Mercola Myth-Busters

Here is a synopsis of some really great articles by Dr. Mercola that he has recently published in his newsletter.  I like to quote Dr. Mercola from time to time because he is a trailblazer and "myth-buster"not afraid of challenging the status quo.  The following post is an synopsis of articles from his free newsletter at www.Mercola.com

“Reading the Labels Won't Always Help

I always advocate reading the labels on the foods and cleaning products you buy, but in the case of household cleaners even the most meticulous eye for labels won't get you very far.

Why?

Because many of the most dangerous chemicals will not even be on the label. The manufacturers have conveniently lobbied the government to exempt them from this requirement and can omit any ingredient that is considered a secret formula from its label. Many of these non-disclosed ingredients are actually toxic and carcinogenic.

Household goods are still very much an unregulated market. And, cleaning product manufacturers -- even those that claim to be "green" -- are not required by law to disclose all of their ingredients on their labels. So while it's still better to read the label than not, be aware that a lack of ingredient on a label doesn't necessarily mean it's not in the product!

But most "green" cleaning products like Simple Green are still loaded with glycol ethers, which are anything but good for your health when inhaled or when they touch your skin. Folks, the simple truth is that if a substance cuts through grease and dirt any faster than soap and water, then there are chemicals in there that most likely aren't very good for your health.

Many large corporations are chomping at the bit, eager to reach into the wallets of modern, environmentally concerned consumers...as more and more consumers are learning about the dangers of the products they use in their homes, "green" environmentally friendly options have sparked an industry revolution with a growing number of companies offering their own versions of eco-friendly cleaners. Some examples are Clorox Green Works Natural All-Purpose Cleaner, Simple Green, and Purex Natural Elements.  Unfortunately, the terms "green" and "natural" are nothing more than marketing terms…

If you want a real treat, please pick up and read a highly recommended book on this subject called Subliminal Persuasion: Influence & Marketing Secrets They Don't Want You To Know. This book reveals the systematic techniques used to form opinions or ideologies, in ways that we never suspect. Multinational corporations, like big drug companies, are using these techniques all the time to deceive you.”

Mercola goes on to list toxins as glycol ethers, phthalates, perfumes, phosphates, and nonylpheno ethoxylates (NPEs), [which are banned in Europe because they are thought to be xenoestrogenic, causing male fish to become female fish in the world’s waterways.]  Other toxic chemicals found in cleaning products are formaldehyde, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), petroleum solvents, bultyl cellosolve, ammonia, chlorine, ethanolamies, and sodium lauryl sulfate.”

Some of these chemicals are potentially carcinogenic, and some are irritants, exacerbate asthma, and may damage the kidneys and nervous system.  Safe cleaning products are listed as baking soda, white vinegar, lemon juice, hydrogen peroxide, liquid castile soap—a stronger cleaning agent is vinegar combined with hydrogen peroxide.  I have done several posts that talk about chemicals causing estrogen dominance, a new health concern for many women, which is a hormonal imbalance leading to fatigue, low thyroid hormone, and even possibly cancer."

Mercola has also cited research about cardiovascular exercise that challenges the status quo that I find interesting.  Check out Part II of this post that talks about the dangers of overdoing cardio and for more abbreviated articles from Mercola.


A Votre Sante, (Here's to Your Health), Alix

 

Acupuncture Update

After three weeks of acupuncture (one session per week), I am feeling a little more energetic.  My previous posts talk about adrenal fatigue and estrogen dominance. [Vitamin Research Newsletter, More on Estrogen Dominance posted 10/19/11, Adrenal Fatigue and Estrogen Dominance posted 9/6/11, Mercola Interviewed by Dr. Oz & Adrenal Fatigue/Estrogen Dominance posted 8/30/11]  After being exhausted on and off for years, I was finally diagnosed by a naturopath with chronic adrenal fatigue/estrogen dominance. 

For a year and a half I have taken bio-identical hormones (Christine Northrup has discussed these natural hormones on the Dr. Oz show, so the term "bio-identical" is becoming more common.)  I finally found an explanation for being exhausted, sleeping 12 or more hours, and the recovery has been slow, but the acupuncturist says that I will only need a few more sessions. 

After a few more acupuncture treatments, I will still be sleeping a lot for a couple of months (I'm at 10 hours now), and he says I will return to normal.  At this point, after eating all organic for a year and a half, and avoiding foods that cause inflammation (by taking the MRT food sensitivity test), I am willing to try anything.  Western medicine does not validate acupuncture, but this doctor has a great reputation. 

Many women over the age of 35 (or younger) are estrogen dominant and don't know it, as the term is just now being accepted by Western Medicine.  This means the progesterone levels are too low, and this leads to exhaustion and adrenal fatigue (which is another term only now beginning to be accepted by Western Doctors.)  My acupuncturist is familiar with and commonly treats adrenal fatigue/estrogen dominance.

Estrogen dominance is caused by stress and all the chemicals/xenoestrogens (foreign estrogens) in our soaps and detergents, as well as perfumes, makeup--even natural topical ingredients like tea tree oil, rosemary and lavender are xenoestrogenic.

Right now over half the fish in American waterways are hermaphrodites due to the chemicals and detergents in the water.  There is also a risk for baby boys drinking soy formula to become hermaphroditic.  Americans jumped on the soy bandwagon without realizing that lowered risk of breast cancer is due to fermented soy like tempeh and soy sauce, not soy milk.  In fact, in holistic health, soy milk is now being linked to breast cancer because soy milk is estrogenic.

I have several cousins who have also experienced adrenal fatigue and thyroid issues (adrenal fatigue often leads to thyroid problems), and they have each gone to natruopaths for the solution.  I will continue to work with my functional nutritionist/naturopath who recommends acupuncture treatments.  These treatments are $50 a session, which is inexpensive compared to all the shopping I am doing at Whole Foods and ordering special supplements.  Hopefully I will be able to report back in a future post with more energy after a few more acupuncture treatments.

A Votre Sante, (Here's To Your Health), Alix

Acupuncture and Adrenal Fatigue

I started this blog because I have adrenal fatigue and estrogen dominance, which I have written about in earlier posts.  As I talked about, I have been on an extensive naturalistic protocol for over a year, and a few days ago I decided to have acupuncture to help assist with my recovery.

This was my first treatment, and I went to an experienced Chinese Medicine Doctor who used disposable needles, which he inserted for 20 minutes.  He also preformed cupping, using suction cups on my back to draw out the toxins.  This causes bruising, and the darker the color, the more treatments that are needed.   Actually, the Chinese medicine holds that these are not bruises, but toxins, and lymph coming out of the tissues.

As soon as I told him about the adrenal fatigue, he immediately associated it with a hormonal imbalance, and has treated this many times.  During the session he took my pulse on both wrists and looked at my tongue, which are indicators of general health.  The needles are inserted in meridians, or energy channels in the body.  I was told I was low on "Liver Energy," and it was recommended that I take cinnamon and ginseng supplements to help with vitality.

Based on the dark bruising, he said I would need 4 treatments, and that would heal the fatigue, although there might be a lag time for my sleeping to reduce to a normal 8-9 hours, due to the fact that my body will be coming out of exhaustion.

Of course, as I perused the Internet, Western Medicine practitioners stated that they had no evidence that acupuncture works better than a placebo.  But Western medicine still is way behind on diet--my Western Medicine Doctor visited his diabetic patient in the hospital, and there was only one thing on the meal plate good for the patient.

Western Medicine doesn't even acknowledge adrenal fatigue, although there was a segment on Dr. Oz (a mainstream indicator) about estrogen dominance, and Christine Northrup has a writeup of estrogen dominance on her blog.

Where will I place my bet?  On Western Medicine that could do absolutely nothing about my exhaustion?  Or on this acupuncturist, who has literally cured patients of pericardia (3 treatments--this patient had been in and out of the hospital for 3 months to no avail), infertility (1 treatment), chronic and debilitating neck pain (several treatments for a condition that had lasted 10 years.)

Well, we'll see.  I will report back after a few more treatments.  I do feel more energy, but certainly not enough after one treatment to say I'm cured.  Will acupuncture work?  More to come later...

A Votre Sante (Here's to Your Health), Alix

GM crops cause disaster in India

Once again, Dr. Mercola wrote a great article explaining how GM crops have led to the suicides of many Indian farmers--such important information now that the Gates foundation is funding GM seeds for poor farmers worldwide....here is clip from Mercola's article.  Mercola has a GREAT free newsletter, which really provides wonderful information on holistic health at www.Mercola.com.

"According to a publication from the New York University School of Lawⁱ, in 2009 alone (the most recent year for which official figures are available) 17,638 Indian farmers committed suicide—that's one farmer every 30 minutes.

Bt Cotton is a Debt Trap

Bt cotton requires more pesticide sprayings than indigenous cotton—MANY times more. Bt cotton has created new resistant pests, and to control these, farmers must use 13 times more pesticides than they were using prior to its introduction. Rates of infestation by aphids, thrips, jassids, and other pests have risen since Bt cotton's introduction.

Meanwhile, yields for Bt cotton are disappointingly low. Monsanto claims Bt cotton will yield 1500 kg per year, but farmers have gotten only 300 to 400 kg per year, average. High costs and unreliable output make GM cotton a debt trap. According to Voltairenet.org:

'When Monsanto first introduced Bt cotton in 2002, the farmers lost one billion rupees due to crop failure. Instead of 1,500 kilos per acre as promised by the company, the harvest was as low as 200 kilos per acre. Instead of incomes of 10,000 rupees an acre, farmers ran into losses of 6,400 rupees an acre… Poor peasants of the South cannot survive seed monopolies. The crisis of suicides shows how the survival of small farmers is incompatible with the seed monopolies of global corporations.' 

      [Mercola then continues to explain]

1. Compared to traditional seed, genetically engineered seeds are very expensive and have to be repurchased every planting season
2. Genetically engineered crops require much more water to grow, have much higher requirements for fertilizer and pesticide, in spite of Monsanto's claims to the contrary and, in spite of their cost to farmers, provide NO increased yield..."

Right now there is a movement to label GM foods in the U.S.  GM crops are banned in many other countries, and in prior posts I have explained their dangers to health as well an article on World Food that talks about their dangers to poor farmers around the world.

A Votre Sante (Here's to Your Health), Alix

The Food of Downton Abbey

Hello again,

Completely obsessed with Downton Abbey, I’ve spent a lot of time watching the episodes to figure out the layout of the first floor.  The whole reason I wanted to write this blog was to post a floor plan of Downton Abbey!!!  The map on the Highclere Castle website was illegible, and I was excited to be able to piece together a floor plan by watching the show!

Later, of course, I found a map confirming my results that I have posted at the end of this blog.  In keeping with the theme of this blog, I have written about the food of Downton Abbey as well as farming practices during the Edwardian era.  I uploaded copyrighted pictures for this post, since this forum is for educational purposes only.
 

 

                       Courtesy (C) Carnival Film & Television Limited 2011 for Masterpiece

Ivan Day, a preeminent British food historian interviewed by NPR explains that “The aristocracy saw food as a way of impressing people…some of it was very technically dazzling and difficult to do."  The cooks of the day were definitely skilled at sophisticated cuisines. 

"It was very much the duty of the hostess and her staff to put very good food on the table when her husband and guests were being served," says Day,  "And they were able to do it because there was a skill base that was very large, because so many people were employed as servants — and particularly servants in kitchens."

The Crawleys would have eaten four times a day—breakfast, lunch, tea time, and dinner.   Food depicted on the show has been typical of the era: meat pie, crepes, raspberry meringue.  I perused the internet and came up with some dishes that would have been served during the Edwardian era. 

Typically each dinner would be comprised of 6-22 courses:  The first course would consist of soup and seafood.  Examples would be creamy watercress soup, oysters on the half shell and poached salmon with piccata sauce. 

The entrée included meat and often featured poultry.  Mustard tarragon chicken, lamb stew with lemon and dill, filet mignon with mushrooms and mustard-red-wine sauce are typical dishes for the entree.

The second course followed the entrée and would often include the heaviest meat and sauces—items such roast turkey with poached plums, roast mutton and roast leg of pork and or lamb were common.

The third course would usually include game bird like squib, pigeon, and quail.  The last course would entail sweets like fruit jelly, meringue with roasted rhubarb and strawberry sauce, apple bread pudding, or jellied cranberry sauce.

 

Drinks in the Library

Their beverages include tea (of course), punch, scotch or wine.  The English use "Claret" as an all inclusive term meaning a red table wine usually from Bordeaux.  On the show, Anna provides instruction to Mr. Moseley on proper wine service at Downton, mentioning to him that the Crawleys don’t drink much of it, as there are about 5-6 varietals served with different courses of dinner. Cousin Isobel is seen drinking Pimm’s Cup, which is a mix of Pimm’s No.1 and lemonade, garnished with lemons, mint or fruit or cucumber—add gin.

   

                         Isobel drinking Pimm’s in the Great Hall/Saloon during the Servant’s Ball

Many of the skilled servants were lost in the trenches or moved into industrial jobs after the WW1.  Lack of skilled staff and food shortages (that lasted well beyond the war) of sugar, cream and imported produce curbed the complexity of the menu.  "Our food culture got incredibly simplified, incredibly slimmed down — everybody was on an austerity program," Day says.

The artisanal cheese-making culture nearly vanished as well. The aristocracy also began to lose their wealth and power due to taxes and political shifts.  "The people who were talented cooks worked for the nobility, the aristocracy and the gentry," Day says. "And all the knowledge of the food was in those places. And once you knocked out that social layer ... you lost that food culture.”  Due to war and economics the food rationing didn’t end until 1954 when British cooking was able to make a comeback.

I imagined that the food of Downton Abbey came from family-owned, idyllic, small organic farms, but the Edwardian era was quite modern in terms of farming as well as cooking.  WWI food shortages resulted in the importation of 5,000 tractors ordered from Henry Ford.  (Hence Edith was able to drive a tractor in the second season.)

The agricultural revolution had started in Great Britain during the early 1700s, so by the Edwardian era, crop rotation, fertilizers, irrigation, and early toxic pesticides—arsenic and lead, sulfur, copper, mercury—were common.
 

Crop rotation (rather than fields lying fallow) and selective breeding increased livestock productivity through the winter--which increased the availability of meat and dairy products year around.

Although there wasn’t modern erosion control, or sophisticated soil conservation, or government-backed irrigation, and DDT had not been invented yet, the enclosure movement in England eliminated traditional smallholdings, combining the land into larger tracts that could be more efficiently farmed.  Most farms in Europe had electrical power by the mid-1930s.  All in all, both farming and dining were sophisticated during the times of Downton Abbey.  The sophistication and elegance of Downton Abbey as a whole are depicted from photos at the Highclere website. (www.Highclerecastle.co.uk.)





                                             Two Pictures of the Saloon (Great Hall) 

The far doors of the Saloon open to the Entrance Hall/The Christmas tree at the South end of the Saloon

This following floor plan is slightly blurry, but I found it at JaneAustensWorld.wordpress.com.  (CLICK ON THE MAP TO ENLARGE) This is the only legible map I could find on the internet.  There is an illegible floor plan on the Highclere website, but, by watching the show, I was able to place the rooms used on Downton Abbey—later confirmed by the following map. 

                                               CLICK ON THE MAP TO ENLARGE

SOUTH

NORTH

The rooms depicted on the show include the Entrance Hall (with telephone), Saloon/Great Hall (with Christmas tree), Library (with secret door in bookcase) & Small Library/North library, the Music room (which shown only briefly on the show) and the Drawing room (many scenes are filmed here.)   


For reference, at the beginning the Christmas special (1st season), Daisy walks a path starting in the Music room, through the Drawing Room into the Great Hall /Saloon to admire the Christmas tree, and then down the servants stairs just north of the Dining Room.     


The Double-Library includes the Small/North Library beyond the pillars. (The direction is reversed on the map.)

The Music Room leads to the Library, which has a hidden door disguised as a bookshelf.

                                                                   Drawing Room

Highclere’s smoking room, pink room/morning room, and secretary’s room are not used on the show.  In real life, Maggie Smith rests in between takes in Highclere’s morning room/pink room on the map. (See these rooms at www.Highclerecastle.co.uk) 

However, there is one “mystery room” on the show with mustard yellow walls and full of marble statues depicted in the first season.  I call it the mystery room, because it is not pictured on the Highclere website.

In the “mystery room” scene, Cora is sitting at her desk when the Dowager Countess enters the room saying, “The Ambassador is dangerous, but then how many people really go to the Turkish Embassy…we can’t have him assassinated—I suppose?” 

I think this room may be Cora’s boudoir/downstairs sitting room.  Early in the second season Cora and the family are told to use the boudoir and small/north library for their private quarters when Downton Abbey is used as a WW1 convalescent home. 

A boudoir can be an upstairs or downstairs sitting room.  The mystery room looks like it is on the first floor,  so I’m guessing that it is actually the real Highclere Study —when I’m trying to piece these rooms together, I always feel like I’m playing the board game “Clue.”

On the show the staff dining room would be located directly below the Crawley’s dining room, and the kitchen (sometimes called it the scullery) would be located in the basement north of the staff dining room, along with Carson’s office and Misses Hugh’s sitting room.  Outside of which I can almost smell the Downton Abbey servants' dinner of lamb stew...hopefully Mrs. Pattmore won't put too much salt in it.

A Votre Sante (Here's to Your Health), Alix

Root Canals Linked To Cancer and Other Disease

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This is the third in the series of my triple header on Mercola excerpts--this article is great, I have never heard this before.  I like to reference Dr. Mercola's articles from time to time because he has a team of researchers who go through a thousand pages of research per day (according to Mercola on an interview with Dr. Oz.)

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The following post is an ammended version of Mercola's article about the link between root canals to cancer and other diseases:

Mercola states, "Most dentists would be doing an enormous service to public health if they familiarized themselves with the work of Dr. Weston Price.  Unfortunately, his work continues to be discounted and suppressed by medical and dental professionals alike...


Dr. Price was a dentist and researcher who traveled the world to study the teeth, bones, and diets of native populations living without the "benefit" of modern food. Around the year 1900, Price had been treating persistent root canal infections and became suspicious that root-canaled teeth always remained infected, in spite of treatments. Then one day, he recommended to a woman, wheelchair bound for six years, to have her root canal tooth extracted, even though it appeared to be fine...


She agreed, so he extracted her tooth and then implanted it under the skin of a rabbit. The rabbit amazingly developed the same crippling arthritis as the woman and died from the infection 10 days later. But the woman, now free of the toxic tooth, immediately recovered from her arthritis and could now walk without even the assistance of a cane....


Price discovered that it's mechanically impossible to sterilize a root-canaled (e.g. root-filled) tooth.
He then went on to show that many chronic degenerative diseases originate from root-filled teeth—the most frequent being heart and circulatory diseases. He actually found 16 different causative bacterial agents for these conditions. But there were also strong correlations between root-filled teeth and diseases of the joints, brain and nervous system...


Dr. Price went on to write two groundbreaking books in 1922 detailing his research into the link between dental pathology and chronic illness. Unfortunately, his work was deliberately buried for 70 years, until finally one endodontist named George Meinig recognized the importance of Price's work and sought to expose the truth...[Mercola article continues]

Root Canals Can Lead to Heart, Kidney, Bone, and Brain Disease

As long as your immune system remains strong, any bacteria that stray away from the infected tooth are captured and destroyed. But once your immune system is weakened by something like an accident or illness or other trauma, your immune system may be unable to keep the infection in check.


These bacteria can migrate out into surrounding tissues by hitching a ride into your blood stream, where they are transported to new locations to set up camp. The new location can be any organ or gland or tissue.


Dr. Price was able to transfer diseases harbored by humans to rabbits, by implanting fragments of root-canaled teeth, as mentioned above. He found that root canal fragments from a person who had suffered a heart attack, when implanted into a rabbit, would cause a heart attack in the rabbit within a few weeks.


He discovered he could transfer heart disease to the rabbit 100 percent of the time! Other diseases were more than 80 percent transferable by this method. Nearly every chronic degenerative disease has been linked with root canals, including:

• Heart disease
• Kidney disease
• Arthritis, joint, and rheumatic diseases
• Neurological diseases (including ALS and MS)
• Autoimmune diseases (Lupus and more)

There may also be a cancer connection. Dr. Robert Jones, a researcher of the relationship between root canals and breast cancer, found an extremely high correlation between root canals and breast cancer.  He claims to have found the following correlations in a five-year study of 300 breast cancer cases:

• 93 percent of women with breast cancer had root canals
• 7 percent had other oral pathology
• Tumors, in the majority of cases, occurred on the same side of the body as the root canal(s) or other oral pathology

Dr. Jones claims that toxins from the bacteria in an infected tooth or jawbone are able to inhibit the proteins that suppress tumor development. A German physician reported similar findings. Dr. Josef Issels reported that, in his 40 years of treating "terminal" cancer patients, 97 percent of his cancer patients had root canals. If these physicians are correct, the cure for cancer may be as simple as having a tooth pulled, then rebuilding your immune system..."

If you would like to read the full article, I recommend subscribing to Mercola's newsletter at www.Mercola.com.  His database contains this article and many other great ones. 


Wow, I never though a root canal could lead to such problems provided that a person's immune system was weakened.  After reading this, I will be taking care to never be put in a position to have a root canal.


A Votre Sante  (Here's to Your Health), Alix

Deadly Vaccines and Children

This is the first in a triple header of quoted Mercola articles.  While my last two posts were longer and fleshed out articles about World Food and GMOs,  I haven't quoted Mercola in a while.  Nobody does expose quite like Mercola.

"The first principle of the Nuremberg Code—that doctors must obtain voluntary informed consent from the person about to be experimented on—appears to be frequently ignored, especially when it comes to clinical trials of experimental vaccines.

In recent news, the Argentinean Federation of Health Professionals accused GlaxoSmithKline of misleading participants and pressuring impoverished, disadvantaged families into enrolling their children in clinical trials of the experimental Synflorix pediatric pneumonia vaccine.  Fourteen of the children participating in the experimental vaccine trial died...

This certainly is not the first time children have died during drug company trials. It's also not the first time a pharmaceutical company has been accused of being less than completely honest about experimental vaccine or drug risks, when they want to persuade poor, under-educated people into signing up for clinical trials...

For example, according to Nigerian authorities, Pfizer illegally tested an unapproved drug on children with brain infections at a field hospital in 1996. Eleven of the children died and dozens were disabled before the illegal activity was exposed...

Similarly, two years ago, the Indian government suspended Merck's Gardasil study after they discovered that four of the young clinical trial participants had died after receiving Gardasil, and more than 120 girls suffered severe adverse reactions. A civil society-led investigation into the vaccine trial highlighted serious violations of ethical guidelines for clinical research and informed consent rights of study participants or their legal guardians...

Pediatric Anthrax Vaccine—A Disaster in the Making?

[Mercola states that] Last year, I interviewed Dr. Meryl Nass about anthrax, and she was the one who brought this terrible situation to my attention. The idea of public health officials promoting the testing of anthrax vaccine on children is truly unfathomable considering the fact that the military's controversial mandatory anthrax vaccination program has already resulted in many reports of anthrax vaccine injuries and deaths in soldiers and civilian military personnel. Side effects occur in one to two percent of those given anthrax vaccine and 11 percent of all anthrax vaccine adverse event reports are considered serious.

The FDA's definition of a "serious adverse reaction" to a vaccine includes a reaction that leads to:

• Hospitalization
• Permanent disability
• Life-threatening event
• Death...

In Dr. Nass' words:

"It's completely crazy, and it's illegal. It can only be done because the Department of Health and Human Services is denying that there are serious adverse reactions...He's [the D.O.H. researcher] a very unethical researcher. He is a pharmacist with a PhD, and of course where did he go after he left the military? He went to Merck and works as a so-called scientist in their vaccine division… Merck knew that this guy was unethical; that he was cooking the books on the research, and they hired him anyway." "

Again, nobody does expose like Mercola, and I'm glad he is a nationally known leader in cautioning people about the dangers of vaccines.  I have done prior posts on vaccines, and I won't be getting one any time soon.

A Votre Sante (Here's to Your Health,) Alix