Can we eat to starve cancer?

May 11, 2012 by admin

The common denominator between Cancer and Obesity

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FDA Isn’t Listening—Time to Turn Up the Heat!

Feb 16, 2012 by admin

A champion of supplements in the House sends a warning to FDA. Persuade others in Congress to join him with our Action Alert!

As we reported last week, FDA has flatly refused to listen to the Senate, rejecting the call of Sens. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to withdraw its disastrous New Dietary Ingredient draft guidance and start over. You may recall that Harkin and Hatch are the original drafters of DSHEA, the law that requires supplement manufacturers to submit notifications whenever an NDI is introduced into the marketplace. FDA’s job was to articulate how those notifications are to be submitted, but they ignored the original intent of Congress and created a de facto approval system for any supplement or ingredient created or changed over the past eighteen years.

Now Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) has composed a letter to FDA expressing regret over FDA’s dismissal of Senators Hatch and Harkin’s request and reiterating that Congress did not intend to give FDA pre-market review of new dietary ingredients, nor did it intend to permit the agency to treat dietary ingredients in the same manner as food additives.

The letter goes on to articulate the legal problems with FDA’s proposal, and strongly urges FDA to withdraw its guidance and instead design a fair and workable NDI notification system. It also requests that FDA refrain from taking any enforcement action that is based solely on positions articulated in the draft guidance that are not unequivocally grounded in the law.

Rep. Chaffetz’s letter to FDA ends with a warning that, in the unfortunate event that FDA does not withdraw this guidance as requested, legislation to clarify current statute will be considered. Let’s show FDA that the House means business—that there is support from Democrats and Republicans alike to withdraw the draft guidance altogether, so that consumers won’t lose access to thousands of supplements.

Please write to your congressional representative and ask that he or she sign onto Rep. Chaffetz’s letter to FDA. Reiterate the serious concerns with NDI guidance—how it severely threatens access to thousands of supplements, even though supplements have a proven safety record (unlike FDA-approved drugs!)

And if you haven’t yet asked your representative to make a one-minute floor speech on this subject, please do that as well.

Please take action today!

We’d love to hear your comments about this article—just add your thoughts below—but remember that the messages below are only seen by ANH-USA readers, not members of Congress or the President. Click the button above to send your message to the Congress and the President!

Please note that because members of US Congress only accepts messages from residents of the districts they represent, this alert is restricted to US residents.

Source: http://www.anh-usa.org

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Vitamin D Deficiency Affects Billion Plus – Are You One Of Them?

Feb 14, 2012 by admin

Unless you’ve been living under a rock during the last few years you know that vitamin D is a vital component of human health.  Vitamin D is crucial for proper bone growth and maintenance, and a deficiency in vitamin D results in an increased risk of osteoporosis, cancer, diabetes, hypertension, chronic pain, and several other bad things.  But ask yourself this: when is the last time you had your vitamin D level measured, and what are you doing to make sure that your body has enough of this important vitamin?

If you are like most people in the world, you have absolutely no clue if you are getting enough vitamin D.  With some estimates placing as many as 1 in 3 of the world’s 6 billion people deficient in vitamin D (and even higher for those in industrialized nations) don’t you think it is time that you stopped ignoring the issue and started taking personal responsibility for it?  After all, you do want to make it to the Singularity…don’t you?

 

Even with vitamin D fortified foods such as milk it is extremely difficult to obtain enough of the vitamin through diet alone.  Nearly all of a person’s vitamin D is obtained when sunlight hits our skin and induces its creation within our bodies.  Stay out of the sun (or wear sunscreen when you are in the sun) and your body isn’t getting any vitamin D.  Take a worldwide culture that is increasingly couped up in sun starved indoor work environments and combine this with a phobia of skin cancer that causes most of us to wear sun screen whenever we do actually go outside, and you have the perfect storm for a worldwide epidemic in vitamin D deficiency.

It sounds bad – and it is.  Vitamin D joins obesity, type 2 diabetes, and several other epidemics that are entirely created by poor lifestyle choices.  Want to avoid vitamin D deficiency?  Simple: get in the sun!  It is generally agreed that only 10 minutes per day of quality sun exposure is more than enough exposure to ensure proper vitamin D production within our bodies.  It really is that simple, but for whatever reason at least a billion people across the globe are likely failing to do this.  Don’t be one of them!

In recent years there has been an avalanche of hype about the health benefits of vitamin D.  Freaks are coming out of the woodwork to tell us that vitamin D, resveratrol, and a host of other chemicals will bring us unimaginable benefits to longevity and health.  I wish it were true, but sadly it is my opinion that vitamin D really isn’t that special of a chemical after all.  It is not the presence of vitamin D that makes you healthier.  Rather it is the absence of vitamin D that makes you sicker!  As soon as we lock ourselves in sun deprived homes and offices and slap on the sun screen we are opening ourselves to a man-made epidemic of increased susceptibility to cancer, type 2 diabetes, bone disease, and a long list of other problems.  Helping your body to accumulate its evolutionarily natural level of vitamin D within the body isn’t going to make you any healthier than you are supposed to be.  It merely allows your body to operate at the health profile that it is already designed for.

The first thing to do if you care about your vitamin D level is to go to your doctor and have your vitamin D level tested.  A simple, cheap blood test accurately determines whether you are within the optimal range or not.  If you are like most people in industrialized nations, you will find that you are either somewhat deficient or severely deficient in this crucial vitamin.  In a recent test with my own doctor, I was shocked to learn that I was deficient in spite of several hundred IU of vitamin D that I was already receiving from my daily vitamin regimen.  Apparently I am indoors blogging even more than I had realized!  The obvious solution is to get more sunlight.  If you work indoors like me all day and find it difficult to get enough sunlight, then do what I do and take a daily vitamin D pill (I now take 2000 IU per day and my vitamin D now measures normal).  The pills are cheap and effective, but of course talk to your doctor before taking them.

If you really want to know all of the details about vitamin D – its chemical profile, metabolic function within the body, and much more, I encourage you to read one of the web’s definitive papers on the topic written by Michael F. Holick titled “The Vitamin D Epidemic and its Health Consequences“.  For those that want a less intense look at vitamin D, below are a few of the more interesting factoids about vitamin D (based on a Natural News interview with Holick) that you don’t want to miss:

• The healing rays of natural sunlight (that generate vitamin D in your skin) cannot penetrate glass. So you don’t generate vitamin D when sitting in your car or home.
• A person would have to drink ten tall glasses of vitamin D fortified milk each day just to get minimum levels of vitamin D into their diet.
• The further you live from the equator, the longer exposure you need to the sun in order to generate vitamin D. Canada, the UK and most U.S. states are far from the equator.
• People with dark skin pigmentation may need 20 – 30 times as much exposure to sunlight as fair-skinned people to generate the same amount of vitamin D. That’s why prostate cancer is epidemic among black men — it’s a simple, but widespread, sunlight deficiency.
• Sufficient levels of vitamin D are crucial for calcium absorption in your intestines. Without sufficient vitamin D, your body cannot absorb calcium, rendering calcium supplements useless.
• Chronic vitamin D deficiency cannot be reversed overnight: it takes months of vitamin D supplementation and sunlight exposure to rebuild the body’s bones and nervous system.
• Even weak sunscreens (SPF=8) block your body’s ability to generate vitamin D by 95%. This is how sunscreen products actually cause disease — by creating a critical vitamin deficiency in the body.

Diseases and conditions cause by vitamin D deficiency:

• Osteoporosis is commonly caused by a lack of vitamin D, which greatly impairs calcium absorption.
• Sufficient vitamin D prevents prostate cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, depression, colon cancer and schizophrenia.
• “Rickets” is the name of a bone-wasting disease caused by vitamin D deficiency.
• Vitamin D deficiency may exacerbate type 2 diabetes and impair insulin production in the pancreas.
• Obesity impairs vitamin D utilization in the body, meaning obese people need twice as much vitamin D.
• Vitamin D is used around the world to treat Psoriasis.
• Vitamin D deficiency causes schizophrenia.
• Seasonal Affective Disorder is caused by a melatonin imbalance initiated by lack of exposure to sunlight.
• Chronic vitamin D deficiency is often misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia because its symptoms are so similar: muscle weakness, aches and pains.
• Your risk of developing serious diseases like diabetes and cancer is reduced 50% – 80% through simple, sensible exposure to natural sunlight 2-3 times each week.
• Infants who receive vitamin D supplementation (2000 units daily) have an 80% reduced risk of developing type 1 diabetes over the next twenty years.

 

Source:singularityhub.com

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Supplements: The Real Story Natural or Synthetic? Foods or Tablets?

Jan 19, 2012 by admin

It’s a nutritional “Catch 22″: The public is told, confusingly: “Vitamins are good, but vitamin supplements are not. Only vitamins from food will help you. So just eat a good diet. Do not take supplements! But by the way, there is no difference between natural and synthetic vitamins.”

Wait a minute. What’s the real story here?

A recent health study reported that the risk of heart failure decreased with increasing blood levels of vitamin C [1]. The benefit of vitamin C (ascorbate) was highly significant. Persons with the lowest plasma levels of ascorbate had the highest risk of heart failure, and persons with the highest levels of vitamin C had the lowest risk of heart failure. This finding confirms the knowledge derived over the last 50 years that vitamin C is a major essential factor in cardiovascular health [2,3]. The study raises several important questions about diet and vitamin supplements.

Was it Food or Supplements?

The report discussed vitamin C as if it were simply an indicator of how many fruits and vegetables were consumed by the participants. Yet, ironically, the study’s results show little improvement in the risk for heart failure from consuming fruits and vegetables. This implies that the real factor in reducing the risk was indeed the amount of vitamin C consumed. Moreover, the study appears to utterly ignore the widespread use of vitamin C supplements to improve cardiovascular health. In fact, out of four quartile groups, the quartile with the highest plasma vitamin C had six to ten times the rate of vitamin C supplementation of the lowest quartile, but this fact was not emphasized. This type of selective attention to food sources of vitamin C, while dismissing supplements as an important source, appears to be an attempt to marginalize the importance of vitamin supplements.

Many medical and nutritional reports have maintained that there is little difference between natural and synthetic vitamins. This is known to be true for some essential nutrients. The ascorbate found in widely available vitamin C tablets is identical to the ascorbate found in fruits and vegetables [3]. Linus Pauling emphasized this fact, and explained how ordinary vitamin C, inexpensively manufactured from glucose, could improve health in many important ways [4]. Indeed, the above-mentioned study specifically measured the plasma level of ascorbate, which was shown to be an important factor associated with lower risk of heart failure [1, 2]. The study did not measure blood plasma levels of the components of fruits and vegetables. It measured vitamin C.

A known rationale for this dramatic finding is that vitamin C helps to prevent inflammation in the arteries by several mechanisms. It is a necessary co-factor for the synthesis of collagen, which is a major component of arteries. Vitamin C is also an important antioxidant throughout the body that can help to recycle other antioxidants like vitamin E and glutathione in the artery walls [2,3]. This was underscored by a report that high plasma levels of vitamin C are associated with a 50% reduction in risk for stroke [5].

Yes, Synthetic Vitamin C is Clinically Effective

We can almost hear “Unsubscribe” links being clicked as we state it, but here it is: synthetic vitamin C works, in real people with real illnesses. Ascorbate’s efficacy has little direct relation to food intake. A dramatic case of this was a dairy farmer in New Zealand who was on life support with lung whiteout, kidney failure, leukemia and swine flu [6]. He was given 100,000 mg of vitamin C daily and his life was saved. We have nothing against oranges or other vitamin C-containing foods. Fruits and vegetables are good for you for many, many reasons. However, you’ll need to get out your calculator to help you figure out how many oranges it would take to get that much, and then also figure how to get a sick person to eat them all.

It is established that liver function improves with vitamin C supplementation, and it is equally well known that adequate levels of vitamin C are essential for the proper functioning of the immune system. Vitamin C improves the ability of the white blood cells to fight bacteria and viruses. OMNS has more articles expanding on this topic, available for free access at http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/index.shtml .

Deficiency of vitamin C is very common. According to US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data, [7] nearly half of Americans do not get even the US RDA of vitamin C, which is a mere 90 mg.

Synthetic Vitamin E is Less Effective

For some other nutrients, there is a significant difference in efficacy between synthetic and natural forms. Vitamin E is a crucial anti-oxidant, but also has other functions in the body, not all well understood. It comprises eight different biochemical forms, alpha-, beta-, delta- and gamma tocopherols, and alpha-, beta-, delta-, and gamma-tocotrienols. All of these forms of vitamin E are important for the body. Current knowledge about the function of vitamin E is rapidly expanding, and each of the eight forms of natural vitamin E is thought to have a slightly different function in the body. For example, gamma-tocotrienol actually kills prostate cancer stem cells better than chemotherapy does. ( http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v07n11.shtml )

Synthetic vitamin E is widely available and inexpensive. It is “DL-alpha-tocopherol.” Yes, it has the same antioxidant properties in test tube experiments as does the natural “D-alpha-tocopherol” form. However, the DL- form has only 50% of the biological efficacy, because the body utilizes only the natural D isomer, which comprises half of the synthetic mix [8]. Therefore, studies utilizing DL-alpha-tocopherol that do not take this fact into account are starting with an already-halved dose that will naturally lead to a reduction in the observed efficacy.

Then there are the esterified forms of vitamin E such as acetate or succinate. These esterified forms, either natural or synthetic, have a greater shelf life because the ester protects the vitamin E from being oxidized and neutralized. When acid in the stomach cleaves the acetate or succinate component from the original natural vitamin E molecule, the gut can then absorb a good fraction and the body receives its antioxidant benefit. But when esterified vitamin E acetate is applied to the skin to prevent inflammation, it is ineffective because there is no acid present to remove the acetate ester.

Based on USDA data [9] an astonishing 90% of Americans do not get the RDA of vitamin E, which is, believe it or not, under 23 IU (15mg) per day.

Magnesium Deficiency is Widespread

Magnesium is another example. Over two-thirds of the population do not get the RDA of magnesium.[10] Deficiency can cause a wide variety of symptoms, including osteoporosis, high blood pressure, heart disease, asthma, depression, and diabetes. Magnesium can be purchased in many forms. The most widely available form is magnesium oxide, which is not very effective because it is only about 5% absorbed [11]. Magnesium oxide supplements are popular because the pills are smaller — they contain more magnesium, but won’t help most people. Better forms of magnesium are magnesium citrate, magnesium malate, and the best absorbed is magnesium chloride. It’s always good to consult your doctor to determine your ideal intake. Testing may reveal unexpected deficiency. [12]

Well, Which? Natural or Synthetic?

While the natural form of vitamin E (mixed natural tocopherols and tocotrienols) is at least twice as effective as the synthetic form, this is not true of vitamin C. The ascorbate that the body gets from fruits and vegetables is the same as the ascorbate in vitamin C tablets. On first thought, this may sound confusing, because there are many so-called “natural” forms of vitamin C widely available. But virtually every study that demonstrated that supplemental vitamin C fights illness used plain, cheap, synthetic ascorbic acid. Other forms of ascorbate, for instance, the sodium or magnesium salt of ascorbic acid, are digested slightly differently by the gut, but once the ascorbate molecule is absorbed from these forms, it has identical efficacy. The advantage of these ascorbate salts is that they are non-acidic and can be ingested or topically applied to any part of the body without concern about irritation from acidity.

Further, it is known that essential nutrients are symbiotic, that is, they are more effective when taken as a group in proper doses. For example, vitamin E is more effective when taken along with vitamin C and selenium, because each of these essential nutrients can improve the efficacy of the others. Similarly, the B vitamins are more effective when taken together. Readers with dosage questions will want to consult their healthcare provider, and also look at freely available information archived at http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/index.shtml .

Food Factors

Natural food factors are also important. Bioflavonoids and other vitamin C-friendly components in fresh fruits and vegetables (sometimes called “vitamin C complex”) do indeed have health benefits. These natural components are easily obtained from a healthy, unprocessed whole foods diet. However, eating even a very good diet does not supply nearly enough vitamin C to be effective against illness. A really good diet might provide several hundred milligrams of vitamin C daily. An extreme raw food diet might provide two or three thousand milligrams of vitamin C, but this is not practical for most people. Supplementation, with a good diet, is.

The principle that “natural” vitamins are better than synthetic vitamins is a widely quoted justification for actually avoiding vitamin supplements. The argument goes, because vitamins and minerals are available from food in their natural form, that somehow one might suppose that we are best off by ignoring supplements. Apparently this is what the authors of the above-mentioned study had in mind, because the report hardly mentions vitamin supplements.

Conclusion

In the real world of today’s processed food, most of us don’t get all the nutrients we need in adequate doses. Most people are deficient in several of the essential nutrients. These deficiencies are responsible for much suffering, including heart disease, cancer, premature aging, dementia, diabetes, and other diseases such as eye disease, multiple sclerosis and asthma. The above-mentioned study showing the efficacy of vitamin C in reducing heart failure is but one of the many studies showing the value of vitamins. Others are discussed and available at http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/index.shtml .

For vitamin E, the natural form, taken in adequate doses along with a nutritious diet, is the best medicine. However, for most vitamins, including vitamin C, the manufactured form is identical to the natural one. Both are biologically active and both work clinically. It all comes down to dose. Supplements enable optimum intake; foods alone do not.

Don’t be fooled: nutrient deficiency is the rule, not the exception. That’s why we need supplements. When ill, we need them even more.

 

References:

1. Pfister R, Sharp SJ, Luben R, Wareham NJ, Khaw KT. (2011) Plasma vitamin C predicts incident heart failure in men and women in European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition-Norfolk prospective study. Am Heart J. 162:246-253. See also: http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v07n14.shtml

2. Levy TE (2006) Stop America’s #1 Killer: Reversible Vitamin Deficiency Found to be Origin of All Coronary Heart Disease. ISBN-13: 9780977952007

3. Hickey S, Saul AW (2008) Vitamin C: The Real Story, the Remarkable and Controversial Healing Factor. Basic Health Publications, ISBN-13: 978-1591202233.

4. Pauling L. (2006) How to Live Longer And Feel Better. Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, OR. ISBN-13: 9780870710964.

5. Kurl S, Tuomainen TP, Laukkanen JA, Nyyssönen K, Lakka T, Sivenius J, Salonen JT. (2002) Plasma vitamin C modifies the association between hypertension and risk of stroke. Stroke. 33:1568-1573.

6. Watch the Channel 3 New Zealand news report at http://www.3news.co.nz/Living-Proof-Vitamin-C—Miracle-Cure/tabid/371/articleID/171328/Default.aspx or http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xh70sx_60-minutes-scoop-on-new-zealand-farmer-vit-c-miracle_tech [ Note that each video is proceeded by a commercial, over which we have no control, and with which we have no financial connection whatsoever. ]

7. Free, full text paper at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1405127/pdf/amjph00225-0021.pdf

8. Papas A. (1999) The Vitamin E Factor: The miraculous antioxidant for the prevention and treatment of heart disease, cancer, and aging. HarperCollins, NY. ISBN-13: 9780060984434

9. http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/vitamins/vitaminE/ ; scroll down to “Deficiency.”

10. Free, full text paper at http://www.jacn.org/content/24/3/166.full.pdf+html (or http://www.jacn.org/content/24/3/166.long )

11. Dean, C. (2007) The Magnesium Miracle. Ballantine Books, ISBN-13: 9780345494580

12. http://www.doctoryourself.com/epilepsy.html

 

Nutritional Medicine is Orthomolecular Medicine

Orthomolecular medicine uses safe, effective nutritional therapy to fight illness. For more information: http://www.orthomolecular.org

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Research From 100+ Countries Proves Sunlight Prevents Cancer

Jan 10, 2012 by admin

For the same reason that the conventional energy industry has not harnessed the full potential of solar energy (its free!), sunlight and its indispensable byproduct in our skin: vitamin D, represents a serious threat to the medical establishment, whose questionable and aggressive promotion of vaccination and drug-based strategies in place of inexpensive, safe and effective vitamin D supplementation (or better, carefully meted out recreation and sunlight exposure) for immunity, has many questioning their motives.

Vitamin D, after all, has a vital preventive role to play in hundreds of conditions, due to the fact that 1 in every 10 genes in the human body depends on adequate quantities of this gene-regulatory hormone to function optimally. In other words, the very genetic/epigenetic infrastructure of our health would fall apart without adequate levels.

Even the risk for developing cancer, one of the most feared health conditions of our time — and the one the medical establishment has had the least success preventing and treating — is intimately connected to your vitamin D status.

Indeed, a groundbreaking new meta-analysis on the sunlight-vitamin D connection, published in the journal Anticancer Research and based on data from over 100 countries, found that “a strong inverse correlations with solar UVB for 15 types of cancer,” with weaker, though still significant evidence for the protective role of sunlight in 9 other cancers.

The relevant cancers were:

“Bladder, breast, cervical, colon, endometrial, esophageal, gastric, lung, ovarian, pancreatic, rectal, renal, and vulvar cancer; and Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Weaker evidence exists for nine other types of cancer: brain, gallbladder, laryngeal, oral/pharyngeal, prostate, and thyroid cancer; leukemia; melanoma; and multiple myeloma.”

Sunlight exposure, after all, is essential for health from the moment we are born. Without it, for instance, infants are prone to developing neonatal jaundice. The very variation in human skin color from African, melanin-saturated dark skin, to the relatively melanin de-pigmented, Caucasian lighter-skin, is a byproduct of the offspring of our last common ancestor from Africa (as determined by mitochondrial DNA) migrating towards sunlight-impoverished higher latitudes, which began approximately 60,000 years ago. In order to compensate for the lower availability of sunlight, the body rapidly adjusted, essentially requiring the removal of the natural “sunscreen” melanin from the skin, which interferes with vitamin D production. While a life-saving adaptation, the loss of melanin likely has adverse health effects, which include losing the ability to convert sunlight into metabolic energy, increased prevalence of Parkinson’s disease (which involves de-melanization of the substantia nigra), and others effects which we will discuss in detail in a future article. For now, it is important to point out that within the span of only 60,000 years (a nanosecond in biological time), many of the skin “color” differences among the world’s human inhabitants reflect how heavily genetically-conserved was the ability of the human body to produce vitamin D.

It should also be pointed out that vitamin D is to sunlight, what ascorbic acid is to the vitamin C activity in food. In other words, sunlight likely provides a greater spectrum of therapeutic activity (when carefully meted out, preferably during solar noon) than supplemental vitamin D3, which is almost exclusively derived from UVB irradiated sheep’s lanolin.

For further research, the following link reveals 50 therapeutic effects of sunlight exposure, as culled from research housed on the National Library of Medicine.

Sayer Ji
GreenMedInfo
Tue, 10 Jan 2012 08:00 CST

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Antidepressants Cause Your Arteries to Thicken 400% More Than Aging

Jan 7, 2012 by admin

Depression may be the worst emotional experience there is. The causes are many, and it often drives people to zig-zag past everything that matters and into a pill bottle of pharmaceutical ‘treatments’. But these solutions offered by the pharmaceutical industry are nothing but a sham, and their antidepressant products only make you more depressed and trigger suicidal thoughts. One study has also found that antidepressants cause your arteries to thicken 400% more than aging – a main factor in the thickening of the arteries.

Antidepressants Linked to Heart Disease and Stroke

A studyconducted by the Emory University School of Medicine included over 500 middle-aged male twins, both who served in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. The researchers noted that among 59 pairs of twins where only one brother was on antidepressants, the one ingesting the drugs usually had higher carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) – the thickness of main arteries in the neck.

“One of the strongest and best-studied factors that thickens someone’s arteries is age, and that happens at around 10 microns per year…In our study, users of antidepressants see an average 40 micron increase in IMT, so their carotid arteries are in effect four years older,” says the first study author Amit Shah, MD.

The most commonly prescribed antidepressants are known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), such as Prozac. Researchers found that participants who used SSRIs, which were 60 percent of those taking antidepressants, had higher carotid IMT. This may be due to the effects antidepressants have on serotonin levels, which is a chemical in your body that helps some brain cells communicate.

These findings are just one more thing to add to the long list of why people shouldn’t be taking many harmful pharmaceuticals. More than 1 in 10 Americans are on these suicide-linked antidepressants even though they do not work and only make the problem worse. Instead of resorting to these pharmaceuticals, try supplementing with vitamin D, as it has been shown to defeat depression naturally. It is also key to de-stress the brain, as depression is always cultivated from stress-related aspects of your life.

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Paradise Lost

Dec 18, 2011 by admin

While examining the available literature on health and nutrition from an evolutionary standpoint, one comes to the inevitable conclusion that, as far as diet is concerned, human beings entered a blind alley thousands of years ago. Even if by some miracle humanity as whole was to completely reorganize its diet overnight, an important question remains – have we engineered our environment beyond the point of no return?

Contrary to the popular belief held by many anthropologists that agriculture is one of man’s greatest achievements, there is an increasing body of evidence which suggests that the human race actually set out on the path of self-destruction when it embraced agrarian societies.

The picture now emerging is that the switch from hunting and gathering occurred suddenly and was followed by a sharp drop in life expectancy. Ancient human bones found in archaeological layers dated since the adoption of agriculture reveal increased prevalence of disease and lesser numbers of aged people. For centuries after the adoption of agriculture, these bones also tell the stories of greater numbers of violent deaths when compared with bone remains from pre-agrarian hunter-gatherer societies. There is an undeniable echo of the Garden of Eden story here. This is, in fact, one of the greatest puzzles of prehistory. Why did agriculture catch on so fast?

It seems that agriculture was suddenly and independently adopted at several sites all around the globe, including the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, China and Mexico. From these sites it spread with considerable speed all over the planet. Today only a few isolated and insignificant populations of hunter-gatherers remain, mostly in the Southern hemisphere.

The speed at which agriculture spread from centres of original adoption may seem slow to the modern traveller, but it is remarkable by the standards of earlier innovations in prehistory. So far no satisfactory explanation has been offered for this puzzle. Most anthropologists have settled for the theory that overwhelming productivity of new technology was simply irresistible to our ancestors. But this theory doesn’t seem viable bearing in mind puzzling evidence from the skeletons of the first farmers. Bone and tooth studies of some of the earliest agricultural communities in the Middle East show that farmers had worse health (due to poorer nutrition) than the hunter-gatherers who preceded them.

Another theory tries to explain the adoption of agriculture by way of population pressure. According to its proponents, ancient humans were unable to stem the population explosion so they willingly sacrificed a surprising degree of security and freedom intrinsic to their previous way of life to adopt a life of toil, disease and stress. However, this doesn’t make much sense either. Evidence suggests that the hunter-gatherer populations were stable for very long periods of time and points to the conclusion that pre-agricultural communities lived in relatively harmonious balance with their environment.

It will certainly take some time before this great mystery can be solved. But in the meantime we can examine what effect this conspicuous and sudden switch in prehistoric society had on contemporary man and his environment, for it was at precisely this juncture when humans adopted agriculture that the ailments which plague modern humans, along with the degradation of the environment, began to take shape. Could this have been the point at which the human race derailed from evolution to devolution, possibly passing the point of no return?

Adam’s Sheath of Wheat

According to the old Sufi legend, Eve actually offered Adam a sheath of wheat, not an apple. This starts to make a lot of sense when we consider all the changes which the cultivation of wheat effected upon human societies. People had long gathered wheat where it grew wild, but with agriculture they began tampering with it. It was altered, production was increased, it was made more robust to withstand the harsher climate conditions as the population traversed northwest from its original homeland, the so-called Fertile Crescent spanning today’s Middle East.

It is an undeniable fact that present-day wheat used for human consumption is deadly. It can kill you very fast if you are hypersensitive to gluten or very slowly if you are not. If it wasn’t for hypersensitive individuals, the detrimental effects of gluten on our health would probably still remain in the dark and deaths would be blamed on the usual suspects such as smoking or high consumption of animal fat.

It is not really clear from the available evidence whether wild wheat was as prominent on the hunter-gatherers’ menu as proponents of the fortunate genesis of agriculture would like us to believe. Even if this assumption is correct, the original wild wheat before the advent of agriculture had no more than 4-5% of its protein content as gluten (and possibly even less). Furthermore, it wasn’t really a staple of the hunter-gatherer’s diet and was probably only an occasional source of energy when the hunt would fail and there was nothing else around to eat. In contrast, several millennia of hybridisation in order to increase crop yield, has resulted in contemporary wheat becoming a mutant blend of multiple plants, with as much as 55% of its total protein content comprising gluten.

Apart from gliadins which belong to the larger family of gluten proteins, wheat also contains wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) – a lectin, which is essentially the plant’s natural defence mechanism. In nature everything seeks balance; as much as animals, plants also do not wish to be eaten. Gliadins and WGA cannot be destroyed by cooking and are linked to various autoimmune diseases and degenerative processes.

The more the sons of Adam sought to exploit wheat, the deadlier wheat became.

In other words, ‘our daily bread’ has turned into our daily poison. If we add the fact that gluten causes brain inflammation to such an extent that it interferes with our normal behavioural patterns, we begin to understand how this poison doesn’t just destroy our bodies, it also destroys our relationships.

In addition to these medical issues, a very interesting social aspect of the wheat story should be noted. It appears that the cultivation of wheat precipitated the beginning of the unprecedented ‘Era of Violence’ among human societies.

There is a remarkable correlation between the diffusion of agricultural technology (chiefly for the cultivation of wheat) from the Middle East to various parts of Europe between 9,500 years ago and around 5,000 years ago, and the pattern of human genetic variation across Europe. What this suggests is that farmers interbred with local hunter-gatherer populations as they slowly expanded across Europe at the rate of 1 kilometer per year over a period of 4,000 years. For example, inhabitants of the Basque region of southwestern France and northern Spain have significantly different gene frequencies from those of other Europeans, indicating that they resisted longer and more successfully against interbreeding with migrant agricultural groups from further east (although significant interbreeding still took place).

This would appear to rule out the theory that the agricultural way of life spread mainly by way of ‘cultural emulation’, as hunter-gatherers simply mimicked the practices of their visibly prosperous neighbours. On the contrary, these practices were spread by migration: people and techniques moved together. This was not just a European phenomenon but was true of other instances of agricultural diffusion that have been studied so far, such as the expansion from Mexico southwards to the Andes, or the Bantu expansion south and eastwards through Africa beginning about 3,000 years ago.

Although we can see from these data that migrant agriculturalists didn’t simply massacre all hunter-gatherer communities along their way, nor did they just drive them from their lands, we can nevertheless conclude that they did, in fact, interbreed with the tribeswomen while the men were put to work as slaves.

Hunter-gatherers who lived in harmony with their environment never had a need for large fortified communities. Once wheat constrained humans to markedly more sedentary lifestyles, they were no longer able to rely on their usual hide-and-seek strategy when faced with enemies. A large group is far more secure than its members could be in multiple smaller groups. The result of devoting time, effort and resources to defending yourself will not just make you feel more secure, it will inevitably make your neighbours feel less secure. Perhaps, this would go some way towards explaining the driving forces behind modern society, with its capacity for brutal expansionism on a massive scale?

Finally, when we take into consideration the damage inflicted to our environment through deforestation and soil depletion over a period of several thousand years, we can plainly see that the cultivation of wheat was indeed equivalent to eating fruit from the tree of inadequate knowledge.

A Plant That Never Existed

Most anthropologists agree that the cultivation of corn, or maize, is responsible for turning the Native American tribes from nomadic into agrarian societies. These days, corn is possibly the single food that epitomises the Americas. Interestingly, corn as we know it today is a human invention: it does not exist naturally in the wild and is the only grain that is not self-propagating. Wheat, for example, produces seeds that will fall and produce more wheat. Corn must be planted by man in order to grow and if left alone, would cease to exist. From a metaphysical point of view, corn might be said to represent entropy, a dead end. Nevertheless, this ‘non-existent’ plant – with our aid – has managed to silently conquer the entire planet.

Many scientists believe people in central Mexico developed corn about 7,000 years ago. The common agreement is that corn was genetically engineered into existence from a wild grass called Teosinte, which looks nothing like the corn of today. This theory is widely accepted although it is very difficult to prove.

According to Aztec mythology, maize was brought to this world by Quetzalcoatl and is associated with the group of stars known commonly today as the Pleiades. Cultivation of this grain in pre-Columbian America was very often connected with gruesome human sacrifice rituals to appease Centeotl – the Corn God. Centuries after mezzo American civilisations perished, Centeotl continues to claim human lives, only this time in a more subtle manner.

Even in the beginning of corn cultivation, wherever this plant was introduced, pellagra would break out. This medical condition is caused by niacin (vitamin B3) deficiency. Many medical sources reason that this happens because niacin is locked inside the grain and is thus unavailable for absorption. This may be true, but did these people really eat only corn and nothing else?

Knowing what we know today about gluten, casein, soy and corn proteins, we can conclude that this deficiency is, in fact, a result of damage to the intestinal wall. This damage hinders the absorption of calcium, iron, iodine, B complex (including niacin), vitamin C and numerous trace minerals (e.g. zinc, magnesium, manganese). As is the case with wheat, the damage caused by corn will become obvious early in life in susceptible individuals. Meanwhile, less susceptible individuals will suffer slowly, all the while many degenerative processes and disease caused by malnutrition will be blamed on aging.

Corn cultivation rapidly changed the face of the American landscape and spread to Africa and Asia. Corn finally entered Europe via the Balkans and the Turkish empire at the end of the 19th century.

At present corn continues to claim new territories. This trend will probably intensify in years to come as other governments follow Obama’s administration by subsidising corn production for ethanol to be used as fuel and as Monsanto Inc. conquers territory after territory with its genetically modified corn products.

The Leguminous Thief of Childhood

It is believed that soy was first cultivated in China and that it wasn’t until the 7th century AD that it spread to other Asian countries, then spread to the rest of the world much later.

This health-robbing legume was unknown to most of the world and was cultivated in one remote area of the world for years as a non-edible plant. Used in crop rotation, the sole purpose of soy was to add nitrogen to the soil. Until one fine day someone in China decided to experiment and use it as food. They quickly learned that fermentation made soy more tolerable just like our ancestors discovered with dairy products (e.g. yogurt or kefir). Interestingly, rice and rice-based wines turned out to be antidotes for some of the harmful properties of this latest culinary creation, in the same way that Italians learned to consume wine, high fat meats, olive oil and vinegar to protect themselves against their passion for pasta. The fat and oil protects the villi from the attachment of gluten in their upcoming main course while the vinegar and wine washes clean what does manage to attach.

Today the United States is the biggest producer of soy beans, followed by South American countries. Soy is touted through the media and many New Age health food shops as healthy food which is supposed to make us younger and healthier. Unfortunately the reality could not be further from the truth. Soy is full of a wide array of anti-nutrients including lectins and overwhelming levels of isoflavones. Asian nations which use soy as a staple in their diet may have a low incidence of heart disease because they don’t consume wheat and dairy, but it cannot be coincidental that they’re leaders of the pack when it comes to incidence of stomach cancer. In addition, soy may be responsible for the shortening of childhood in modern females. Thanks to its phytoestrogens, which mimic estrogen by binding to receptors allocated for this important hormone, soy has altered the outward appearance and hormonal balance of our children.

Sadly, most physicians and consumers don’t realise that science is now for sale; published data often misrepresents the truth, academic medical research has become corrupted by pharmaceutical money and special interests, and government regulators more often protect industry rather than the public. Increasingly, academic medical researchers are for hire, and research, once a purer activity of inquiry, is now a tool for promoting products. Once again we see devolution at its best.

The Tale of Nature’s Wellness Drink

Paleolithic humans never drank milk. Aurochs, the wild ancestors of modern cows, once ranged over large areas of Asia, Europe and North Africa. They were first domesticated 8,000 to 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent area of the Near and Middle East and evolved into two types of domestic cattle: the humped Zebu (Bos indicus) and the humpless European Highland cattle (Bos taurus). Some scientists believe that domesticated cattle from the Fertile Crescent spread throughout Eurasia, while others believe that a separate domestication event took place in the area of India and Pakistan.

Whatever the case, the mighty Auroch is today reduced to a genetically-inbred milk-secreting mutant, suffering tremendous abuse on a daily basis.

Through analyzing degraded fats on unearthed pot shards, scientists have discovered that Neolithic farmers in Britain and northern Europe may have been among the first to begin milking cattle for human consumption as early as 6,000 years ago. According to scientists, the ability to digest milk was slowly acquired sometime between 5,000 and 4,000 B.C.E. by the spread of a genetic mutation called ‘lactase persistence’ that allowed post-weaned humans to continue digesting milk. If this date range is correct, it may pre-date the rise of other major dairy-consuming civilizations in the Near East, India, and North Africa.

We don’t know exactly what prompted early humans to start drinking cow’s milk. It is a very strange habit from a biological point of view. Humans are the only mammals which drink milk as adults; this apart from the fact that drinking the milk of another species is unparalleled in the natural world. The idea of drinking the milk of any other species but domestic cattle is still repulsive to many modern humans. This could indicate that the taste for cow’s milk was acquired suddenly at some point in history, for some pressing reason such as environmental stresses, and then humans became conditioned over the millennia.

As with other damaging foods, official nutritional guidelines keep ignoring some scary facts about milk. Cows’ milk contains 80-86% of a type of glycoprotein called casein (of which 39% is the alpha S-1 variety). This variety of casein is gluten’s evil twin and it has already been linked to numerous immune-mediated disorders. Furthermore, it seems that there is a link between the hormones found in milk and precocious puberty in young girls. All the toxins entering into mammalian bodies can be secreted directly through the milk. Dairy cows are fed inadequate diets laden with pesticides and other toxins, all of which end up in their milk. Most dairy cows don’t live past four years of age, even though their natural life-span averages 25 years. Why would anyone want to drink milk from such animals?

In spite of all this, milk is still sold to us as “nature’s wellness drink” and one glass a day is recommended as the only good source of calcium available to modern man. So where did hunter-gatherers get their calcium from way back then if there was no “Got Milk? campaign?

Both direct and indirect evidence supports the hypothesis that early humans had a high calcium intake. Archaeological evidence reveals that hunter-gatherers who lived before the dawn of agriculture had heavy skeletons and were comparable – and even superior – in stature to present day groups. A careful examination of foods available to those early hunter-gatherers indicates that daily calcium intakes in excess of 1,800 mg were likely. Indirect evidence that the customary diets of our distant ancestors were calcium-rich and low in sodium exists in the physiology of present-day humans: calcium is absorbed and conserved inefficiently; by contrast the gut absorbs sodium completely.

Can Paradise Be Reclaimed? Is a Return to the True Paleo-Diet Possible?

Unfortunately the prospects of this happening are pretty slim. We have engineered our environment to such an extent that it wouldn’t be able to sustain us in the same way it was able to sustain our ancestors. An ever-increasing incidence of ecological disasters and natural catastrophes certainly don’t work in our favour either.

From an evolutionary point of view, it seems that our planet is ripe for destruction. It looks like we have reached a critical mass that tipped the scale towards entropy some time ago. And yet, this bleak outlook should not discourage us from making every possible effort to reorganise our dietary habits and to detoxify our bodies as much as possible. For the majority of the population, living in the urban centres of industrialized countries, especially those belonging to the less wealthy strata of society, this may prove to be a difficult task indeed.

Most of animal protein and fat available to average westerners today comes from grain-fed animals, fish and poultry. It doesn’t really make much sense to avoid grains in our diet if we are going to consume large quantities of such meat.

‘Secondary food intolerance’ is the term coined by veterinarian John B. Symes to describe the situation that arises when a food intolerant individual consumes the meat of an animal that was fed gluten grains (wheat, barley, rye), soy, corn – even dairy products – and is negatively affected by it.

In addition to this there is an issue with fatty acids. Animals that eat quantities of green plants have very high levels of omega-3 fats. Conversely, animals fed largely on grain, which includes virtually all American fed animals except lamb, have very high levels of omega-6. We should have approximately equal amounts of omega-3 and omega-6 in our bodies, or at maximum, not much more than twice omega-6 to omega-3. But almost all Americans have ten or twenty times more omega-6 than omega-3, a condition that leads to all sorts of degenerative diseases.

Traditionally, all beef was from grass-fed cattle, but today, what is commercially available in both wealthy and poor countries is almost all factory-farmed beef. Seventy-five years ago, steers would be 4 or 5 years old at slaughter. Today, slaughtering age is 14 to 16 months. It is impossible to raise a calf from a birth weight of 40 kg to 550 kg in little more than a year on grass alone. This horrendous feat is accomplished thanks to enormous quantities of corn, protein supplements, antibiotics and other drugs, including growth hormones.

Therefore we can see that sourcing good quality animal fat, grass-fed cattle or free-range poultry, while increasingly difficult, is essential if we are to get around the noose that agriculture has tied around our necks.

We can only hope that in the years to come we will see more of a movement away from industrialisation and increasing attempts to create communities based on true human values; communities which will not only heal devolved humans but will also attempt to heal our environment.

The only question which remains is whether we have enough time left to try and recreate the paradise that was once lost.

References:

1. Food and Western Disease by Staffan Lindeberg MD

 

1. Warfare and the Multiple Adoption of Agriculture after the Last Ice Age by Paul Seabright, IDEI, University of Toulouse & CEPR

 

1. John B. Symes, D.V.M., Dogtorj.com

 

1. Exercise and Sport Science by William E. Garrett, Donald T. Kirkendall

 

1. “The Secret History of Milk: The Truth about Nature’s Miracle Food,” an interview with Ron Schmid, M.D.

 

1. “Population structure, infant transport and infanticide among Pleistocene and modern hunter-gatherers,” Woodrow W. Denham, Journal of Antopological Research, Vol. 30, No.3.

 

[This article originally appeared in Issue 13 of Sott.net's The Dot Connector Magazine]

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