Could High Cholesterol Make Us Live Longer?

Bacon and eggs a great meal full of good fats and vitamins! — Bacon and eggs a great meal full of good fats and vitamins and healthy cholesterol!

Original article by. P. D. Mangan Health Author.

Is it possible that mainstream medicine got cholesterol all wrong? That not only does cholesterol have no connection to heart disease, but that high cholesterol is actually a good thing? Yes, it’s more than possible — here I’ll show some evidence that higher cholesterol is associated with longer life.

All-cause mortality vs heart disease

Obviously, people die from many causes, whether natural, such as heart disease, cancer, or infection, or unnatural, such as from homicide, suicide, or accidents.

Should we be concerned about what cause we die from?

Yes, and no. On the one hand, if you’re dead, you’re dead, no matter from what. On the other, dying in your sleep in old age may be preferable to a long, lingering illness.

Nevertheless, from a public health standpoint, it seems a mistake to focus on changing something that lowers the risk of death from one cause only to raise that risk from another.

While total cholesterol is a poor if not utterly worthless risk marker for heart disease, doctors have focused on it to the exclusion of how it might affect other causes of death. It does you little good to save yourself from heart disease if it means that you increase your risk of death from cancer.

All-cause mortality — death from anything — is the most appropriate measure to use when looking at risk factors.

Older people with higher cholesterol live longer

Population studies in Japan show that people of all ages with higher cholesterol live longer.1

Overall, an inverse trend is found [in Japan] between all-cause mortality and total (or low density lipoprotein [LDL]) cholesterol levels: mortality is highest in the lowest cholesterol group without exception. If limited to elderly people, this trend is universal. As discussed in Section 2, elderly people with the highest cholesterol levels have the highest survival rates irrespective of where they live in the world.

Consider the chart above, taken from the paper. It shows all-cause mortality by cholesterol levels, men on the left, women on the right.

Current guidelines call for keeping cholesterol at 200 mg/dl or lower, yet higher levels meant lower death rates.

What about outside Japan? The following chart shows cumulative all-cause mortality of people older than 85 in Leiden, The Netherlands, by cholesterol level.

The cohort with an average cholesterol of 252 mg/dl, the highest, had the lowest death rates.

The following shows data from elderly people in Finland. Those with cholesterol greater than 232 mg/dl had the lowest death rates.

The data from Japan is for all ages; the data from outside Japan is for the elderly. What about the data for all ages, outside of Japan? The authors believe that the presence of people with familial hypercholesterolemia, which causes a very high cholesterol level and which raises the risk of death, in the highest cholesterol categories, accounts for higher death rates in those categories. They also argue that cholesterol levels in that disorder are not the cause of increased death rates.

A recent review in the prominent medical journal BMJ regarding LDL cholesterol, the risk marker considered most significant, found either no association or an inverse association between LDL and death rates.2

High LDL-C is inversely associated with mortality in most people over 60 years. This finding is inconsistent with the cholesterol hypothesis (ie, that cholesterol, particularly LDL-C, is inherently atherogenic). Since elderly people with high LDL-C live as long or longer than those with low LDL-C, our analysis provides reason to question the validity of the cholesterol hypothesis. Moreover, our study provides the rationale for a re-evaluation of guidelines recommending pharmacological reduction of LDL-C in the elderly as a component of cardiovascular disease prevention strategies.

The Honolulu Heart Program was one of the first studies to find this inverse relation between total cholesterol and death rates in elderly people, aged 71 to 93. It found that compared to the lowest quartile (fourth) of cholesterol level, increasing quartiles of cholesterol had cholesterol had 28%, 40%, and 35% decreased death rates, respectively.

Furthermore, the Honolulu study seems to provide evidence that actually raising cholesterol is protective, since “Only the group with low cholesterol concentration at both examinations had a significant association with mortality.”

The authors of the study concluded, “We have been unable to explain our results. These data cast doubt on the scientific justification for lowering cholesterol to very low concentrations (<4.65 mmol/L) [<180 mg/dl] in elderly people.”

Is high cholesterol protective?

Why would people with low cholesterol die at higher rates than those with higher cholesterol?

Several things could be going on.

Cholesterol may protect against infections and atherosclerosis.3

Cholesterol may protect against cancer.4

A strong association was found between low cholesterol and violence. Odds ratio of violence for cholesterol of <180 mg/dl was 15.49. 5

Several studies have found an association between low cholesterol and suicide. For instance, one study found that those in the lowest quartile (fourth) of cholesterol concentration had more than 6 times the risk of suicide as those in the highest quartile.6

Conclusion

A number of studies have found that, at least in people older than 60, high cholesterol is associated with lower death rates.

This fact casts considerable doubt on the cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease.

Why, with so much evidence against it, does the cholesterol theory still have so much traction? To quote the authors in the first cited study, it’s all about the money:

We believe the answer is very simple: for the side defending this so-called cholesterol theory, the amount of money at stake is too much to lose the fight.

Update: I hadn’t seen this before I wrote this article, but Uffe Ravnskov, a co-author of some of the above-cited studies, has a good article with many relevant citations, The Benefits of High Cholesterol.

Red Meat Allergy From Tick Bites (Alpha-gal)

Excerpts from Prevention Magazine Article by Alisa Hrustic May 21, 2019

While not technically classified as a disease, a bite from a lone star tick can cause an allergic reaction to red meat. How? These critters transfer a sugar called alpha-gal into your system, which is found in red meat—like beef, pork, and lamb—but not in humans. Because the sugar travels through your blood, your immune system goes haywire and releases antibodies. Once you try to eat red meat again, your body pumps out histamine in reaction to the sugar, spurring an allergic reaction.

Symptoms: If you have the alpha-gal allergy, you will experience symptoms similar to other severe food allergies, like itching, swelling of the throat, lips, and tongue, weakness, nausea, vomiting, headaches, skin rash, and even passing out due to anaphylaxis (difficulty breathing). Unlike typical allergic reactions to food, which tend to be immediate, symptoms may take hours to appear, according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI).

How common it is: It’s hard to tell, since meat allergies themselves aren’t very common. However, one preliminary study presented at the 2018 AAAAI and World Allergy Organization Joint Congress found that 40 percent of 222 anaphylaxis cases had a definitive trigger—and the most common was alpha-gal.

Conclusion on what to do for tick born symptoms is by Dr. Demetrios Kydonieus, Chiropractic Nutritionist.

Nutritional therapy for tick bite diseases and the red meat allergy are based on supporting a normal healthy response of the immune system. This type of treatment is not a cure or a direct assault on the condition like medicine but works very well. In the current scientific research literature there are many studies that show a stronger response to “natural therapies” than conventional medical or drug based ones. Alpha-gal is an allergy most likely related to a weak immune system from leaky gut issues that has been going on way before the tick bite. This is compounded by generations of people eating processed, high sugar, low fiber, high inflammatory fatty (Omega-6) foods. As people eat more of these inflammatory and autoimmune triggering foods their genetics become “weakened” and they pass this onto successive generations (their children). Now weak children eat the same poor diets and they pass on even more weakened genes to their kids and this continues until the poor diet is stopped. So this is one theory as to why we are seeing more diseases and reactions to the environment (allergies) that we have not seen before in such high numbers. These “weak” people are more reactive to environmental stresses like tick bites and pollutants than their grandparents.

The good news is that this can be overcome with targeted nutritional support and knowledge of what you are sensitive to in the environment. Nutrition Response Testing is just one nutritional technique that can accurately help the body become stronger and more healthy, many times overcoming autoimmune and allergy challenges. My definition of Health is, “A normal functioning body(and all systems) with no lasting reactions from environmental challenges expressing itself in a vibrant and active manor for a lifetime.”

So if you are suffering from any tick born disease, like Lyme’s, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Alpha-gal, etc. Nutrition Response Testing may be able to help you feel better by making you stronger enabling your body to use your innate immune responses to overcome your condition. We do not cure or treat any specific disease or condition but work to strengthen and normalize biochemical reactions within your body by restoring normal nerve function and physiology. We teach you how to become “healthier”.

Inflammation from Food can tear ligaments

If you eat too much sugar, flour and fried foods your muscle become weak on the cellular level.

Just came back to work from a great lecture on general inflammation by Dr. David Seaman, DC, MS. Did you know that what you eat can tear your ligaments and discs? In the scientific literature there are hundreds of published papers over the last 20 years that prove and support this concept.

Hypothalamic Immune signaling — The left side is normal tissue based on a “good” diet. The right side is what happens when you eat too much sugar, flour, and refined oils. *Picture comes from the journal article referenced below.

Pro-inflammatory foods will ultimately weaken ALL tissues; muscles, bones, nerves and organs to the point of failure! Not only will you gain weight that is hard to lose but you joints and muscles will weaken and become arthritic WITHOUT physical trauma. Osteoarthritis has been traditionally taught as “wear and tear” or “injury” arthritis but now has been proven to be autoimmune triggered by food and environmental factors. Yes you will have an arthritic knee after that football tackle but it will heal and not chronically swell as you get older from the injury if you have a “good” diet. But the swollen knees and shoulders as you age are from your poor diet which has made you over-weight and environmental pollutants which get “stuck” inside your body weakening it further.

This concept of tissue degradation because of destructive components becoming part of normal tissues like muscles and tendons explains how seemingly low force movements cause BIG injuries that seem trauma or mechanical in origin when they are not. Over time, years and decades your muscles become infiltrated by “bad” fats, inflammatory molecules and immune cells that cause inflammation as part of the clean-up process related to this daily tissue micro tearing or damage. This infiltration means that your tendons, muscles and cartilage(discs) are not as dense and strong later in life like they were when you were younger since this is an accumulation process over time. This weakening of your tissues takes a prolonged amount of time. Now add aging, meaning that your body doesn’t respond as efficiently or fast as it used to at the chemical level, this in turn slows down our physical performance and healing. As time and over-eating these “bad” foods continues you accumulate “junk” in your cells or pro-inflammatory molecules. Now when a 35 or 45 year old tears a meniscus while jogging or walking up the stairs instead of thinking injury from physical activity you should consider tissue failure under normal physical stress caused by poor diet! This was NOT a mechanical injury albeit the stepping or running triggered it but it only tore or became subluxated because of the acquired structural weakness due to chemical mediators. FAT. This was a directly related to your bad diet.

So now you show up at the physical therapist’s office they treat you like they always have, for a “mechanical” injury and do rehab and you heal. Maybe you were sharp enough to see your chiropractor and they do something similar and add chiropractic adjustments (PT’s are not legally aloud to adjust or manipulate joints in most states). And here too your knee heals and you’re running again. But… If the weakened tissue from pro-inflammatory agents like leukotrienes is not addressed your lifestyle will cause other tissues to fail and you will be destined to repeat this back and knee injury scenario again and again! Worse yet this same degradation from eating poorly is happening EVERYWHERE in your body; your heart, your kidneys, your liver, you intestines, your brain, your sexual organs, everywhere. Then one day you middle aged and you have a heart attack. All this could most likely have been prevented had someone caught the problem, the poor diet.

In our office we not only do the chiropractic, the physical therapy rehab we always include the nutritional detective work to give our patients the fullest recovery and lowest chance of re-injury or organ failure. If this pro-inflammatory state that sugar, grains and refined oils has led you to isn’t addressed you will be a cardiac or brain disease victim later in life if you are not one already. According to top researchers, Carey Lumbeng and Alan Saltiel¹ these joint and muscle injuries should be treated like heart disease and not just soft tissue injuries. (I have paraphrased their exact comment).

If you do not address your diet and environment you will be destined for a shortened life full of muscle and joint injuries, unnecessary prescriptions and doctor visits. Find a holistic doctor that uses chiropractic, nutrition and rehab exercise to fix your injuries and improve your total health.

1.Carey N. Lumeng and Alan R. Saltiel,
Inflammatory links between obesity and metabolic disease. J Clin Invest. 2011 Jun 1; 121(6): 2111–2117. Published online 2011 Jun 1. doi: 10.1172/JCI571321.

How Do We Get Results?

surface_EMG — Non-invasive nerve testing, nerve health

How Do We Measure Your Progress?

We use the latest and most accurate technology to measure how well the “inside” of your body is healing and base all our care on these measurements and reflex markers along with your symptomology. Gathering this information on each visit gives the doctor information that they need to make a correction and keep the healing process moving as quickly as possible, making you a more energetic, active and happy person. We all are aging so why not age as well as possible! No other profession checks your body’s SELF REGULATION SYSTEM like we do. Regular checkups of your body’s self-regulation and reflex system gives the doctor a real-time assessment of what is working at optimum and what is below par on each visit. Then a focused and personalized plan can be put in place to find the true cause of your weaknesses and get you back in shape or keep you in shape if you are on Wellness Care! We understand that symptoms or poor performance brought you in here for help and we want to help you get well but remember this problem started on the “inside” before you noticed any symptoms. There was some interference and a vital deficiency that started way before you could feel anything that was slowly degrading your body and health. The great thing about our system is that it can quickly be rechecked on each visit and is very accurate when done by a trained professional with thousands of hours of experience like our doctor. From time to time more high tech evaluations like the one you just went through are done in addition to your regular treatment visits. This is to measure and compare the progress of your physiology and neurology, again taking specific measurements of what is going on inside your body where you can’t “feel” anything happening. Using Heart Rate Variability, Surface EMG, Spinal Thermography Differential Scanning, Orthopedics, Chiropractic and basic vital sign instrumentation gives the doctor the most accurate picture of what is going on inside your body before it hurts. All this data gives the doctor a deeper understanding which helps you better, knowing when you are finally stable enough to go on Wellness Care.

Keep Monsanto OUT of Your Garden

Whether your garden is big or small keep it YOURS.

Have you unknowingly invited Monsanto to your garden party? Updated from 2013.

In 2005, Monsanto grabbed 40% of the U.S. seed market and 20% of the global seed market when it bought out Seminis, making them the largest seed company in the world. —supplying the genetics for 55% of the lettuce on U.S. supermarket shelves, 75% of the tomatoes, and 85% of the peppers, with strong holdings in beans, cucumbers, squash, melons, broccoli, cabbage, spinach and peas! (source)

And Monsanto has been buying up every seed company they can ever since. By going to the Seminis site, you can see their history of acquisitions. You can see Syngenta and Dow are doing the same.

Apparently, Monsanto is now legally registered or established to hold the trademark for a plethora of the named heirloom seed varieties. (See a list of names below.) This company has strategically positioned itself to profit from the growing heirloom or open-pollinated home-gardening market.

Bayer, Monsanto and Their Terrible Little Secrets

First, as of “2015, the Bayer takeover of Monsanto merges a chemical giant with a seed giant and leaves the control of the world’s food supply in too few hands. The merger also links two key parts of agricultural production, reducing competition in the food chain. Bayer is now expected to control 29 per cent of the global seed market and 24 per cent of the global pesticide market.

“Second, there are serious concerns about increased farmer dependency on a smaller number of suppliers, and higher prices due to weak competition.

“Third, the deal increases the power of an even smaller group of companies over the intellectual property, and patents that already lock up much of the world’s commercially produced food supply. The patents weaken farmers’ ability to use and reuse their own seeds.”

“Finally, there are ongoing food health and safety concerns related to the seeds and chemicals produced by these companies. Increasing their market share increases their power over the market and over the producers and consumers that use their products. In 2015, the World Health Organisation declared glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide, Roundup, as “probably carcinogenic in humans,””(source)

These companies may change so check them out yourself to make sure that a Monsanto company has not bought them out and tainted their seeds.

1.) Avoid buying anything from companies that are affiliated with Monsanto or Seminis. You can search the companies they do business with to avoid them as they are potentially compromised.

2.) Avoid buying seed or seedlings varieties that are trademarked and owned by Seminis or Monsanto. This includes popular tomato varieties such as ‘Early Girl’, ‘Better Boy’, and ‘Burpee’s Big Boy’, as well as a host of other common home garden varieties like ‘Habanero’ hot pepper and ‘Packman’ broccoli. These are not GMO varieties, but their purchase does profit Monsanto.

Here’s a list.

3.) Ask seed companies if they have taken the Safe Seed Pledge and tested their stock for GMOs. Here’s a list.

4.) Purchase, plant, and save seeds from heirloom varieties. We need to support Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Seed Savers Exchange, and Clear Creek Heirloom Seeds and others that specialize in heirlooms and that are NOT owned by Monsanto or Seminis. The legacy of Seed Saver’s Exchange is to tell you how to collect and store seeds.

This article originally posted here.

HPV Vaccinations are Dangerous

HPV Vaccine Is Associated with Serious Health Risks, Including Sudden Death

This article is from mercola.com who did a great research piece that I wanted to share with you here.

Many women are not aware that the HPV vaccine Gardasil might actually increase your risk of cervical cancer. Initially, that information came straight from Merck and was presented to the FDA prior to approval⁵. According to Merck’s own research, if you have been exposed to HPV strains 16 or 18 prior to receipt of Gardasil vaccine, you could increase your risk of precancerous lesions, or worse, by 44.6 percent.

Other health problems associated with Gardasil vaccine include immune-based inflammatory neurodegenerative disorders, suggesting that something is causing the immune system to overreact in a detrimental way—sometimes fatally.

Between June 1, 2006 and December 31, 2008, there were 12,424 reported adverse events following Gardasil vaccination, including 32 deaths. The girls, who were on average 18 years old, died within two to 405 days after their last Gardasil injection
Between May 2009 and September 2010, 16 additional deaths after Gardasil vaccination were reported. For that timeframe, there were also 789 reports of “serious” Gardasil adverse reactions, including 213 cases of permanent disability and 25 diagnosed cases of Guillain-Barre Syndrome
Between September 1, 2010 and September 15, 2011, another 26 deaths were reported following HPV vaccination
As of May 13, 2013, VAERS had received 29,686 reports of adverse events following HPV vaccinations, including 136 reports of death,⁶, as well as 922 reports of disability, and 550 life-threatening adverse events

Lawsuit Reveals Payouts of Nearly $6 Million to HPV Vaccine-Damaged Victims

On February 28, 2013 the government watchdog group Judicial Watch announced it had filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to obtain records from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) related to the HPV vaccine⁷. The lawsuit was filed in order to force the DHHS to comply with an earlier FOIA request, filed in November 2012, which had been ignored. As reported by WND.com⁸:

“Judicial Watch wants all records relating to the VICP, any documented injuries or deaths associated with HPV vaccines and all records of compensation paid to the claimants following injury or death allegedly associated with the HPV vaccines… The number of successful claims made under the VICP to victims of HPV will provide further information about any dangers of the vaccine, including the number of well-substantiated cases of adverse reactions.”

On March 20, Judicial Watch announced it had received the FOIA documents from the DDHS, which revealed that the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has awarded $5,877,710 to 49 victims for harm resulting from the HPV vaccine. According to the press release⁹: “On March 12, 2013, The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an agency of HHS, provided Judicial Watch with documents revealing the following information:

Only 49 of the 200 claims filed have been compensated for injury or death caused from the (HPV) vaccine. Of the 49 compensated claims, 47 were for injury caused from the (HPV) vaccine. The additional 2 claims were for death caused due to the vaccine.
92 (nearly half) of the total 200 claims filed are still pending. Of those pending claims, 87 of the claims against the (HPV) vaccine were filed for injury. The remaining 5 claims were filed for death.
59 claims have been dismissed outright by VICP. The alleged victims were not compensated for their claims against the HPV vaccine. Of the claims dismissed, 57 were for injuries, 2 were for deaths allegedly caused by the HPV vaccine.
The amount awarded to the 49 claims compensated totaled 5,877,710.87 dollars. This amounts to approximately $120,000 per claim.

This new information from the government shows that the serious safety concerns about the use of Gardasil have been well-founded,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Public health officials should stop pushing Gardasil on children.”

Review of HPV Vaccine Trials Conclude Effectiveness Is Still Unproven

Last year, a systematic review¹⁰ of pre- and post-licensure trials of the HPV vaccine by researchers at University of British Columbia showed that the vaccine’s effectiveness is not only overstated (through the use of selective reporting or “cherry picking” data) but also unproven. In the summary of the clinical trial review, the authors state it quite clearly:

“We carried out a systematic review of HPV vaccine pre- and post-licensure trials to assess the evidence of their effectiveness and safety. We found that HPV vaccine clinical trials design, and data interpretation of both efficacy and safety outcomes, were largely inadequate. Additionally, we note evidence of selective reporting of results from clinical trials (i.e., exclusion of vaccine efficacy figures related to study subgroups in which efficacy might be lower or even negative from peer-reviewed publications).

Given this, the widespread optimism regarding HPV vaccines long-term benefits appears to rest on a number of unproven assumptions (or such which are at odds with factual evidence) and significant misinterpretation of available data.

For example, the claim that HPV vaccination will result in approximately 70% reduction of cervical cancers is made despite the fact that the clinical trials data have not demonstrated to date that the vaccines have actually prevented a single case of cervical cancer (let alone cervical cancer death), nor that the current overly optimistic surrogate marker-based extrapolations are justified.

Likewise, the notion that HPV vaccines have an impressive safety profile is only supported by highly flawed design of safety trials and is contrary to accumulating evidence from vaccine safety surveillance databases and case reports which continue to link HPV vaccination to serious adverse outcomes (including death and permanent disabilities).

We thus conclude that further reduction of cervical cancers might be best achieved by optimizing cervical screening (which carries no such risks) and targeting other factors of the disease rather than by the reliance on vaccines with questionable efficacy and safety profiles.” [Emphasis mine]

Talk to Your Kids about HPV and Gardasil

There are better ways to protect yourself or your young daughters against cancer than getting Gardasil or Cervarix vaccinations, and it’s important you let your children know this. In more than 90 percent of HPV infections, HPV infection is cleared within two years on its own, so keeping your immune system strong is far more important than getting vaccinated.

In addition, HPV infection is spread through sexual contact and research¹¹ has demonstrated that using condoms can reduce your risk of HPV infection by 70 percent, which is far more effective than the HPV vaccine. Because this infection is sexually transmitted, the risk of infection can be greatly reduced by lifestyle choices, including abstinence. In addition, there are high risk factors for chronic HPV infection including smoking, co-infection with herpes, Chlamydia or HIV and long-term birth control use. Women chronically infected with HPV for many years, who don’t get pre-cancerous cervical lesions promptly identified and treated, can develop cervical cancer and die.

So it is important to remember that, even if they get vaccinated, girls and women should get Pap test screening every few years for cervical changes that may indicate pre-cancerous lesions because there is little guarantee that either Gardasil or Cervarix vaccinations will prevent cervical cancer. After Pap test screening became a routine part of health care for American women in the 1960’s, cervical cancer cases in the U.S. dropped 74 percent and continued Pap testing is recommended for women who receive HPV vaccines.

Why We Must Protect Vaccine Exemptions

There can be no doubt that we are in urgent need of a serious vaccine safety review in the US. Quality science is simply not being done. And very few vaccine recommendations, which prop up state vaccine mandates, stand on firm scientific ground. Your right to vaccine exemptions is also increasingly under threat.

I urge you to get involved in the monumentally important task of defending YOUR right to know and freedom to choose which vaccines you and your child will use. The non-profit charity, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), has been preventing vaccine injuries and deaths through public education for more than 30 years and is leading the advocacy effort in the states to protect vaccine exemptions. Supporting NVIC is one way you can help, in addition to signing up for the free online NVIC Advocacy Portal so you stay informed about threats to vaccine exemptions in your state and contact your state legislators to make your voice heard.

All across the United States, people are fighting for their right not to be injected with vaccines against their will. These threats come in a variety of guises like California bill AB499¹², which permits minor children as young as 12 years old to be vaccinated with sexually transmitted disease vaccines like Gardasil without parental knowledge or parental consent! In light of the evidence that HPV vaccines have not been proven safe or effective, how wise is it to allow doctors to give a minor child Gardasil or Cervarix vaccinations without informing and getting the consent of parents? How are parents supposed to monitor their children for signs of a vaccine reaction if they don’t even know their children have been given a vaccine? It’s nothing short of reprehensible.

I cannot stress enough how critical it is to get involved and stand up for your human right to exercise informed consent to vaccination and protect your legal right to obtain medical and non-medical vaccine exemptions. This does not mean you have to opt out of all vaccinations if you decide that you want to give one or more vaccines to your child. The point is, EVERYONE should have the right to evaluate the potential benefits and real risks of any pharmaceutical product, including vaccines, and opt out of any vaccine they decide is unnecessary or not in the best interest of their child’s health. Every child is different and has a unique personal and family medical history, which may include severe allergies or autoimmune and neurological disorders, that could increase the risks of vaccination.

It is your parental right to make potentially life-altering health decisions for your own children. Why wouldn’t you want to keep that right—even if you want your child to receive most or all vaccinations currently available? Tomorrow there might be a vaccine you don’t want your child to receive, but if you’ve failed to support strong informed consent protections in public health laws, which includes the legal right for all Americans to take medical and non-medical vaccine exemptions, you’ve given away your own freedom to choose in the future…

Internet Resources Where You Can Learn More

I encourage you to visit the following web pages on the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) website at www.NVIC.org:

NVIC Memorial for Vaccine Victims: View descriptions and photos of children and adults, who have suffered vaccine reactions, injuries and deaths. If you or your child experiences an adverse vaccine event, please consider posting and sharing your story here.
If You Vaccinate, Ask 8 Questions: Learn how to recognize vaccine reaction symptoms and prevent vaccine injuries.
Vaccine Freedom Wall: View or post descriptions of harassment by doctors, employers or school officials for making independent vaccine choices.
NVIC Advocacy Portal: Sign up today to be a user of this free online privacy-protected network of concerned citizens all working to educate legislators to protect vaccine exemptions in public health policies and laws.

Connect with Your Doctor or Find a New One That Will Listen and Care

If your pediatrician or doctor refuses to provide medical care to you or your child unless you agree to get vaccines you don’t want, I strongly encourage you to have the courage to find another doctor. Harassment, intimidation, and refusal of medical care is becoming the modus operandi of the medical establishment in an effort to stop the change in attitude of many parents about vaccinations after they become truly educated about health and vaccination.

However, there is hope.

At least 15 percent of young doctors polled in the past few years admit that they’re starting to adopt a more individualized approach to vaccinations in direct response to the vaccine safety concerns of parents. It is good news that there is a growing number of smart young doctors, who prefer to work as partners with parents in making personalized vaccine decisions for children, including delaying vaccinations or giving children fewer vaccines on the same day or continuing to provide medical care for those families, who decline use of one or more vaccines.

So take the time to locate a doctor, who treats you with compassion and respect and is willing to work with you to do what is right for your child.

Protect Your Right to Informed Consent and Defend Vaccine Exemptions

With all the uncertainty surrounding the safety and efficacy of vaccines, it’s critical to protect your right to make independent health choices and exercise voluntary informed consent to vaccination. It is urgent that everyone in America stand up and fight to protect and expand vaccine informed consent protections in state public health and employment laws. The best way to do this is to get personally involved with your state legislators and educating the leaders in your community.

THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY.

National vaccine policy recommendations are made at the federal level but vaccine laws are made at the state level. It is at the state level where your action to protect your vaccine choice rights can have the greatest impact.

It is critical for EVERYONE to get involved now in standing up for the legal right to make voluntary vaccine choices in America because those choices are being threatened by lobbyists representing drug companies, medical trade associations, and public health officials, who are trying to persuade legislators to strip all vaccine exemptions from public health laws.

Signing up for NVIC’s free Advocacy Portal at www.NVICAdvocacy.org gives you immediate, easy access to your own state legislators on your smart phone or computer so you can make your voice heard. You will be kept up to date on the latest state bills threatening your vaccine choice rights and get practical, useful information to help you become an effective vaccine choice advocate in your own community.

Also, when national vaccine issues come up, you will have the up to date information and call to action items you need at your fingertips. So please, as your first step, sign up for the NVIC Advocacy Portal.

Share Your Story With the Media and People You Know

If you or a family member has suffered a serious vaccine reaction, injury, or death, please talk about it. If we don’t share information and experiences with one another, everybody feels alone and afraid to speak up. Write a letter to the editor if you have a different perspective on a vaccine story that appears in your local newspaper. Make a call in to a radio talk show that is only presenting one side of the vaccine story.

I must be frank with you; you have to be brave because you might be strongly criticized for daring to talk about the “other side” of the vaccine story. Be prepared for it and have the courage to not back down. Only by sharing our perspective and what we know to be true about vaccination, will the public conversation about vaccination open up so people are not afraid to talk about it.

We cannot allow the drug companies and medical trade associations funded by drug companies or public health officials promoting forced use of a growing list of vaccines to dominate the conversation about vaccination.

The vaccine injured cannot be swept under the carpet and treated like nothing more than “statistically acceptable collateral damage” of national one-size-fits-all mandatory vaccination policies that put way too many people at risk for injury and death. We shouldn’t be treating people like guinea pigs instead of human beings.

Internet Resources Where You Can Learn More

I encourage you to visit the website of the non-profit charity, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), at www.NVIC.org:

NVIC Memorial for Vaccine Victims — View descriptions and photos of children and adults, who have suffered vaccine reactions, injuries, and deaths. If you or your child experiences an adverse vaccine event, please consider posting and sharing your story here.
If You Vaccinate, Ask 8 Questions — Learn how to recognize vaccine reaction symptoms and prevent vaccine injuries.
Vaccine Freedom Wall — View or post descriptions of harassment and sanctions by doctors, employers, and school and health officials for making independent vaccine choices.
Vaccine Failure Wall — View or post descriptions about vaccines that have failed to work and protect the vaccinated from disease.

Connect With Your Doctor or Find a New One That Will Listen and Care

If your pediatrician or doctor refuses to provide medical care to you or your child unless you agree to get vaccines you don’t want, I strongly encourage you to have the courage to find another doctor. Harassment, intimidation, and refusal of medical care is becoming the modus operandi of the medical establishment in an effort to stop the change in attitude of many parents about vaccinations after they become truly educated about health and vaccination. However, there is hope.

At least 15 percent of young doctors recently polled admit that they’re starting to adopt a more individualized approach to vaccinations in direct response to the vaccine safety concerns of parents.

It is good news that there is a growing number of smart young doctors, who prefer to work as partners with parents in making personalized vaccine decisions for children, including delaying vaccinations or giving children fewer vaccines on the same day or continuing to provide medical care for those families, who decline use of one or more vaccines.

So take the time to locate a doctor, who treats you with compassion and respect, and is willing to work with you to do what is right for your child.

Weight Loss Classes – FREE

A New YOU in 21 Days!

DrD teaches weight loss — Ask questions get help from Dr. D

STARTS January 21st 7 PM to 8 PM FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Join us for our FREE in-office Weight Loss Meetings starting Monday 1/21/2019 from 7 to 8 PM. We will be covering the Metabolic Reset Diet. This is a 21 day elimination diet that we do in 3 day intervals. You do not have to purchase anything to learn how to reset your metabolism just by using this system. There will be optional supplement support and Nutritional Counseling available for those that want to add it. Fees for that will discussed in the office. Seating is limited so call now to get your spot!

“Psst…Sign up for my newsletter on the side of this page and get a $50 coupon off your first Nutritional or Chiropractic Visit.”

Psst… Fill out the Newsletter Sign-up to your right on this page and get a $50 coupon toward your first Nutrition and another $50 coupon towards your first chiropractic Visits. That’s $100 in savings for new patients!

*Not valid towards supplement or supplies.

Vitamin D and the Flu

There is a lot more in that needle than the vaccine

Flu Shot Facts vs. Vit D Facts

(psst, spoiler… Vit D is better….just sayin’ “)

A systematic review of 51 studies involving 260,000 children age 6 to 23 months found no evidence that the flu vaccine is any more effective than a placebo in that group (Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2006;1:CD004879).

A JAMA study showed the incidence of clinical influenza in the vaccinated group was 2%, but in the un-vaccinated group it was only 3% (JAMA 1994;272:1661-5). This means that out of 100 people, one person was attributed with avoiding the flu because of the vaccine.

Officials select three strains of flu virus for the vaccine that they think are most likely to be circulating during the next winter season (they failed to pick the swine flu last year).

According to the CDC, common substances found in flu vaccines include: Antibiotics, MSG, Formaldehyde, mercury-containing Thimerosal, and Polysorbate 80 (PS 80 can cause severe anaphylactoid reactions – Ann Asthma Immunol 2005 Dec 95(6):593-9.)

There are 1 to 2 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome per 1 million vaccinated persons. Taking a flu shot is essentially the same as buying a lottery ticket for acquiring GBS, anti-inflammatory demyelinating condition of the nervous system.

Pneumonia Kills Seniors More than Flu

>70 age group accounts for 3/4 of all flu deaths are mostly from bacterial pneumonia not the flu virus. In the largest case-control study of flu vaccine in the elderly, the Group Health study (The Lancet, August 2, 2008) found the “flu vaccine doesn’t protect seniors as much as has been thought,” as it does not protect from pneumonia.

Vitamin D Facts

From: Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin

D. Epidemiology and Infection; Oct. 2007; 135 (7):1095-1098; On the Epidemiology of Influenza. Virology Journal; Feb. 25, 2008, vol 5

Compelling evidence indicates vitamin D deficiency is the ‘seasonal stimulus’ responsible for flu outbreaks”.

“Physiological doses (800-2,000 IU/day) of vitamin D prevent many viral infections”, and “Vitamin D is the ‘antibiotic vitamin’ due primarily to its robust effects on innate immunity”.

Double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial: 104 women given vitamin D were 3 times less likely to report cold and flu symptoms. “A low dose (800 IU/day) not only reduced incidence, it abolished the seasonality of reported colds and flu.

A higher dose (2,000 IU/day), given during the last year of their trial, virtually eradicated all reports of cold or flu”.

Vitamin D deficiency predisposes children to respiratory infections, and an interventional study showed vitamin D reduces the incidence.

How to Avoid Catching the Flu

3 Things YOU Can Do to Avoid Catching the Flu

First you have to understand the Flu Vaccine has more risks and damage it will do to you than it does “prevention”. Don’t let the media campaigns wear you down into getting “stuck”. Don’t be pressured by your job or coworkers, tell them you “opt out”. I know plenty of pharmacists that NEVER take the vaccine for them or their family although they give it to hundreds as part of their “job”. (What a conflict, glad I don’t have that philosophical issue!). I have never had a Flu or Shingles vaccine and never will. My children were not vaccinated when they were born or in school back in the 90’s and are very healthy adults now. Not to mention they hardly missed any school due to illness. They were always healthy while all their vaccinated friends were out regularly in the cold and flu season!

So what can you do to strengthen your immune system and body to stay healthy?

Hydration is crucial. Bottled or filtered water, 48 to 64 oz per day depending on your size and activity level. Coffee, teas, even herbal tea are not hydration. Water, water, water…and nothing but water. Regular water is my favorite not enhanced vitamin water or alkaline water and definitely not reversed osmosis water. RO water and distilled waters have less of the organic minerals that you need. Alkaline water an mess up your digestion so don’t drink it with meal if you drink it, drink in 1 to 2 hours away from consuming any food. You need water to run all the chemical reactions in your body including your immune system.
Reduce stress, chill out take some needed “me time”. Warm baths with essential oils for relaxation and immune stimulation work well. I like Lavender, Peppermint, Oregano, Roman Chamomile, Orange, and Lemon oils. (Sounds like a soup base!) Myrrh and Frankincense work well too but can be expensive. Epsom salt and baking soda work when you have muscle or joint pain , 24 oz of Epsom salt and 8 oz of baking soda to regular sized bath tube of hot water. The baking soda is to help with water hardness, making the magnesium salts more absorbable.
Regular nervous system check-ups. Chiropractic and Nutrition Response Testing are the two best, most proven therapies to check for, find and fix nervous system irritation and organ weaknesses/nutritional deficiencies. Your nervous system controls everything! Every cell, every molecule gets its orders from through your nervous system. Chiropractors are specifically trained to find and remove physical nerve irritations called subluxations. Nutritional testing using the Nutrition Response Testing method based on kinesiological reflexes helps me find and support any tissue weakness returning it back to normal or health status. If your immune system is getting the messages through a nervous system that is subluxation-free and the nerves and organs are strong because you have the proper support and a good diet for you then you will most likely avoid the flu this and every season that you continue these healthy habits.

So see your chiropractor and Nutrition Response Doctor today. I of course use both these approaches in my office to help all my patients, young and old stay healthy and avoid the flu and all other adverse conditions as much as possible. Since I combined both health therapies, nutrition and chiropractic our results with wellness and people not having illnesses has dramatically improved. Call us for more information now. 434-481-2012.

5 Reasons High Fructose Corn Syrup will Kill YOU!

Here is a reprint of Dr. Mark Hyman, MD on High Fructose Corn Syrup and why it’s “BAD”

What the Science Says About High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)

Let’s examine the science and insert some common sense into the conversation. These facts may indeed come as a sweet surprise. The ads suggest getting your nutrition advice from your doctor (who, unfortunately, probably knows less about nutrition than most grandmothers).

Having studied this for over a decade, and having read, interviewed, or personally talked with most of the “medical and nutrition experts” used to bolster the claim that “corn sugar” and cane sugar are essentially the same, quite a different picture emerges and the role of HFCS in promoting obesity, disease, and death across the globe becomes clear.

Last week over lunch with Dr. Bruce Ames, one of the foremost nutritional scientists in the world, and Dr. Jeffrey Bland, a nutritional biochemist, a student of Linus Pauling, and I reviewed the existing science, and Dr. Ames shared shocking new evidence from his research center on how HFCS can trigger body-wide inflammation and obesity.

Here are 5 reasons you should stay way from any product containing high fructose corn syrup and why it may kill you.

Sugar in any form causes obesity and disease when consumed in pharmacologic doses.Cane sugar and high fructose corn syrup are indeed both harmful when consumed in pharmacologic doses of 140 pounds per person per year.When one 20 ounce HFCS sweetened soda, sports drink, or tea has 17 teaspoons of sugar (and the average teenager often consumes two drinks a day) we are conducting a largely uncontrolled experiment on the human species.Our hunter gatherer ancestors consumed the equivalent of 20 teaspoons per year, not per day. In this sense, I would agree with the corn industry that sugar is sugar. Quantity matters. But there are some important differences.
HFCS and cane sugar are NOT biochemically identical or processed the same way by the body. High fructose corn syrup is an industrial food product and far from “natural” or a naturally occurring substance. It is extracted from corn stalks through a process so secret that Archer Daniels Midland and Carghill would not allow the investigative journalist Michael Pollan to observe it for his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The sugars are extracted through a chemical enzymatic process resulting in a chemically and biologically novel compound called HFCS. Some basic biochemistry will help you understand this. Regular cane sugar (sucrose) is made of two-sugar molecules bound tightly together– glucose and fructose in equal amounts.The enzymes in your digestive tract must break down the sucrose into glucose and fructose, which are then absorbed into the body. HFCS also consists of glucose and fructose, not in a 50-50 ratio, but a 55-45 fructose to glucose ratio in an unbound form. Fructose is sweeter than glucose. And HFCS is cheaper than sugar because of the government farm bill corn subsidies. Products with HFCS are sweeter and cheaper than products made with cane sugar. This allowed for the average soda size to balloon from 8 ounces to 20 ounces with little financial costs to manufacturers but great human costs of increased obesity, diabetes, and chronic disease.Now back to biochemistry. Since there is there is no chemical bond between them, no digestion is required so they are more rapidly absorbed into your blood stream. Fructose goes right to the liver and triggers lipogenesis (the production of fats like triglycerides and cholesterol) this is why it is the major cause of liver damage in this country and causes a condition called “fatty liver” which affects 70 million people.The rapidly absorbed glucose triggers big spikes in insulin–our body’s major fat storage hormone. Both these features of HFCS lead to increased metabolic disturbances that drive increases in appetite, weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, and more.But there was one more thing I learned during lunch with Dr. Bruce Ames. Research done by his group at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute found that free fructose from HFCS requires more energy to be absorbed by the gut and soaks up two phosphorous molecules from ATP (our body’s energy source).This depletes the energy fuel source, or ATP, in our gut required to maintain the integrity of our intestinal lining. Little “tight junctions” cement each intestinal cell together preventing food and bacteria from “leaking” across the intestinal membrane and triggering an immune reaction and body wide inflammation.
High doses of free fructose have been proven to literally punch holes in the intestinal lining allowing nasty byproducts of toxic gut bacteria and partially digested food proteins to enter your blood stream and trigger the inflammation that we know is at the root of obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, dementia, and accelerated aging. Naturally occurring fructose in fruit is part of a complex of nutrients and fiber that doesn’t exhibit the same biological effects as the free high fructose doses found in “corn sugar”.

The takeaway: Cane sugar and the industrially produced, euphemistically named “corn sugar” are not biochemically or physiologically the same.
HFCS contains contaminants including mercury that are not regulated or measured by the FDA. An FDA researcher asked corn producers to ship a barrel of high fructose corn syrup in order to test for contaminants. Her repeated requests were refused until she claimed she represented a newly created soft drink company. She was then promptly shipped a big vat of HFCS that was used as part of the study that showed that HFCS often contains toxic levels of mercury because of chlor-alkali products used in its manufacturing.(i) Poisoned sugar is certainly not “natural”.When HFCS is run through a chemical analyzer or a chromatograph, strange chemical peaks show up that are not glucose or fructose. What are they? Who knows? This certainly calls into question the purity of this processed form of super sugar. The exact nature, effects, and toxicity of these funny compounds have not been fully explained, but shouldn’t we be protected from the presence of untested chemical compounds in our food supply, especially when the contaminated food product comprises up to 15-20 percent of the average American’s daily calorie intake?
Independent medical and nutrition experts DO NOT support the use of HFCS in our diet, despite the assertions of the corn industry. The corn industry’s happy looking websites www.cornsugar.com and www.sweetsurprise.com bolster their position that cane sugar and corn sugar are the same by quoting experts, or should we say misquoting … Barry M. Popkin, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has published widely on the dangers of sugar-sweetened drinks and their contribution to the obesity epidemic. In a review of HFCS in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,(ii)he explains the mechanism by which the free fructose may contribute to obesity.He states that: “The digestion, absorption, and metabolism of fructose differ from those of glucose. Hepatic metabolism of fructose favors de novo lipogenesis (production of fat in the liver). In addition, unlike glucose, fructose does not stimulate insulin secretion or enhance leptin production. Because insulin and leptin act as key afferent signals in the regulation of food intake and body weight (to control appetite), this suggests that dietary fructose may contribute to increased energy intake and weight gain. Furthermore, calorically sweetened beverages may enhance caloric over-consumption.”He states that HFCS is absorbed more rapidly than regular sugar and that it doesn’t stimulate insulin or leptin production. This prevents you from triggering the body’s signals for being full and may lead to over-consumption of total calories. He concludes by saying that:“… the increase in consumption of HFCS has a temporal relation to the epidemic of obesity, and the overconsumption of HFCS in calorically sweetened beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity.”The corn industry takes his comments out of context to support their position. “All sugar you eat is the same.”True pharmacologic doses of any kind of sugar are harmful, but the biochemistry of different kinds of sugar and their respective effects on absorption, appetite, and metabolism are different, and Dr. Popkin knows that.
David S. Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, and a personal friend, has published extensively on the dangers and the obesogenic properties of sugar-sweetened beverages.

He was quoted as saying that “high fructose corn syrup is one of the most misunderstood products in the food industry.” When I asked him why he supported the corn industry, he told me he didn’t and that his comments were taken totally out of context.

Misrepresenting science is one thing, misrepresenting scientists who have been at the forefront of the fight against obesity and high fructose sugar sweetened beverages is quite another.
HFCS is almost always a marker of poor-quality, nutrient-poor disease-creating industrial food products or “food-like substances”. The last reason to avoid products that contain HFCS is that they are a marker for poor-quality, nutritionally-depleted, processed industrial food full of empty calories and artificial ingredients. If you find “high fructose corn syrup” on the label you can be sure it is not a whole, real, fresh food full of fiber, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and antioxidants. Stay away if you want to stay healthy. We still must reduce our overall consumption of sugar, but with this one simple dietary change you can radically reduce your health risks and improve your health.While debate may rage about the biochemistry and physiology of cane sugar versus corn sugar, this is in fact beside the point (despite the finer points of my scientific analysis above). The conversation has been diverted to a simple assertion that cane sugar and corn sugar are not different.

The real issues are only two.

We are consuming HFCS and sugar in pharmacologic quantities never before experienced in human history–140 pounds a year versus 20 teaspoons a year 10,000 years ago.
High fructose corn syrup is always found in very poor-quality foods that are nutritionally vacuous and filled with all sorts of other disease promoting compounds, fats, salt, chemicals, and even mercury.

These critical ideas should be the heart of the national conversation, not the meaningless confusing ads and statements by the corn industry in the media and online that attempt to assure the public that the biochemistry of real sugar and industrially produced sugar from corn are the same.

Now I’d like to hear from you …(read his entire post here)

Do you think there is an association between the introduction of HFCS in our diet and the obesity epidemic?

What reason do you think the Corn Refiners Association has for running such ads and publishing websites like those listed in this article?

What do you think of the science presented here and the general effects of HFCS on the American diet?

Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below—but remember, we can’t offer personal medical advice online, so be sure to limit your comments to those about taking back our health!

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD