipoproteins (the LDL and HDL). Large fluffy LDL particles are not harmful. Only small dense LDL particles can potentially cause problems as they can squeeze through the lining of your arteries. If they oxidize, they can cause damage and inflammation.
This means you could potentially have an LDL level of 190 but still be at low risk as long as your LDLs are large, and your HDL-to-total cholesterol ratio is above 24 percent. As mentioned earlier, saturated fat not only increases your HDL, it also increases large, fluffy LDLs, which is what you want.

Two Leading Cholesterol Guidelines Differ in Their Recommendations

Now, researchers have revisited the cholesterol guidelines, noting there are significant differences between the two leading guidelines in the U.S.³⁴ In 2016, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) released its own cholesterol treatment guidelines, which suggests statins should not be used unless the patient has at least one other risk factor (such as high blood pressure, diabetes or smoking) in addition to having a 10 percent risk on the cardiovascular risk calculator.
Under these guidelines, an estimated 17.1 million Americans are candidates for a statin, compared to the 26.4 million covered by the American College of Cardiology/AHA guidelines. The differences between the two guidelines have caused a great deal of debate among experts.
Which one's better? As Michael Pencina, a professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics at the Duke Clinical Research Institute and lead author of the study told CNN:³⁵ "There's generally confusion on who should be getting statins. I don't think we have the perfect guideline yet."
In my view, the number needed to treat offers compelling clues to the overall uselessness of statins. According to an analysis by the USPSTF, published last year:³⁶

• 100 people need to take a statin as a primary preventive for five years in order for one or two people to avoid a heart attack, and none will actually live longer
• 250 people need to take a statin for up to six years in order to prevent a single death from any cause

A 2015 report³⁷ published in the Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology concluded that "statistical deception created the appearance that statins are safe and effective in primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease."
By using relative risk reduction, the trivial benefits of statins are amplified. If you look at absolute risk, statin drugs benefit a mere 1 percent of the population. As noted by the USPSTF, this report found that out of 100 people treated with the drugs, one person will have one less heart attack.

Statins Do Not Reduce Mortality, and Can Seriously Harm Your Health

Other studies³⁸ have also found that statins provide no reduction in mortality when used preventatively — even in at-risk groups. This strongly suggests statins have even less of a benefit among those already at low risk of heart disease. Recent research³⁹ has also confirmed that high cholesterol is not linked with heart disease in the elderly, prompting the researchers to conclude that reducing cholesterol levels with statin drugs is "a waste of time."
Indeed, Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D. and senior scientist at MIT, believes heart disease is a cholesterol deficiency problem, which is essentially the converse of the conventional paradigm. Still, her hypothesis appears to be supported by studies showing people with higher levels of cholesterol actually live longer than those with lower levels.
Aside from being a "waste of time" and not doing anything to reduce mortality, statins also carry with them a list of over 200 side effects and clinical challenges, including:^40,41

✓ Increased risk of diabetes (there are several mechanisms for this, including increasing insulin resistance and raising your blood sugar)	✓ Acute liver disease	✓ Muscle pain, tenderness or weakness
✓ Rhabdomyolysis (a condition involving the death of muscle fibers),	✓ Acute kidney failure	✓ Chronic liver dysfunction
✓ Reduced ketone production.42 Ketones are water-soluble fat nutrients important for tissue health. They're also important molecular signaling molecules	✓ Depletes your body of essential vitamins, minerals and nutrients, including CoQ10 and vitamin K2, both of which are important for cardiovascular and heart health	✓ Impaired fertility and reduced sex drive. Importantly, statins are a Category X medication, meaning they cause serious birth defects, so they should NEVER be used by a pregnant woman or women planning a pregnancy
✓ Increased risk of cancer. Long-term statin use (10 years or longer) more than doubles women's risk of two major types of breast cancer: invasive ductal carcinoma and invasive lobular carcinoma43	✓ Nerve damage. Research has shown statin treatment lasting longer than two years causes "definite damage to peripheral nerves"44	✓ Reduced muscle and nervous system coordination
✓ Diarrhea and/or constipation	✓ Dizziness	✓ Headache
✓ Central nervous system toxicity	✓ Abdominal pain	✓ Cataracts
✓ Decreased heart function45	✓ Endocrine dysfunction	✓ Memory loss

Making Sense of Your Cholesterol Levels and Assessing Your Heart Disease Risk

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

Embed this infographic on your website:

<img src="http://media.mercola.com/assets/images/infographic/cholesterol-levels-infographic.png" alt="cholesterol levels infographic" border="0" style="max-width:100%; min-width:300px; margin: 0 auto 20px auto; display:block;" /><div style="max-width:800px; min-width:300px; margin:0 auto; text-align:center;" _rdEditor_temp="1"> Learn the better indicator of heart disease risk than just your total cholesterol - plus the dangers of statins and the need to supplement with CoQ10 if you're taking these cholesterol-lowering drugs - through our infographic "<a href="http://www.mercola.com/infographics/cholesterol-levels.htm">How to Make Sense of Your Cholesterol Levels</a>." Use the embed code to share it on your website or visit our infographic page for the high-res version.</div> <pre style="max-width:800px; min-width:300px; margin: 20px auto 0 auto; padding:10px; border:solid 1px #999999; background: #ffffff; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap:break-word;"><code><img src="http://media.mercola.com/assets/images/infographic/cholesterol-levels-infographic.png" alt="cholesterol levels infographic" border="0" style="max-width:100%; min-width:300px; margin: 0 auto 20px auto; display:block;"><p style="max-width:800px; min-width:300px; margin:0 auto; text-align:center;"> Learn the better indicator of heart disease risk than just your total cholesterol - plus the dangers of statins and the need to supplement with CoQ10 if you're taking these cholesterol-lowering drugs - through our infographic "<a href="http://www.mercola.com/infographics/cholesterol-levels.htm">How to Make Sense of Your Cholesterol Levels</a>." Visit our infographic page for the high-res version.</p> </code></pre>

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As a general rule, cholesterol-lowering drugs are not required or prudent for the majority of people — especially if both high cholesterol and longevity run in your family. Also keep in mind that your overall cholesterol level says very little about your risk for heart disease.
For more information about cholesterol and what the different levels mean, take a look at the infographic above. As for evaluating your heart disease risk, the following tests will provide you with a far more accurate picture than your total cholesterol or LDL level alone:

✓ HDL/Cholesterol ratio HDL percentage is a very potent heart disease risk factor. Just divide your HDL level by your total cholesterol. That percentage should ideally be above 24 percent

✓ Triglyceride/HDL ratio You can also do the same thing with your triglycerides and HDL ratio. That percentage should be below 2

✓ NMR LipoProfile Large LDL particles are not harmful. Only small dense LDL particles can potentially be a problem, as they can squeeze through the lining of your arteries. If they oxidize, they can cause damage and inflammation. Some groups, such as the National Lipid Association, are now starting to shift the focus toward LDL particle number instead of total and LDL cholesterol, in order to better assess your heart disease risk. Once you know your particle size numbers, you and your doctor can develop a more customized program to help manage your risk

✓ Your fasting insulin level Any meal or snack high in carbohydrates like fructose and refined grains generates a rapid rise in blood glucose and then insulin to compensate for the rise in blood sugar. The insulin released from eating too many carbs promotes fat accumulation and makes it more difficult for your body to shed excess weight. Excess fat, particularly around your belly, is one of the major contributors to heart disease

✓ Your fasting blood sugar level Studies have shown that people with a fasting blood sugar level of 100-125 mg/dl had a nearly 300 percent increased higher risk of having coronary heart disease than people with a level below 79 mg/dl

✓ Your iron level Iron can be a very potent oxidative stress, so if you have excess iron levels you can damage your blood vessels and increase your risk of heart disease. Ideally, you should monitor your ferritin levels and make sure they are not much above 80 ng/ml. The simplest way to lower them if they are elevated is to donate your blood. If that is not possible you can have a therapeutic phlebotomy and that will effectively eliminate the excess iron from your body

How to Reverse Type 2 Diabetes

Reposted from Dr. Mercola

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By Dr. Mercola
Great Britain, like the United States, has seen a remarkably rapid rise in pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes over the last decade. According to a recent BBC News¹ report, more than one-third of British adults are now pre-diabetic.
In 2003, 11.6 percent of Britons had pre-diabetes. By 2011, that figure had more than tripled, reaching 35.3 percent. Researchers warn that this will lead to a massive avalanche of type 2 diabetics in upcoming years, which will have serious consequences for health care and life expectancy.
In the United States, nearly 80 million people, or one in four has some form of diabetes or pre-diabetes. What's worse, both type 1 and type 2 diabetes among children and teens has also skyrocketed.
The most recent data,^{2, 3} reveals that, between 2001 and 2009, incidence of type 1 diabetes among children under the age of 19 rose by 21 percent. Incidence of type 2 diabetes among children aged 10-19 rose by 30 percent during that same timeframe!

Conventional Medicine Has It All Wrong...

Statistics such as these point to two very important facts. First, it tells us that diabetes cannot be primarily caused by genetics, and secondly, it literally screams that something we're doing, consistently and en masse, is horribly wrong, and we need to address it.
In this case, that "something" is a seriously flawed diet and lack of physical activity. Unfortunately, Dr. Ron Rosedale wrote in 2005, doctors cause diabetics to D.I.E from their flawed prescriptions, which stem from a basic lack of insight into the root cause of this disease. D.I.E., here, is a clever acronym for "Doctor Induced Exacerbation," which does indeed include early death.
Conventional medicine has type 2 diabetes pegged as a problem with blood sugar rather than the underlying problem of improper insulin and leptin signaling. The reality is that diabetes is a disease rooted in insulin resistance⁴ and perhaps more importantly, a malfunction of leptin signaling, caused by chronically elevated insulin and leptin levels.
This is why the medical community's approach to its treatment is not getting anywhere. Treating type 2 diabetes with insulin is actually one of the worst things you can do...
Recent research has come to the same conclusions that Dr. Rosedale warned us about nearly a decade ago, which is that treating type 2 diabetes with insulin can lead further to the development of type 1 diabetes.
And, not only are conventionally-trained doctors wrong about the cause of the disease, but they continue to pass along seriously flawed nutritional information as well, which allows the disease to increase to epidemic proportions.

Definitions of Terms

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of causes and treatments for diabetes, let's clarify the difference between type 1 and type 2, and the emergence of what some are now referring to as "type 3" diabetes. The terms "pre-diabetes" and "metabolic syndrome" also need to be explained.

• Pre-diabetes, also known as impaired glucose tolerance, is a term used to describe an earlier state of progressing insulin resistance. It is conventionally diagnosed by having a fasting blood sugar between 100 and 125 mg/dl.
Pre-diabetes is very easy to turn around. Simply swapping processed foods for whole organic foods lower in sugar and sugar-forming carbohydrates combined with a few minutes of daily exercise will quickly put you on the road to reversing this condition.
• Metabolic syndrome. As your insulin resistance progresses, your liver makes too much sugar and fat, and your skeletal muscles are less able to burn them and make glycogen, which is how glucose is stored in your muscles and liver. In turn, there is an increase in sugar and fats in your bloodstream which leads to high triglyceride levels and increased body fat--especially abdominal fat, and higher blood pressure.
Having 3 or more of a group of symptoms caused by insulin (and now we also know leptin) resistance -- high triglycerides, low HDL, higher blood glucose and blood pressure, and increased belly fat—is referred to as metabolic syndrome (in the past it was called Syndrome X).
• Type 1: insulin-dependent diabetes. Traditionally, type 1 diabetes develops before the age of 20. It used to be relatively uncommon, but as noted above, its incidence is rapidly rising.
Type 1 diabetes is classically an autoimmune disease in which your immune system destroys the insulin-producing cells of your pancreas, resulting in an inability to produce any significant insulin which that, if left untreated, will cause death in days to weeks from a hyperglycemic coma.
This deficiency of insulin is why type 1 is called "insulin-dependent" diabetes. There is currently no known way to completely reverse this.
However recent research suggests glimmers of hope. For example, Columbia University scientists claim that by turning off a particular gene, human gut cells can be converted into cells that produce insulin in response to dietary sugar.^{5, 6}
• Type 2: non-insulin-dependent diabetes. In type 2 diabetes, the pancreas is producing some insulin, in fact usually too much, but is unable to recognize the insulin and use it properly. This is an advanced stage of insulin resistance, which is typically caused by a diet that is too high in sugars and sugar-forming foods.
When you have inadequate insulin signaling, sugar cannot get into your cells and instead builds up in your blood. While anyone can get type 2 diabetes, you are typically considered at highest risk if you are overweight, sedentary, if you are a woman who had gestational diabetes, have family members with type 2 diabetes, or have metabolic syndrome. However, all of these really have the same underlying root of insulin and leptin resistance.
Type 2 diabetes represents the vast majority of all diabetics, and contrary to conventional medical and media teaching, it's nearly 100 percent curable⁷ through lifestyle changes alone (if these are instituted before conventional medical therapy/drugs kills the cells in the pancreas that makes insulin, causing type 1 diabetes too; see below).

Study Confirms: 'Insulin Therapy May Do More Harm Than Good'

A study published in the June 30, 2014 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine⁸ concluded what Dr. Rosedale has been saying for two decades, that insulin therapy in type 2 diabetic patients may indeed do more harm than good. As reported by Medical News Today:⁹

"In the US, type 2 diabetes is diagnosed when hemoglobin A1c levels reach 6.5 percent or higher. The higher A1c levels are, the greater the risk of other health problems. Sometimes the condition can be managed through changes in diet, but other patients with type 2 diabetes may need medication - such as insulin or metformin - to help lower their blood sugar levels, and ultimately, reduce the risk of diabetes complications.

But the researchers of this latest study... claim that the benefits of such treatment - particularly for people over the age of 50 - may not always outweigh the negatives. 'In many cases, insulin treatment may not do anything to add to the person's quality life expectancy,' says study co-author John S. Yudkin... 'If people feel that insulin therapy reduces their quality of life by anything more than around 3-4 percent, this will outweigh any potential benefits gained by treatment in almost anyone with type 2 diabetes over around 50 years old.'

For example, they estimate that a person with type 2 diabetes who begins insulin therapy at age 45 and lowers their hemoglobin A1c levels by 1 percent may experience an extra 10 months of healthy life. But for a patient who starts treatment for type 2 diabetes at age 75, they estimate the therapy may only gain them an additional 3 weeks of healthy life. The researchers say this prompts the question - is 10-15 years of pills or injections with possible side effects worth it?"

New Kid on the Block: Type 3 Diabetes, or 'Brain Diabetes,' May Be Responsible for Alzheimer's Disease and Glaucoma

A growing body of research suggests there's a powerful connection between your diet and your risk of both Alzheimer's disease and glaucoma,¹⁰ via similar pathways that cause type 2 diabetes. Alzheimer's disease was tentatively dubbed "type 3 diabetes" in early 2005 when researchers learned that the pancreas is not the only organ that produces insulin. Your brain also produces insulin, and this brain insulin is necessary for the survival of your brain cells.
A drop in insulin production in your brain may contribute to the degeneration of your brain cells, and studies have found that people with lower levels of insulin and insulin receptors in their brain often have Alzheimer's disease. Researchers have now discovered that insulin does far more than simply regulating blood sugar. Your brain does not require glucose, and actually functions better burning alternative fuels, especially ketones. In fact, Dr. Rosedale believes that it is the constant burning by the brain of glucose that is primarily to blame for Alzheimer's and other brain disorders
Insulin is actually a "master multitasker" that helps with neuron glucose-uptake, and the regulation of neurotransmitters, like acetylcholine, which are crucial for memory and learning. This is why reducing the level of insulin in your brain impairs your cognition. Other research¹¹ shows that type 2 diabetics lose more brain volume with age than expected—particularly gray matter. This kind of brain atrophy is yet another contributing factor for dementia. "Brain diabetes" may also be responsible for glaucoma, according to recent research. As reported by Medical News Today:¹²

"Researchers [in India]... have proposed a new mechanism of glaucoma which suggests that diabetes can occur in the brain and may be the cause of many neurodegenerative disorders including glaucoma... an irreversibly blinding disorder with almost 65 million sufferers worldwide. There is no cure...

The recent paper titled 'Glaucoma: Diabetes of the brain - a radical hypothesis about its nature and pathogenesis', published in Medical Hypotheses... explore glaucoma and related neurodegenerative diseases from many perspectives and come up with a multifaceted and internally coherent concept of glaucoma being 'the diabetes of the brain.'"

It's becoming increasingly clear that the same pathological process that leads to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes may also hold true for your brain. As you over-indulge on sugar and grains, your brain becomes overwhelmed by the consistently high levels of glucose and insulin that blunts its insulin signaling, leading to impairments in your thinking and memory abilities, eventually causing permanent brain damage.
Additionally, when your liver is busy processing fructose (which your liver turns into fat), it severely hampers its ability to make cholesterol, an essential building block of your brain that is crucial for optimal brain function. Indeed, mounting evidence supports the notion that significantly reducing fructose consumption is a very important step you can take to prevent Alzheimer's disease.

Root Causes of Type 1 Diabetes

Contrary to type 2 diabetes, type 1 is not may not be rooted in insulin and leptin dysfunction caused by excessive sugar (and carbohydrate) consumption. However, over the past several years, research has given us important clues about its predisposing conditions. Two important ones that you have more or less complete control over are:

• Vitamin D deficiency. Research suggests that sun avoidance may play a major role in the development of insulin dependent diabetes. The further you move away from the equator the greater your risk of being born with, or developing type 1 diabetes. A major key to preventing type 1 diabetes in children is to ensure that pregnant mothers have optimal vitamin D stores. There is also strong evidence that this can decrease your child's risk of autism. Once your child is born, ensuring he or she gets optimal sun exposure (and/or wise use of oral vitamin D supplementation) could virtually eliminate the risk for type 1 diabetes.
• Abnormal gut flora. An excessive focus on a germ-free environment is another potential contributing factor that impairs immune function. In 2008, animal research¹³ suggested that beneficial bacteria could protect against the development of type 1 diabetes. There is a good deal of evidence that a contributor to the rising rates of type 1 diabetes is raising our children in too sterile an environment. Many parents religiously use antibacterial soaps and keep their children away from the natural dirt, germs, viruses and other grime of childhood.¹⁴
Antibiotics, which kill all of the good and bad bacteria in the gut, are also overused in childhood. The lesson here is, it's okay to let your child get dirty. Use plain soap and water for washing. Avoid antibiotics unless absolutely necessary, and feed them naturally fermented foods such as yogurt, pickles and sauerkraut.¹⁵

Root Causes of Insulin Resistance, Pre-Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome, and Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes involves loss of insulin and leptin sensitivity. This makes it easily preventable and nearly 100 percent reversible without drugs. One of the driving forces behind type 2 diabetes is excessive dietary fructose, which has adverse effects on all of metabolic hormones—including two key players: insulin and leptin.
There is no question in my mind that regularly consuming more than 25 grams of fructose per day will dramatically increase your risk of insulin/leptin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and chronic diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, cancer, heart disease, arthritis, and Alzheimer's. It's important to realize that even though fructose is relatively "low glycemic" on the front end, it actually reduces the receptor's affinity for insulin, leading to chronic insulin resistance and elevated blood sugar on the back end. So, while you may not notice a steep increase in blood sugar immediately following fructose consumption, it is likely changing your entire endocrine system's ability to function properly behind the scenes...
Another major cause of type 2 diabetes is the consumption of the vast amount of glucose derived from the high carbohydrate diet that has been recommended for the last half century by conventional medical and media recommendations. All carbohydrates that are not fiber will be quickly metabolized into sugar, and it makes little sense to eat large amounts of sugar to keep your blood sugar lower.
The misconception of the cause of diabetes may be the biggest problem. Conventional medicine describes diabetes as a disease characterized by elevated blood sugar. This "dysregulation of blood sugar control" is typically explained as "an inability of your body to produce enough insulin." To control diabetes with that view, it would be rational to prescribe insulin or drugs that raise insulin to counteract the elevated blood sugar. The reality however is that type 2 diabetes is NOT the result of insufficient insulin production. It's actually the result of too much insulin being produced on a chronic basis primarily from eating the high carbohydrate, low fat diet recommended by the ADA and AHA to prevent and treat this.
This overwhelms and "deafens" your insulin receptors, hence the term "insulin resistance." It's the chronically elevated insulin levels that make your body "resistant" to understanding the signals sent by the insulin. This also occurs with leptin. It's really important to realize that T2 diabetes is not caused by elevated blood sugar or "insulin deficiency" per se. The root cause is insulin and leptin resistance which is why prescribing insulin is one of the WORST things you can do for type 2 diabetes, as it will actually worsen your insulin and leptin resistance over time. You do not need more insulin. You need to restore the sensitivity of your insulin and leptin receptors by keeping their levels low!
If you're still having trouble understanding why taking insulin is a terrible choice in type 2 diabetes consider this; when your blood sugar becomes elevated, insulin is released to direct the extra energy (sugar) into storage. A small amount is stored as a starch called glycogen, but the majority is stored as fat. Therefore, insulin's primary role is not to lower your blood sugar, but rather to store this extra energy as fat for future needs when food may not be available. The fact that insulin lowers your blood sugar is merely a "side effect" of this energy storage process. Taking more insulin just makes you fatter!
Your body's cells become desensitized to insulin, leptin, and other hormones, by being overexposed to these hormones—be it by eating food that causes excessive secretion, or by injection. Diabetes treatments that concentrate merely on lowering blood sugar by adding insulin therefore tend to worsen rather than remedy the actual problem of metabolic miscommunication.

As Dr. Rosedale has previously stated: "Type 2 diabetes is brought on by constantly having too much insulin and leptin circulating secondary to the same diet that has been recommended to treat diabetes and heart disease, a high carbohydrate, low-fat diet. Then giving these diabetics more insulin is adding gasoline to the fire. Doctors couldn't be doing more harm if they tried."

Leptin—An Oft-Ignored KEY Player in Type 2 Diabetes Development

While much conventional advice centers around insulin, leptin is another hormone that plays an integral role in the development of type 2 diabetes. Leptin is produced in your fat and other cells, and one of its primary roles is regulating your appetite and body weight. Leptin tells your brain when to eat, how much to eat, and most importantly, when to stop eating. Leptin also instructs your brain as to what to do with the available energy.
Now remember, when your blood sugar becomes elevated, insulin is released to direct the extra energy into storage—the majority of which is stored as fat, and leptin is produced in these fat cells. The more fat you have, the more leptin is produced. Furthermore, as the sugar gets metabolized in your fat cells, the fat releases further surges in leptin. This is why I typically talk about insulin and leptin resistance, as they work in tandem. Moreover, leptin is largely responsible for the accuracy of insulin signaling and whether or not you become insulin-resistant. If you're insulin resistant, you're more than likely leptin resistant as well, especially if you're overweight or obese.
Why?
Because when you develop leptin resistance, your brain can no longer hear leptin's signals, resulting in chronic hunger, overeating, inability to properly burn fat and, typically, obesity. Insulin resistance, and ultimately type 2 diabetes, follow suit. Just as with insulin, the only known way to reestablish proper leptin signaling is through proper diet. High consumption of carbohydrates, especially fructose, are again the prime culprit and the root cause of leptin resistance. Lack of exercise and abnormal gut flora also contribute and/or exacerbate insulin and leptin resistance. Leptin's importance in blood glucose control and diabetes is powerfully illustrated by recent studies that show its ability, even in low doses, to lower blood glucose in both type 1 and 2 diabetics, and this is an exciting new potential treatment.

New Warning: Insulin Can Rapidly Produce Type 1 Diabetes in Type 2 Diabetics

Please understand that medications and supplements are not the answer for type 2 diabetes. Diabetes drugs fail to address the underlying problem, and many, like Avandia, can have dangerous side effects. Avandia is linked to 43 percent increased risk of heart attack and 64 percent higher risk of cardiovascular death, compared with other treatments. Instead, type 2 diabetes is best controlled by restoring your insulin and leptin sensitivities. This is done by eliminating grains and sugars—especially fructose—from your diet, getting plenty of healthy fats, exercising, and sleeping well. Further details on this will be provided below, in the treatment section.
As noted earlier, recent research published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism¹⁶ confirms what Dr. Ron Rosedale has stated for the last two decades, which is that insulin treatment can provoke otherwise reversible type 2 diabetes to progress into type 1 insulin deficient and therefore insulin-dependent diabetes. The study found that giving genetically engineered recombinant insulin to type 2 diabetics with certain genetic susceptibility can trigger their bodies to produce antibodies that destroy their insulin producing cells (pancreatic islet cells). You may not realize that all human insulin, the type typically used, is GMO or genetically modified which might be responsible for this autoimmune reaction.
Basically, it triggers an autoimmune disease response, producing a condition in which you have both type 1 and type 2 diabetes simultaneously. The average time of type 1 diabetes onset was 7.7 months. One study participant developed type 1 diabetes in just over one month! According to the authors, acute deterioration of blood glucose control after administering insulin is a warning sign of this problematic side effect. According to this study, the genes predisposing you to this autoimmune-type response to insulin are:

• Type 1 diabetes high risk HLA class II (IDDM1), thought to play a role in about half of all type 1 diabetes cases
• VNTR genotype (IDDM2), which is believed to predispose you to type 2 diabetes

This is yet another way conventional diabetic treatment pushes diabetics into premature death... Research¹⁷ published last year revealed that treating type 2 diabetes with insulin more than doubled patients' risk of all-cause mortality. It also leads to:

✓ Twice as many myocardial infarctions	✓ 1.4 time more strokes	✓ 2.1 time more neuropathy	✓ 1.4 times more cancer
✓ 1.7 time more major adverse cardiac events	✓ 3.5 times more renal complications	✓ 1.2 times more eye complications	✓ 2.2 times more deaths

Another study published in Diabetologia^{18, 19} in May of this year, found that diabetic cancer patients also have a significantly elevated risk of death. Diabetic patients using insulin at the time of their cancer diagnosis had a four times higher mortality rate one year after cancer diagnosis, compared to non-diabetic patients, or those who did not use insulin to control their diabetes. While this was an observational study, which means it cannot establish causality, it is worth noting nonetheless.

Dr. Rosedale has also said; "All of these increased rates of chronic diseases caused by taking insulin may be because it is doing exactly the opposite of what has been shown in many studies to reduce cancer, total mortality, and extend lifespan; reducing insulin. In fact, T2 diabetes is often considered to be a model of accelerated aging because of the high insulin. In other words, treating diabetics by overly raising insulin, either with drugs or insulin itself, is only further accelerating their aging, associated chronic diseases, and death, and should be considered malpractice."

Warning #2: Beware of Future Diabetic Vaccines

As noted by GreenMedInfo.com,²⁰ these findings also raise serious warnings against diabetic vaccines:

"[T]here are a number of trials underway to produce vaccines containing insulin intended to induce a 'tolerogenic immune response' and therefore ameliorate autoimmune type 1 diabetes. Clearly, however, their findings run contrary to this expectation, revealing that it is possible that introducing exogenous forms of insulin may stimulate the opposite reaction and induced autoimmunity against the hormone, or the cells in the pancreas responsible for producing it."

It also raises questions about the safety and effectiveness of synthetic insulin. Virtually all of the insulin sold in the US is synthetic, synthesized from recombinant DNA technology, which differs considerably from natural animal-derived insulin. Interestingly, it could be that it's the "inactive" ingredients or additives, such as polysorbate 20, that produce an exaggerated immune response in susceptible individuals—similar to that encountered with vaccines. Sayer Ji also notes that:²¹

"Furthermore, synthetic insulin does not have the same conformational state – i.e. it does not assume the same complex folded form – of natural human insulin, or more closely related pig insulin. This presents a 'recognition' problem from the perspective of the immune system which may identify the foreign protein as 'other' generating acute or sustained autoimmune reactions to it as a result...

Research²² dating back to the early 1980s compared synthetic E. Coli derived insulin with porcine (pig) derived insulin in diabetic children and found that porcine insulin was more effective at lowering HbA1 values (a marker of damage associated with elevated blood sugar), superior at reducing fasting glucose concentrations, and less antibody reactive to insulin than synthetic insulin. While pig derived insulin has its limitations, especially considering there are limits to how much can be produced, clearly it is more appropriate than synthetic versions if it is true that the latter is incapable of reproducing the same therapeutic outcome for diabetics."

How to Prevent and Treat Insulin/Leptin Resistance and Type 2 Diabetes

Now that you have an understanding of the root causes of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, it's time to outline a program to reverse this condition. Remember, type 2 diabetes is curable, and in the vast majority of cases does not require any form of medication.
The following nutrition and lifestyle modifications should be the foundation of your diabetes prevention and treatment plan. Also, make sure to monitor your FASTING insulin level. This is every bit as important as monitoring your fasting blood sugar. You'll want your fasting insulin level to be between 2 and 4. The higher your level, the greater your insulin resistance and the more aggressive you need to be in your treatment plan, especially when it comes to altering your diet.

• Swap out processed foods, all forms of sugar—particularly fructose—as well as all grains, for whole, fresh food. A primary reason for the failure of conventional diabetes treatment over the last 50 years has to do with seriously flawed dietary recommendations. Fructose, grains, and other sugar forming starchy carbohydrates are largely responsible for your body's adverse insulin reactions, and all sugars and grains—even "healthful" grains such as whole, organic ones—need to be drastically reduced.
If you're insulin/leptin resistant, have diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, or are overweight, you'd be wise to limit your total fructose intake to 15 grams per day until your insulin/leptin resistance has resolved. This includes about 80 percent of Americans. For all others, I recommend limiting your daily fructose consumption to 25 grams or less, to maintain optimal health.
The easiest way to accomplish this is by swapping processed foods for whole, ideally organic foods. This means cooking from scratch with fresh ingredients. Processed foods are the main source of all the primary culprits, including high fructose corn syrup and other sugars, processed grains, trans fats, artificial sweeteners, and other synthetic additives that may aggravate metabolic dysfunction.
Besides fructose, trans fat (NOT saturated fat) increases your risk for diabetes²³ by interfering with your insulin receptors. Healthy saturated fats do not do this. Since you're cutting out a lot of energy (carbs) from your diet when you reduce sugars and grains, you need to replace them with something. The ideal replacement is a combination of:

◦ Low-to-moderate amount of high-quality protein. Substantial amounts of protein can be found in meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, legumes, and nuts. When selecting animal-based protein, be sure to opt for organically raised, grass-fed or pastured meats, eggs, and dairy, to avoid potential health complications caused by genetically engineered animal feed and pesticides.
Most Americans eat far too much protein, so be mindful of the amount! I believe it is the rare person who really needs more than one-half gram of protein per pound of lean body mass. Those that are aggressively exercising or competing and pregnant women should have about 25 percent more, but most people rarely need more than 40-70 grams of protein a day.
To determine your lean body mass, find out your percent body fat and subtract from 100. This means that if you have 20 percent body fat, you have 80 percent lean body mass. Just multiply that by your current weight to get your lean body mass in pounds or kilos. To determine whether you're getting too much protein, simply calculate your lean body mass as described above, then write down everything you're eating for a few days, and calculate the amount of daily protein from all sources.
Again, you're aiming for one-half gram of protein per pound of lean body mass, which would place most people in the range of 40 to 70 grams of protein per day. If you're currently averaging a lot more than that, adjust downward accordingly. You could use the chart below or simply Google the food you want to know and you will quickly find the grams of protein in the food.

✓ Red meat, pork, poultry and seafood average 6-9 grams of protein per ounce. An ideal amount for most people would be a 3 ounce serving of meat or seafood (not 9 or 12 ounce steaks!), which will provide about 18-27 grams of protein	✓ Eggs contain about 6-8 grams of protein per egg. So an omelet made from two eggs would give you about 12-16 grams of protein. If you add cheese, you need to calculate that protein in as well (check the label of your cheese)
✓ Seeds and nuts contain on average 4-8 grams of protein per quarter cup	✓ Cooked beans average about 7-8 grams per half cup
✓ Cooked grains average 5-7 grams per cup	✓ Most vegetables contain about 1-2 grams of protein per ounce

• As much high-quality healthy fat as you want (saturated²⁴ and monounsaturated). For optimal health, most people need upwards of 50-85 percent of their daily calories in the form of healthy fats. Good sources include coconut and coconut oil, avocados, butter, nuts, and animal fats. (Remember, fat is high in calories while being small in terms of volume. So when you look at your plate, the largest portion would be vegetables.)
• As many non-starchy vegetables as you want
• Exercise regularly and intensely. Studies have shown that exercise, even without weight loss, increases insulin sensitivity.²⁵ High intensity interval training (HIIT), which is a central component of my Peak Fitness program, has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity by as much as 24 percent in just four weeks.
• Improve your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio. Today's Western diet has far too many processed and damaged omega-6 fats, and is far too little omega-3 fats.²⁶ The main sources of omega-6 fats are corn, soy, canola, safflower, peanut, and sunflower oil (the first two of which are typically genetically engineered as well, which further complicates matters). Our bodies evolved for an optimal 1:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3. However, our ratio has deteriorated to between 20:1 and 50:1 in favor of omega-6. This lopsided ratio has seriously adverse health consequences.
To remedy this, reduce your consumption of vegetable oils (this means not cooking with them, and avoiding processed foods), and increase your intake of animal-based omega-3, such as krill oil. Vegetable-based omega-3 is also found in flaxseed oil and walnut oil, and it's good to include these in your diet as well. Just know they cannot take the place of animal-based omega-3s.
• Maintain optimal vitamin D levels year-round. New evidence strongly supports the notion that vitamin D is highly beneficial not only for type 1 diabetes as mentioned before, but also in type 2 diabetes. The ideal way to optimize your vitamin D level is by getting regular sun exposure, or by using a safe tanning bed. As a last resort, consider oral supplementation with regular vitamin D monitoring, to confirm that you are taking enough vitamin D to get your blood levels into the therapeutic range of 50-70 ng/ml. Also please note that if you take supplemental vitamin D, you create an increased demand for vitamin K2.
• Get adequate high-quality sleep every night. Insufficient sleep appears to raise stress and blood sugar, encouraging insulin and leptin resistance and weight gain. In one 10-year long study²⁷ of 70,000 diabetes-free women, researchers found that women who slept less than five hours or more than nine hours each night were 34 percent more likely to develop diabetes symptoms than women who slept seven to eight hours each night. If you are having problems with your sleep, try the suggestions in my article "33 Secrets to a Good Night's Sleep."
• Maintain a healthy body weight. If you incorporate the diet and lifestyle changes suggested above you will greatly improve your insulin and leptin sensitivity, and a healthy body weight will follow in time. Determining your ideal body weight depends on a variety of factors, including frame size, age, general activity level, and genetics. As a general guideline, you might find a hip-to-waist size index chart helpful. This is far better than BMI for evaluating whether or not you may have a weight problem, as BMI fails to factor in both how muscular you are, and your intra-abdominal fat mass (the dangerous visceral fat that accumulates around your inner organs), which is a potent indicator of leptin sensitivity and associated health problems.
• Incorporate intermittent fasting. If you have carefully followed the diet and exercise guidelines and still aren't making sufficient progress with your weight or overall health, I strongly recommend incorporating intermittent fasting. This effectively mimics the eating habits of our ancestors, who did not have access to grocery stores or food around the clock. They would cycle through periods of feast and famine, and modern research shows this cycling produces a number of biochemical benefits, including improved insulin/leptin sensitivity, lowered triglycerides and other biomarkers for health, and weight loss.
Intermittent fasting is by far the most effective way I know of to shed unwanted fat and eliminate your sugar cravings. Intermittent fasting has also been identified as a potent ally for the prevention and perhaps even treatment of dementia. Ketones are released as a byproduct of burning fat, and ketones (not glucose) are actually the preferred fuel for your brain. Keep up your intermittent fasting schedule until your insulin/leptin resistance improves (or your weight, blood pressure, cholesterol ratios, or diabetes normalizes). After that, you only need to do it "as needed" to maintain your healthy state.
• Optimize your gut health. Your gut is a living ecosystem, full of both good bacteria and bad. Multiple studies have shown that obese people have different intestinal bacteria than lean people. The more good bacteria you have, the stronger your immune system will be and the better your body will function overall. Fortunately, optimizing your gut flora is relatively easy. You can reseed your body with good bacteria by regularly eating fermented foods (like natto, raw organic cheese, miso, and cultured vegetables).

You CAN Prevent and Treat Diabetes

You don't have to be a part of the diabetes epidemic that is taking place before your eyes; you merely need to make some lifestyle changes and be mindful about your habits. The changes, detailed above, will prevent you from heading down the diabetes path, and can be the U-turn you've been looking for if you're already insulin resistant or diabetic. None of these strategies are expensive or overly time-consuming. However, they do require a measure of honest reflection and discipline.
Now that you have an understanding of what diabetes really is and how it develops, you can steer clear of behavior patterns that harm your health, and incorporate those that will enhance your quality of life. Again, type 2 diabetes involves loss of insulin and leptin sensitivity, which is easily preventable, and nearly 100 percent reversible without drugs, by addressing your diet and other lifestyle habits, such as exercise, sleep, and intermittent fasting. I suggest taking a lifestyle inventory to see where you might have room for improvement. For example:

• Review your eating patterns. How much sugar and sugar-forming carbohydrates are you eating daily? Is corn syrup a primary staple of your diet, hidden in the processed foods you buy on a regular basis? Are you spending your time in the middle of the grocery store, or around the periphery? (Most processed foods come from the middle aisles.)
• Are you an "emotional eater"? Do you tend to overindulge in comfort foods when you are feeling sad or angry? If so, review the information on my website about EFT, which you might find very helpful.
• Evaluate your activity level. Are you getting enough exercise each week?
• Are you getting enough sunlight? Have you measured your vitamin D levels lately? Unless you are deeply tanned, that is the only way to know your level. Do you need to consider a vitamin D supplement?
• Are you getting enough magnesium in your diet? Early signs of magnesium deficiency include loss of appetite, headache, nausea, fatigue, and weakness. An ongoing magnesium deficiency can lead to more serious symptoms, including muscle spasms and abnormal heart rhythms. To learn more, please see my interview with Dr. Carolyn Dean, author of The Magnesium Miracle.
• What patterns are you inadvertently passing along to your children? What example are you setting for your kids, in terms of nutrition and exercise? Are they getting the message that health is a priority? Getting healthy can and should be a family activity! When everyone is involved, you can support each other and give kudos for positive strides, making it more fun for everyone. The payoffs to your health will be great, and you will be passing along good lifestyle habits to your children, which will serve them for years to come.

Your Blood Type and Health Risks

Reposted from The Hearty Soul

http://theheartysoul.com/blood-types/?t=DrM

Blood type is one of the body’s more mysterious taxonomies. There are four bins our blood can fall into — A, B, AB, and O — and together they represent the four groups of antigens found on the surfaces of red blood cells.

But they don’t just signal who we can donate to and receive from; our blood types can reveal complex patterns of personal health. Here are six to consider:

1. Memory Problems

At-risk: AB

Your brain and vascular system have more in common than you may think. A recent study found people with type AB blood were 82 percent more likely to experience difficulties with memory recall, language, and attention than people with other types. One reason, researchers suspect, is due to the key clotting protein, known as coagulation factor VIII, which may actually reduce the quality of blood flow to the brain, rather than sealing up injury sites.
“Since factor VIII levels are closely linked to blood type, this may be one causal connection between blood type and cognitive impairment,” said Mary Cushman, author of the recent study, to Yahoo Health.

2. Pancreatic Cancer

At-risk: Non-O

It may be more accurate to say people with type O blood are at a lower risk for pancreatic cancer, given the work researchers from Yale University are doing on bacterial infection. In a study conducted last July, scientists from the University’s Cancer Center looked at cases of a common species of bacteria called Helicobacter pylori, or H. pylori, that lives in people’s gut.
They found people with H. pylori were significantly more likely to develop pancreatic cancer, due to the way A and B antigens help the bacteria thrive. People with type O blood carry no antigens on the surface of their red blood cells. This is what allows them to donate to anyone.

3. Heart Disease

At-risk: AB

A 2012 study from Harvard University found people with non-O blood also happen to have an increased risk for cardiovascular disease. But those with type AB blood were the most at-risk overall, demonstrating a 23 percent greater chance of suffering from heart disease than type O subjects.

Study author Dr. Lu Qi, an assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition, said the particular makeup of people’s antigens should be given the same weight we already assign to cholesterol and blood pressure. “While people cannot change their blood type, our findings may help physicians better understand who is at risk for developing heart disease,” Qi said in a statement.

4. Stress

At-risk: A

Because certain blood types are more likely to co-occur with varying levels of hormones in the body, physicians commonly tailor their exercise recommendations to the patient’s type. People with type A blood, for example, are more likely to have higher levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, in their body. So, stress-reducing exercises, like Tai Chi and yoga, may be more beneficial at cutting that tension than running or weightlifting alone.
When the adrenal gland dumps more and more cortisol into the blood, people’s stress response grows more acute. People with type A blood may find themselves getting anxious more quickly and having a harder time letting troubles roll off their back.

5. Exercise Demands

More generally, the makeup of a person’s antigens on his or her red blood cells can determine how much of a certain hormone gets released. People with type A and B blood respond better to calming, low-intensity exercise like yoga, especially if depression runs in the family. Likewise, people with AB blood benefit from well-rounded workouts that keep their immune systems in check. Type O people, however, are a different story.
“Type O’s are more prone to problems that arise from an inability to clear stress hormones from their system quickly,” Dr. Ginger Nash, a naturopathic physician, told Personalized Living. “It takes more to get a Type O stressed but it takes more to de-stress them as well.”

6. Gut Bacteria

In addition to living on your red blood cells, antigens are often found in the lining of your digestive tract — about 80 percent of people fall into this category. Much of the bacteria living in people’s gut uses these antigens as food, which largely determines which bacteria flourish and which disappear. Prior research has estimated, for instance, that people with type B blood contain up to 50,000 times the number of strains of friendly bacteria than people with either type A or O blood.

A Killer In Your Fridge

Reposted from Rhoda Gessner

https://rhondagessner.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/a-killer-in-your-fridge-sweet-poison-a-must-read/

In October of 2001, my sister started getting very sick. She had stomach spasms and she was having a hard time getting around. Walking was a major chore. It took everything she had just to get out of bed; she was in so much pain.

By March 2002, she had undergone several tissue and muscle biopsies and was on 24 various prescription medications. The doctors could not determine what was wrong with her. She was in so much pain, and so sick she just knew she was dying.

She put her house, bank accounts, life insurance, etc., in her oldest daughter’s name, and made sure that her younger children were to be taken care of.

She also wanted her last hooray, so she planned a trip to Florida (basically in a wheelchair) for March 22nd.

On March 19, I called her to ask how her most recent tests went, and she said they didn’t find anything on the test, but they believe she had MS.

I recalled an article a friend of mine e-mailed to me and I asked my sister if she drank diet soda? She told me that she did. As a matter of fact, she was getting ready to crack one open that moment.
I told her not to open it, and to stop drinking the diet soda! I e-mailed her an article my friend, a lawyer, had sent. My sister called me within 32 hours after our phone conversation and told me she had stopped drinking the diet soda AND she could walk! The muscle spasms went away. She said she didn’t feel 100% but, she sure felt a lot better.

She told me she was going to her doctor with this article and would call me when she got home.
Well, she called me, and said her doctor was amazed! He is going to call all of his MS patients to find out if they consumed artificial sweeteners of any kind. In a nutshell, she was being poisoned by the Aspartame in the diet soda.. and literally dying a slow and miserable death.

When she got to Florida March 22, all she had to take was one pill, and that was a pill for the Aspartame poisoning! She is well on her way to a complete recovery. And she is walking! No wheelchair! This article saved her life. If it says ‘SUGAR FREE’ on the label; DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!  I have spent several days lecturing at the WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL CONFERENCE on ‘ASPARTAME,’ marketed as ‘Nutra Sweet,’ ‘Equal,’ and ‘Spoonful. ‘In the keynote address by the EPA, it was announced that in the United States in 2001 there is an epidemic of multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus. It was difficult to determine exactly what toxin was causing this to be rampant. I stood up and said that I was there to lecture on exactly that subject.
I will explain why Aspartame is so dangerous: When the temperature of this sweetener exceeds 86 degrees F, the wood alcohol in ASPARTAME converts to formaldehyde and then to formic acid, which in turn causes metabolic acidosis. Formic acid is the poison found in the sting of fire ants. The methanol toxicity mimics, among other conditions, multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus.
Many people were being diagnosed in error. Although multiple sclerosis is not a death sentence, Methanol toxicity is!

Systemic lupus has become almost as rampant as multiple sclerosis, especially with Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi drinkers. The victim usually does not know that the Aspartame is the culprit. He or she continues it’s use; irritating the lupus to such a degree that it may become a life-threatening condition. We have seen patients with systemic lupus become asymptotic, once taken off diet sodas.
In cases of those diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, most of the symptoms disappear. We’ve seen many cases where vision loss returned and hearing loss improved markedly.

This also applies to cases of tinnitus and fibromyalgia. During a lecture, I said, ‘If you are using ASPARTAME (Nutra-Sweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc) and you suffer from fibromyalgia symptoms, spasms, shooting, pains, numbness in your legs,
Cramps,
Vertigo,
Dizziness,
Headaches,
Tinnitus,
Joint pain,
Unexplainable depression, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, blurred vision, or memory loss you probably have ASPARTAME poisoning!’ People were jumping up during the lecture saying, ‘I have some of these symptoms. Is it reversible?’
Yes!
Yes!
Yes!
STOP drinking diet sodas and be alert for Aspartame on food labels! Many products are fortified with it! This is a serious problem. Dr. Espart (one of my speakers) remarked that so many people seem to be symptomatic for MS and during his recent visit to a hospice; a nurse stated that six of her friends, who were heavy Diet Coke addicts, had all been diagnosed with MS. This is beyond coincidence!
Diet soda is NOT a diet product! It is a chemically altered, multiple SODIUM (salt) and ASPARTAME containing product that actually makes you crave carbohydrates.
It is far more likely to make you GAIN weight!

These products also contain formaldehyde, which stores in the fat cells, particularly in the hips and thighs. Formaldehyde is an absolute toxin and is used primarily to preserve ’tissue specimens.’
Many products we use every day contain this chemical but we SHOULD NOT store it IN our body!
Dr. H. J. Roberts stated in his lectures that once free of the ‘diet products’ and with no significant increase in exercise; his patients lost an average of 19 pounds over a trial period. Aspartame is especially dangerous for diabetics. We found that some physicians, who believed that they had a patient with retinopathy, in fact, had symptoms caused by Aspartame. The Aspartame drives the blood sugar out of control. Thus diabetics may suffer acute memory loss due to the fact that aspartic acid and phenylalanine are NEUROTOXIC when taken without the other amino acids necessary for a good balance.

Treating diabetes is all about BALANCE.. Especially with diabetics, the Aspartame passes the blood/brain barrier and it then deteriorates the neurons of the brain; causing various levels of brain damage, Seizures, Depression, Manic depression, Panic attacks, Uncontrollable anger and rage. Consumption of Aspartame causes these same symptoms in non-diabetics as well. Documentation and observation also reveal that thousands of children diagnosed with ADD and ADHD have had complete turnarounds in their behavior when these chemicals have been removed from their diet.
So called ‘behavior modification prescription drugs’ (Ritalin and others) are no longer needed. Truth be told, they were never NEEDED in the first place!  Most of these children were being ‘poisoned’ on a daily basis with the very foods that were ‘better for them than sugar. ‘It is also suspected that the Aspartame in thousands of pallets of diet Coke and diet Pepsi consumed by men and women fighting in the Gulf War, may be partially to blame for the well-known Gulf War Syndrome.

Dr. Roberts warns that it can cause birth defects, i.e. mental retardation, if taken at the time of conception and during early pregnancy. Children are especially at risk for neurological disorders and should NEVER be given artificial sweeteners.

There are many different case histories to relate of children suffering Grand mal seizures and other neurological disturbances talking about a plague of neurological diseases directly caused by the use of this deadly poison.’

Herein lies the problem: There were Congressional Hearings when Aspartame was included in 100 different products and strong objection was made concerning its use. Since this initial hearing, there have been two subsequent hearings, and still nothing has been done. The drug and chemical lobbies have very deep pockets.

Sadly, MONSANTO’S patent on Aspartame has EXPIRED! There are now over 5,000 products on the market that contain this deadly chemical and there will be thousands more introduced. Everybody wants a ‘piece of the Aspartame pie. ‘I assure you that MONSANTO, the creator of Aspartame, knows how deadly it is.

And isn’t it ironic that MONSANTO funds, among others, the American Diabetes Association, the American Dietetic Association and the Conference of the American College of Physicians?
This has been recently exposed in the New York Times. These [organizations] cannot criticize any additives or convey their link to MONSANTO because they take money from the food industry and are required to endorse their products. Senator Howard Metzenbaum wrote and presented a bill that would require label warnings on products containing Aspartame, especially regarding pregnant women, children and infants.

The bill would also institute independent studies on the known dangers and the problems existing in the general population regarding seizures, changes in brain chemistry, neurological changes and behavioral symptoms.  The bill was killed. It is known that the powerful drug and chemical lobbies are responsible for this, letting loose the hounds of disease and death on an unsuspecting and uninformed public. Well, you’re informed now!

Note 1:  I have been studying health and nutrition for 35 years.  What I’ve learned in the past 3 years has been by far…the most valuable.  My husband was diagnosed with liver disease 3 years ago and that sent me on a very aggressive search for help.  I came across an article about Dr. Otto Warburg that said…he won the Nobel Prize in 1931 for proving that no disease including cancer, can survive in an alkaline body. 

From there…a friend told me about a Japanese medical device that makes alkaline water.  She went on to tell me that since our body is 70% water, drinking alkaline ionized water is the easiest way to raise your pH.  It makes perfect sense…the health “puzzle” is made up of many pieces including water, diet, exercise, sleep, etc.  But since 3/4 of that puzzle is made up of one big piece…WATER, drinking enough of the “right” kind of water will have a HUGE impact on your health.  

Want to know why EVERYONE is talking about Kangen Water? Click here to register: alkaline water webinar

And you can request a FREE eBook on Healthy Water:   www.usakangenwater.net

Note 2:  I’m just sharing the Aspartame article from another blog…I’m not the author.  I shared this article when I first started blogging and I didn’t know I was supposed to give credit to the original author. I can’t find the original so there’s no way for me to credit the author.  I’ve received tons of emails from people that had very similar experiences with aspartame so I absolutely believe this is true. Hydration is my area of expertise.

This Plant Kills Lyme Disease Better Than Antibiotics

Reposted from David Wolfe

https://www.davidwolfe.com/stevia-kills-lyme-disease-research/

Lyme disease is a bacterial infection that affects people of all ages. It’s transmitted by deer ticks and black-legged ticks across the United States, as well as in more than sixty other countries. According to the CDC, at least 300,000 people are infected with Lyme disease each year. Diagnosing Lyme disease can be difficult, because its symptoms mimic many other diseases. It can affect any organ in the body, including the brain and nervous system, the muscles and joints and the heart.

Lyme disease symptoms can include:

• Fever
• Chills
• Sweats
• Muscle Aches
• Nausea
• Joint Pain
• A rash shaped like a bull's eye

The conventional treatment for Lyme disease is antibiotics, but they often only address the surface aspects of the infection, leaving the disease deep within the body where it’s able to cause more harm. In a new preclinical study, researchers found that whole stevia leaf extract has powerful antibiotic activity against a pathogen known as Borrelia Burgdorferi, which is known to cause Lyme disease.

The Study

The study was conducted by researchers from the Department of Biology and Environmental Science, University of New Haven, West Haven, CT. The findings were published in the European Journal of Microbiology & Immunology. In the study, researchers directly compared an alcohol extract of a whole stevia leaf product to conventional antibiotics. They assessed their abilities to kill various forms of Borrelia burgdorferi.

B. burgdorferi can exist in different forms and it is highly resistant to antibiotics. It created a barrier against most conventional antibiotics, making it difficult to treat. Researchers found, “Stevia whole leaf extract, as an individual agent, was effective against all known morphological forms of B. burgdorferi.”

Researchers pointed out that about 10-20% of Lyme disease patients treated with antibiotics for the recommended 2-4 weeks experience adverse health effects. These often include fatigue, pain, joint aches and muscle aches. In some patients, these adverse effects from Lyme disease antibiotics lasted for more than six months.

The researchers noted, “The leaf extract of stevia possesses many phytochemicals… with known antimicrobial properties against many pathogens.” They concluded, “Results from this study suggest that a natural product such as Stevia leaf extract could be considered as an effective agent against B. burgdorferi.”

While this was a preliminary study, it provides a foundation for future research on the topic. The findings suggest that whole stevia leaf extract could play an important role in the natural treatment of Lyme disease.

Sources:
Green Med Info
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Green Med Info

Cancer and Baking Soda

Reposted from Healthy Food For Me:  http://healthyfoodforme.com/oncologists-dont-like-baking-soda-cancer-treatment-effective-cheap/

Baking soda is a white crystalline solid that appears as fine powder. It is also called cooking soda, bread soda and bicarbonate of soda. Its chemical name is sodium bicarbonate or sodium hydrogen carbonate. The National Institutes of Health at the University of Arizona Cancer Center has proven that even the most aggressive cancers which have metastasized can be reversed with baking soda treatments. Studies have shown that dietary measures to boost bicarbonate levels can increase the pH of acidic tumors without upsetting the pH of the blood and healthy tissues. Most of the people choose chemotherapy in cancer treatment, but it is toxic to all cells in our body. It boosts cancer growth and long-term mortality rates.

Dr. Julian Whitaker has made The Whitaker protocol. This protocol uses 12g (two rounded teaspoons) of baking soda mixed in two cups water, along with a low-cal sweetener. He says that if you drink this mixture three times a day it is very successful in cancer treatment and the cancer can even be cured.

Baking soda can also reduce the involvement of the lymph node on the transport cancer cells, it does not lower the levels of circulating tumor cells, it reduces the involvement of the liver and it inhibits the colonization of other organs by circulating tumor cells.

The baking soda cancer remedy formula is very easy to prepare. You will need maple syrup and molasses or honey. Just mix one teaspoon of baking soda with one teaspoon of molasses in a cup of water and your drink is ready.