How Nutritional and Alternative Treatments Can Help You Avoid Using Drugs for Depression

By Dr. Mercola

Depression is a very serious health problem and can be terminal, as up to 30,000 people who are depressed commit suicide every year. But are antidepressants the best approach?

Contrary to popular belief, there are safer—and oftentimes far more effective—alternatives to the drug route, as explained here by Dr. Hyla Cass, a practicing psychiatrist who uses integrative medicine.

Dr. Cass appears regularly on TV and radio shows, and is an associate editor of Total Health Magazine. She also serves on the boards of California Citizens for Health and the American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM), of which I was a member for some time.

Her father was a doctor, practicing out of their home in Toronto, so Dr. Cass was exposed to medicine first hand from a very early age. Her father’s old-fashioned medical values of personal care and attention was the model of healing after which she eventually modeled her own career.

“Doctors really relied on their own judgment then. It wasn’t just a pill for every ill,” she notes. “In my own practice, I began to notice that what people ate and how they lived actually influenced their health.

People who were eating junk were not doing very well. People who were eating healthier, more natural foods, actually were feeling better, doing better, were healthier (have less colds, flus and all the rest), and even, were nicer people to be around!”

Why Focus on Natural Interventions for Depression?

Early on, Dr. Cass began searching for other doctors of like mind, and discovered a mentor in Dr. Abram Hoffer, the co-founder of “orthomolecular medicine.” This refers to the concept of nutritional deficiencies being a source of mental illness, and the right nutrients or molecules can correct the problem.

“While I was in my residency at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, I began to notice that medications had side effects... It would be okay if the side effects were worth it, but most of the time they weren’t...”

Side effects of antidepressants run the gamut from sexual side effects to lack of emotions or “emotional flatness,” restlessness, sleep disturbances, brain damage, and thoughts (and actions, tragically) of suicide, and even homicide. Virtually all of the school and mass shooters, for example, have been on antidepressants.

“You could say, “Well, of course, they were on antidepressants. They were disturbed and that’s why they did the shooting.” But a comparable number of people who were not on antidepressants and having similar problems did not become school shooters,” Dr. Cass notes.

“The difference was, first of all, they were genetically predisposed to have that reaction to the medications -- but nobody’s looking at genetics when they prescribe medication.

These shooters were either just newly on medication, or had just had some sort of change in their medications or dosage; ie regardless of details, there was something going on with their medications before the event. And that’s a terrible tragedy. A lot of this information has been suppressed, too.”

Nutrition Is Essential for Proper Brain Function

Long before holistic health became a catch phrase, Dr. Cass began pursuing the use of nutritional supplements rather than medication, and lo and behold, her patients improved.

A huge drawback of the conventional mental health care system is that few doctors have the time, or take the time, to sort out the root of the problem with each patient. It’s a lot easier to simply write a drug prescription. Dr. Cass, on the other hand, takes the time to focus on finding, and then treating, the root cause.

“It’s so scary when you think of what these medications do. They’re not to be handed out the way they are. That really is disturbing to me. People think, “My doctor knows what he or she is doing.” Well, that’s not always true. I think it’s up to people to educate themselves,” she says.

“At Cedars-Sinai I was trained in a more psychoanalytic way. That’s actually good. It’s a Freudian model. I don’t practice that way now, but it was a good basis; understanding that there’s an unconscious and that we have scripts in us that are outside of our regular awareness.

And when we make them conscious, we actually are liberated . We can go on and live more fulfilling lives. I began looking first of all, at their psyche, but also at their lifestyle – what they were eating and drinking,and their attitudes. So many things go into being healthy.”

The Placebo Effect in Action

People can get quite defensive when you mention that antidepressants may be doing more harm than good, and that there are better alternatives. Many insist their whole life changed for the better once they started taking an antidepressant, and they cannot conceive living without it.

According to Dr. Cass, this can often be the placebo effect in action. You are in essence healed by your belief. If you think the drug will work, it likely will. But the same power of belief could be applied to virtually any other treatment modality, including a sugar pill.

One 2010 study¹ concluded that there is very little evidence to suggest antidepressants benefit people with mild to moderate depression, as these drugs work no better than a placebo in at least 80 percent of cases.

An earlier meta-analysis² published in PLoS Medicine also concluded that the difference between antidepressants and placebo pills is very small. Other research³ into the placebo effect noted that “the placebo effect is an unacknowledged partner for powerful medications.”

"Here we are with these miracle bodies. What we have to do is feed them right and treat them right, and we'll get the most wonderful results," Dr. Cass says.

“On the other hand, if we overuse or misuse medication, which is often the case, you’re just going to cause these side effects, some of them very dangerous, and won’t ever deal with the root cause.

We need to look at psychodynamics. But we also must take a look at nutritional status. Is there an infection? Is there toxicity? Is there a Vitamin B12 deficiency? Is there an iron deficiency anemia? There are so many medical issues that actually appear as depression.

When a doctor just hands you a prescription for an SSRI, they are not doing you a favor unless they’ve first given you a thorough medical workup, looking hormonal imbalance including thyroid or adrenal, or gluten sensitivity, to name a few of the possible causes.”

Gluten Sensitivity—A Common But Hidden Cause of Depression

You may not have realized this, but the gluten level in our grains is much higher today than it ever was before, thanks to various breeding techniques, and gluten can produce depression if you're sensitive to it. In such a case, the key is to remove gluten from your diet entirely. You cannot simply cut down. It must be removed completely. In Dr. Cass' practice, she's seen many people recover from severe depression when going gluten-free.

“They start to feel better, their mood improves. The depression, it turned out was really due to gluten sensitivity. And you may ask, “How can gluten affect your brain like that? What is going on?” It has to do with inflammation,” she explains. “When gluten is inflaming your gut, it’s also inflaming your brain. Whatever’s going on in your gut is also going on in your brain. They’re very connected.

The gut is the second brain. In fact, there are more serotonin receptors in the gut than anywhere else in the whole body. What I’m saying is, to summarize, it can be gluten sensitivity, thyroid imbalance, anemia, some kind of infection, Lyme disease, or chronic fatigue syndrome. Many medical issues will show up as depression. Depression is a symptom. Depression is not a condition. It’s not an illness; it’s simply a symptom...

We have this three-pound sophisticated organ, the brain,, the control center of our whole body, and it does not get evaluated. No one looks at it. You have a symptom of depression, anxiety, or insomnia, and you get a prescription. That’s crazy. That is not good medicine. I’m saying I’m not even practicing alternative medicine; I’m practicing good medicine.”

An important issue to address is junk food, which also promotes gut inflammation. So one of the first steps in addressing problems like anxiety and depression is to clean up your diet and address your gut health. Otherwise, you’ll have virtually no chance of getting healthy emotionally and mentally. As noted by Dr. Cass, there are times when temporary use of an antidepressant may be warranted, but such occasions are really quite rare.

"I think that if we use the right doses of specific herbs and supplements, and get exactly the right diagnosis, the right biological, biochemical diagnosis, we probably won't need to use the meds," she says.

High Dose Niacin for Psychosis

Before he attended medical school, the mentor I mentioned, Dr. Abram Hoffer, received a PhD in biochemistry specializing in vitamin B research. So when he became director of the largest psychiatric hospital in Saskatchewan, he used his knowledge to research the administration of high doses of niacin (vitamin B3) to schizophrenic patients.

Amazingly, he was able to get many of these very ill mental patients well enough to be released, get married and go on to lead normal lives. It turns out that pellagra, a disorder caused by niacin deficiency, produces the same psychiatric symptoms such as irrational anger, feelings of persecution, mania, and dementia that were found in many of these “ hopelessly incurable” patients. The cure was giving them the deficient B vitamin. Sadly, despite “performing miracles” on these hard-to-treat patients, Dr. Hoffer’s ground-breaking research was discredited by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), which was sadly more interested in promoting drugs.

“As long as the patients continued to take their niacin, as well as vitamin C, they were OK. On the other hand, nowadays if psychotic patients stop their medication, they may or may not relapse. This brings up another issue; we’re seeing more relapses than we used to in psychosis and depression. It may be due to the meds. Before people were on meds to the extent that they are, they would have a depressive episode, [then] recover and not necessarily have another one...But we’re now having far more chronically relapsing depression and psychosis than before the introduction of medication.

Moreover, we’re having more bipolar illness than we ever had. Something is going on. The medications are actually changing the brain. This is what is so scary. We have people who start off being depressed, being put on antidepressants for their depression, end up becoming bipolar, and then they’re placed on a whole cocktail of medications. And they’re kept on that cocktail indefinitely, which frequently ends their ability to function normally.”

How to Revert from Antidepressants to More Natural Treatments

If you’re currently on an antidepressant and want to get off it, ideally you’ll want to have the cooperation of your prescribing physician. Some doctors are happy to help you to withdraw if they know that you’re going to be responsible about it. Others may not want to bother, or they don’t believe that you can get off the medication. As noted by Dr. Cass, you may need to do some reading in order to be better prepared. Dr. Joseph Glennmullen from Harvard wrote a very helpful book on how to withdraw called The Antidepressant Solution.

You can also turn to an organization with a referral list of doctors who practice more biologically or naturally, such as the American College for Advancement in Medicine www.ACAM.org. Also, it doesn’t make much sense to withdraw unless you’re implementing some other strategy to address the cause of your depression. In summary, Dr. Cass suggests keeping the following guidelines in mind:

Under your prescribing physician's supervision, start lowering the dosage of the antidepressant you're taking. There are protocols for gradually reducing the dose of the medication that your doctor should be well aware of.

At the same time, start taking a multivitamin. Start taking low doses. If you're quitting an SSRI under doctor supervision, you can go on a low dose of 5-Hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP).

For bipolar patients, Dr. Cass and other holistic psychiatrists may prescribe nutritional supplements such as fish oil (omega-3 fats), inositol, tryptophan, and others, depending on the individual's need.

Bipolar symptoms can also be related to Lyme disease, so if Lyme infection is present, that needs to be addressed, also by a more functionally oriented doctor.

Chronic inflammation in general appears to be a significant underlying factor causing symptoms of depression, so keeping inflammation in check is an important part of any effective treatment plan. If you're gluten sensitive, you will need to remove all gluten from your diet. A food sensitivity test can help ascertain this.

Vitamin D deficiency is another important biological factor that can play a significant role in mental health. A double-blind randomized trial4 published in 2008 concluded that: "It appears to be a relation between serum levels of 25(OH)D and symptoms of depression. Supplementation with high doses of vitamin D seems to ameliorate these symptoms indicating a possible causal relationship." Recent research5 also claims that low vitamin D levels appear to be associated with suicide attempts. Ideally, maintain your vitamin D level between 50-70 ng/ml year-round.

Unbalanced gut flora have also been identified as a significant contributing factor to depression, so be sure to optimize your gut health, either by regularly eating traditionally fermented foods, or taking a high quality probiotic.

Make sure you’re getting enough high quality sleep, as sleep is essential for optimal mood and mental health. A fitness tracker that tracks your sleep can be a useful tool.

The inability to fall asleep and stay asleep can be due to elevated cortisol levels, so if you have trouble sleeping, you may want to get your saliva cortisol level tested with an Adrenal Stress Index test. If you’re already taking hormones, you can try applying a small dab of progesterone cream on your neck or face when you awaken during the night and can’t call back to sleep. Another alternative is to take adaptogens, herbal products that help lower cortisol and adjust your body to stress. There are also other excellent herbs and amino acids that help you to fall asleep and stay asleep.

Meditation can also help. A new piece of technology that can be quite useful is a headband sensor called Muse.6 It gives you real-time feedback on your brain wave frequencies, which can help train you to enter into deeper states of relaxation and meditation. I've been using it for 15 minutes twice a day for about six months, and I've noticed some really impressive improvements. Slowing your breathing through meditation and/or using the Buteyko breathing technique also increases your partial pressure of carbon dioxide (CO2), which has enormous psychological benefits.

Other helpful tools to ease symptoms of depression and anxiety include Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). EFT is well-studied, and recent research found it significantly increased positive emotions, such as hope and enjoyment, and decreased negative emotional states like anger and shame. Another recent review found statistically significant benefits in using EFT for anxiety, depression, PTSD, and phobias.

Many 'Depressed' Women Are Actually in Perimenopause

Amazingly, 23 percent of women over the age of 40 are on antidepressants. According to Dr. Cass, this is likely due to misdiagnosis of perimenopause or other hormonal imbalances. Women are entering perimenopause at younger ages these days; some even before the age of 40, and this phase can last for years.

“Women who have never had PMS or mild PMS are suddenly having bad PMS. They are feeling depressed and irritable. They’re yelling at their kids and their partners. They’re having a very hard time. They may be fatigued and feeling like they’re falling apart. What do they do? They go to their doctor, and guess what they get? They get a prescription for an antidepressant. Guess what they shouldn’t get? An antidepressant.

They need to get their hormones balanced. Start with all the usual things: good diet, make sure your liver is able to detoxify properly so you may need some liver supportive herbs like milk thistle or bupleurum. There are also well-researched herbs for menopausal and PMS symptoms like dong quai, black cohosh and vitex.

You can also move into bioidentical hormones. [They are] very safe, particularly progesterone. Very safe. When these women get the hormones that they need, they stop feeling anxious and irritable, and start to feel good again. Their PMS goes away. And it doesn’t take long: one or two cycles and they are likely feeling great. They have a whole new lease on life.”

More Information

For more information, please see Dr. Cass’ website, CassMD.com. She has also authored four books on these subjects: Natural Highs, 8 Weeks to Vibrant Health, and The Addicted Brain: How to Break Free, which details how to get off addictive substances including medications. Another book, Supplement Your Prescription, deals with detecting and treating the nutrient deficiencies caused by medications. All four books are available on her website. She also has a special report called Reclaim Your Brain, available for free on her site, in which she discusses the different nutritional substances you can use to address conditions like anxiety, depression, and lagging memory.

Global Health Problems Reflect Our Disconnection from the Earth

By Dr. Mercola

“Fire is what set us apart. But that fire is on the verge of burning us.”

Living in the modern world is making us sick. That’s the conclusion drawn by Dr. Pedram Shojai, OMD after many years of treating patients for the same lifestyle-induced illnesses, over and over again. This realization inspired him on a four-year mission to produce a film that might help “wake us all up.”

Dr. Shojai partnered with South American filmmaker Mark van Wijk to produce the documentary “Origins,”¹ a broad exploration of the intrinsic connection between our health and the vitality of our planet, and how our modern lifestyle is out of synch with our DNA.

The film features 24 great minds in the fields of anthropology, medicine, ecology and health, including David Wolfe, Jeffrey Smith and Sara Gottfried, M.D. Not only is it very informative but also beautifully filmed. “Origins” takes us back to our human roots when we lived as one with the earth.

Plugging Back into the Earth

“The bushman lives his life in nature... the earth, the sun, the wind. This is a wilderness person who respects nature. This is where we make our lives in order to live together with nature.” -!’Aru Ikhuisi Piet Berendse, Bushman and Activist

While we were developing as a species, we lived in tune with the earth, but that connection has been all but lost. Once we plugged into technology, we unplugged from our planet.

Most people feel profoundly different when they leave the city to spend just a few days in nature, gaining an appreciation of just how disengaged they’ve become. This is why grounding is so powerful.

We are besieged by constant messages that in order to be happy, we need more stuff, but in reality, we have only four basic human needs: water, fire, food, and shelter.

The modern world wants to brainwash you into thinking you need much more than that, but in reality, the rest are only “wants.” All of this “stuff” has weakened your relationship with the earth.

The Native Americans were highly attuned to nature. They took care of the earth and it took care of them. They lived symbiotically with the planet instead of as parasites upon it, with reverence rather than disregard.

They would sit in one spot listening to the noises the birds were making, sensing the direction of the wind, atmospheric changes and so on, and this mindfulness informed them of what their next move should be.

As Above, So Below

What allowed us to pull to the head of the pack was fire, making it possible to grow bigger brains that gave us tools, then eventually science and technology. Our ability to wield fire put us into orbit and gave us the internet and all its benefits.

We became Top Dog—but also Top Bully. The unfortunate corollary to humanity’s greatness has unfortunately been tendencies toward arrogance and shortsightedness.

Technology has vastly outpaced our common sense, and we’ve developed a dangerous disregard for long-term consequences for ourselves and the ecosystem in which we live. Both are sounding alarms, and it’s questionable whether we’re hearing them.

Greek philosopher Hermes Trismegistus had a famous axiom: “As above, so below.” This can be applied to the relationship between humans and the earth—microcosm and macrocosm are reflections of each other. What we see on a large scale will inevitably show up on a small scale, and vice versa.

Our ailing bodies, ailing soils, disappearing species and their habitats are all symptoms of one pervasive problem: a planet that’s becoming more toxic with each passing day. Ignoring its warning calls may place humans next in line for extinction.

Humanity and Earth Cry Out... But Is Anyone Listening?

The US is now producing and importing 74 billion pounds of chemicals each day—that’s 250 pounds per person, per day. And that figure doesn’t even include pharmaceuticals, pesticides, fuels, and food additives. Most of these chemicals have never been tested for their effects on human health, yet we consume them daily. What on earth are we doing to ourselves?

In 2013, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization (WHO), deemed air pollutants a class 1 carcinogen.² It’s projected that air pollution will be the number one cause of death globally by 2050, largely because of our dependence on fossil fuels.

Six billion pounds of bisphenol-A (BPA) is produced each year, leaving our planet literally choking on plastics. BPA, phthalates, and other pseudo estrogens are hijacking our hormones, disrupting the endocrine function of our entire species.

The average baby is now born with 287 chemicals in their body—before they even takes their first breath. We’ve reached the point at which the signals from endocrine disrupting chemicals in our children’s bodies are louder than the signals they’re getting from their own natural hormones.

We used to be naturally lean and strong but have become progressively more obese and weaker. Our bodies are so busy detoxifying that they frequently lack adequate resources to perform basic biological processes. Is it any wonder that humanity has become so sick?

When a species is healthy, nature rewards it with fertility, but studies show that human fertility is waning. One of every four couples worldwide is unable to conceive due to problems with conception and miscarriage. Fertility is a leading indicator for the health of an organism, so the fact that one in eight of us are not healthy enough to reproduce is a major clue.

Your Inner Ecosystem: The Interface with the World

There is no more poignant illustration of your connection to the world around you than your microbiome, or “inner ecosystem.” The long tube running through you from your mouth to your anus is the interface between you and the outside world, and the seat of your immunity—health and disease start in your gut. But this vital system is being severely disrupted by our modern lifestyle.

Infants are literally bathed in beneficial microorganisms during childbirth, which they receive from their mothers as they pass through the birth canal—it’s a baby’s “first inoculation,” potentially providing lifelong immunity.

However, babies born by C-section do not receive this natural inoculation. Kids who were deprived of a vaginal birth are showing all kinds of diseases, including asthma and autoimmune disorders. Infants receive another microbial boost from breast milk, but of course those fed infant formula miss out on this too.

Making matters worse, infants and children are prescribed antibiotics periodically throughout childhood, are discouraged from playing in the dirt and then doused in hand sanitizer. This “sanitized childhood” prevents kids from developing natural immunity, and their bodies fail to populate with the beneficial microbes that grow into an army of protection from illness. Antibiotics have essentially led to the “mass extinction” of our beneficial gut flora, resulting in dysbiosis (an imbalance in your microbiome) and all of the health problems that accompany it.

Your DNA Is Largely Controlled by Your Gut Flora

An abnormal microbiome is a factor behind inflammation, food cravings, obesity, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and many of the other chronic diseases seen today. When your gut flora is unhealthy, leaky gut syndrome can develop whereby food particles leach into your bloodstream where they can trigger allergic and inflammatory responses. An abnormal microbiome can also lead to depression and other emotional and physical problems, because your gut bacteria provide a significant source of your amino acids, vitamins and other important compounds. Three major ones are ATP, tryptophan and serotonin.

Beneficial bacteria also play an enormous role in your genetic expression—continuously helping flip genes off and on as you need them. Your genetic expression is 50 to 80 percent controlled by how you eat, think and move, and your genes change daily—if not hourly. You may be surprised to learn that 140 times more genetic influence comes from your microbes as from the DNA in your own cells. Your genes control protein coding, which determines your hormones, weight, fertility, mood and others.

Which Do You Choose—Food or 'Edible Manufactured Products?'

Our biology adapted to a diet of wild plants and animals—wild vegetables, berries, nuts, roots, and game, which were MUCH higher in nutrients than our foods today. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors consumed nearly 100 grams of fiber every day, compared to the eight to 15 grams now consumed by the average Westerner. Food can be medicine or poison... the processed foods found lining grocery store shelves are not the foods we were designed to eat. Ninety percent of the average American diet is fake food out of a box, can, jar, or tube.

The foods many react adversely to are relatively new in our food supply—soy, gluten from hybridized wheat, corn, sugar, and highly pasteurized dairy, for example. These modern foods are foreign to your body, so it’s common to have problematic reactions, including inflammatory and autoimmune responses, which can lead to allergies, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and the list goes on and on. One of every four Americans now has type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes.

Americans have shunned fats for the last 40 years after being told they cause heart disease, when the real culprit is sugar. The epidemic of brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, and the like are evidence of what happens when your brain is starved of beneficial fats while being bombarded with toxic insults over time. Your brain is made up of fat, so it’s no surprise that low-fat diets have been linked to depression and suicidal or homicidal behavior.

We have outsourced the making of our food to corporations that have cut corners, added chemicals, and altered the genetic makeup of what we eat—it’s not food anymore but rather “edible manufactured products.” Our children pay the heaviest price, becoming biochemically enslaved to sugar. This is not an exaggeration as studies have shown sugar to be eight times as addictive as cocaine. Would it be okay if the government began marketing and subsidizing cocaine? Of course not, but that’s exactly what they’re doing with sugar with their subsidization of the corn and fructose industry and manipulative marketing campaigns.

Adding a sedentary lifestyle to a massively unhealthy diet creates the perfect storm for “diabesity.” Our ancestors were in constant motion, hunting, building and carrying things, escaping from predators, etc. Today, people barely move. Sitting for more than eight hours a day is associated with a 90 percent increased risk of type 2 diabetes. For optimal health, you need to move near-continuously throughout the day, or at least avoid sitting down for more than three hours a day. And, to keep your body strong, you hunter-gatherer genes want you to exert an all-out effort occasionally, such as high intensity exercises, but few of us actually do this.

Your Health Depends on Soil Health, and Our Soils Are Dying

Download Interview Transcript

Just as your gut houses a microbiome that’s critical for your health, our soils contain a microbiome critical to the health of the planet. Your health is directly related to the quality of the food you eat, and the quality of your food depends on the health of the soil in which it’s grown. As above, so below. In the rhizosphere, microorganisms form nodules on the roots of plants to help them take up minerals and other nutrients from the soil. Unfortunately, modern industrial agriculture (monoculture) destroys much of the soil’s microbiome. Heavy agrichemical use and GE crops rapidly destroy once-fertile soils that took centuries to develop. Removing the stress on a plant by dousing it with chemical fertilizers and insecticide cocktails causes it to become weak, producing less of the natural phytochemicals so vital for your health.

Although arrogant molecular biologists believe they know, the reality is that we really don’t know what effects tampering with the genetics of our food supply will have on your health and your children’s health over the long run. I expose their fraud in my fascinating interview with Steven Druker, slated to be published next month. Many experts believe GE foods are contributing to the growing chronic disease epidemics seen today. Despite what industry says, GE foods are not the answer to world hunger. On the contrary, sustainable agriculture that works in harmony with nature instead of against it has been proven to double crop yield.

The United Nations published in a study in 2010 concluding that if the world were switched to agroecological techniques, on the same farming footprint existing today, we could double world food production in about 10 years and begin to heal many of the insults of the chemical era. We must rekindle our relationship with food, go back into our kitchens and start cooking again. In 1900, only two percent of meals were eaten outside of the home, but today it’s more than half.

Your Future Depends on Your Choices Today

Many inroads have been made improving access to local and sustainable foods, but we still have a long way to go. Building a food system that relies heavily on locally grown foods is the answer to many of our global problems, from environmental destruction to hunger and disease. The most powerful tool you have for change is your fork—you vote with your fork three times a day! Are you going to support the companies that are poisoning you and your children, or will you support the people who are raising food in a way that’s a win-win for you and the earth and everyone?

Real food may seem more expensive, but it’s your primary health care, and cheap food isn’t cheap when you consider the risk of extinction. As you’ve seen, nature isn’t “out there”—it’s in your own body, in your own home and all around you. All life on earth is inextricably linked. Every time you make a choice, you’re changing the world and influencing our future. The goal isn’t to abandon technology and return to ancient times, but rather to harness technology for the betterment of all and proceed with mindfulness and reverence. As stated in the film, “The wisdom of the ancients is the medicine of the future.”

Relax, You'll Feel Better

By Dr. Mercola

While 99 percent of Americans feel relaxation is important, most spend less than 5 percent of their day in pursuit of it, according to a survey commissioned by, fittingly, a major cruise line.¹

After you’ve done all of the ‘must-dos” of your day, you may simply feel you don’t have time for relaxation or, like 62 percent of the parents surveyed, you might feel guilty doing it.

One-third of those polled even said they feel stressed out just by thinking about relaxation! Perhaps, more aptly, they feel stressed out because it’s just one more thing that you’re “supposed” to be doing to stay well.

But I assure you, once you get into the habit of daily relaxation, you won’t know how you did without it. And don’t feel guilty. Regular relaxation is every bit as important as proper diet, sleep, and exercise; it’s all a part of feeling your best, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Anxiety May Accelerate Aging, While Relaxing Slows It

Part of what makes relaxation so good for you is by tamping down the effects of stress and anxiety. For instance, a recent study revealed that anxiety disorders increase your risk of several aging-related conditions, which might be due to accelerated aging at the cellular level.²

This cellular aging was reversible when the anxiety disorder went into remission, which suggests sound relaxation strategies may help you avoid this accelerated aging. In fact, you might be aware that your body has a stress response that kicks into gear when you’re facing a real (or perceived) threat.

The counterpart of the stress response is the relaxation response, which is a physical state of deep rest that changes physical and emotional responses to stress.

Researchers now know that by evoking your body’s built-in relaxation response – your innate, inborn capacity to counter the harmful effects of stress, according to an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Herbert Benson³ -- you can actually change the expression of your genes for the better.

According to one study in PLOS One:⁴

“RR [relaxation response] elicitation is an effective therapeutic intervention that counteracts the adverse clinical effects of stress in disorders including hypertension, anxiety, insomnia and aging…

RR practice enhanced expression of genes associated with energy metabolism, mitochondrial function, insulin secretion and telomere maintenance, and reduced expression of genes linked to inflammatory response and stress-related pathways.”

Previous research by Dr. Benson and colleagues also found that people who practice relaxation methods such as yoga and meditation long-term have more disease-fighting genes switched “on” and active, including genes that protect against pain, infertility, high blood pressure and rheumatoid arthritis.⁵

The Many Health Benefits of Deep Relaxation

If you want to experience the health benefits of relaxation, you need to do more than lounge on your couch watching TV. You’re looking for deep relaxation, the kind where your mind stops running and your body is free of tension.

Jake Toby, a hypnotherapist at London's BodyMind Medicine Center who helps people to evoke the relaxation response, told The Independent:⁶

“What you're looking for is a state of deep relaxation where tension is released from the body on a physical level and your mind completely switches off," he says.

"The effect won't be achieved by lounging round in an everyday way, nor can you force yourself to relax. You can only really achieve it by learning a specific technique such as self-hypnosis, guided imagery or meditation."

Once you get into the relaxation “zone,” however, your body can benefit greatly.⁷ For instance, a stress-management program has been shown to alter tumor-promoting processes at the molecular level in women with breast cancer.⁸

Genes responsible for cancer progression (such as pro-inflammatory cytokines) were down-regulated while those associated with a healthy immune response were up-regulated.⁹ In addition, relaxation may help:

• Boost Immunity: Meditation is known to have a significant effect on immune cells,¹⁰ and research shows relaxation exercises may boost natural killer cells in the elderly, leading to increased resistance to tumors and viruses.
• Fertility: Research suggests women are more likely to conceive when they’re relaxed as opposed to when they’re stressed.¹¹
• Heart Health: Relaxation via meditation (done once or twice daily for three months) significantly lowered their blood pressure and psychological distress, and also bolstered coping ability in people at increased risk of hypertension.¹²
• Mental Health: People who meditate note reductions in psychological distress, depression, and anxiety.¹³
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS): When people with IBS practiced relaxation meditation twice daily, their symptoms (including bloating, belching, diarrhea, and constipation) improved significantly.^14,15

Money Is a Top Source of Stress for Americans

In case you were wondering, money tops the list of stressors to Americans, beating out work, family responsibilities and health concerns.¹⁶ If you have trouble relaxing, perhaps you know this all too well.

Close to three-quarters of Americans (72 percent) said they feel stressed about money at least some of the time, and close to one-quarter (22 percent) said they experience extreme stress about money, according to the American Psychological Association’s (APA) latest “Stress in America” report.

What’s more, 32 percent of Americans said their lack of money prevents them from living a healthy lifestyle, while one in five have skipped (or considered skipping) needed doctor’s visits due to financial concerns.

Remember, it’s key to nip stress in the bud, because chronic stress – whatever the cause -- disrupts your neuroendocrine and immune systems and appears to trigger a degenerative process in your brain that can result in Alzheimer's disease.

In addition, when you're stressed, your body releases stress hormones like cortisol, which prepare your body to fight or flee the stressful event.

When stress becomes chronic, however, your immune system becomes less sensitive to cortisol, and since inflammation is partly regulated by this hormone, this decreased sensitivity heightens the inflammatory response and allows inflammation to get out of control.

According to award-winning neurobiologist Dr. Robert Sapolsky, the following are the most common health conditions that are caused by or worsened by stress (which, theoretically, relaxation could help counter):

Cardiovascular disease	Hypertension	Depression
Anxiety	Sexual dysfunction	Infertility and irregular cycles
Frequent colds	Insomnia and fatigue	Trouble concentrating
Memory loss	Appetite changes	Digestive problems and dysbiosis

How to Evoke Your Body’s Relaxation Response

As noted in the journal PLOS One, “Millennia-old practices evoking the RR include meditation, yoga and repetitive prayer.”¹⁷ These are, of course, not the only options. The relaxation response can also be elicited through tai chi, progressive muscle relaxation, biofeedback, guided imagery and Qi Gong, for instance. Deep breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which induces the relaxation response, but taking even 10 minutes to sit quietly and shut out the chaos around you can also trigger it.¹⁸ And as noted by Dr. Kelly Brogan:

“…summoning up a feeling of gratitudewhile breathing in a paced manner (typically six counts in and six counts out), can flip heart rate variability into the most optimal patterns associated with calm relaxation and peak mental performance. They have validated the effects on ADHD, hypertension, and anxiety including double blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trials.”

If you’re feeling the effects of stress and you’re unable to fully relax, Dr. Brogan recommends doing this:

1. Notice and acknowledge your discomfort.
2. Relax and release it no matter how urgent it feels. Let the energy pass through you before you attempt to fix anything.
3. Imagine sitting back up on a high seat, in the back of your head watching your thoughts, emotions, and behavior with a detached compassion.
4. Then ground yourself. Connect to the present moment – feel the earth under your feet, smell the air, imagine roots growing into the earth from your spine.

EFT for Stress Relief and Relaxation

I also strongly recommend energy psychology techniques such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), which can be very effective for reducing anxiety and stress – and inducing relaxation -- by correcting the bioelectrical short-circuiting that causes your body’s reactions. You can think of EFT as a tool for “reprogramming” your circuitry, and it works on both real and imagined stressors. EFT is a form of psychological acupressure, based on the same energy meridians used in traditional acupuncture for more than 5,000 years to treat physical and emotional ailments, but without the invasiveness of needles.

Following a 2012 review in the American Psychological Association’s journal Review of General Psychology, EFT has actually met the criteria for evidence-based treatments set by the APA for a number of conditions.¹⁹ Recent research has shown that EFT significantly increases positive emotions, such as hope and enjoyment, and decreases negative emotional states, including anxiety.²⁰ EFT is particularly effective for treating stress and anxiety because it specifically targets your amygdala and hippocampus, which are the parts of your brain that help you decide whether or not something is a threat.

In addition to stress relief, you can use EFT for setting goals and sticking to them, which is what the video above is focused on. If you are seriously stressed about money, setting goals related to your financial future might be especially pertinent to finding deep relaxation – and easier to achieve when combined with EFT. Ideally, choose a combination of approaches, like guided imagery, meditation, yoga, and EFT, and do some form of them daily. Remember, the key to relaxation’s beneficial effects is to relax regularly and as often as you can.

Is Bone Broth the New Super Food?

By Dr. Mercola

If you happen to be in New York City, you can stop by Brodo, a trendy new to-go restaurant devoted to selling broth.¹ One cup will set you back about $8… or you can make a gallon (that’s 16 cups) of this healing staple food right in your own kitchen for far less than the equivalent $128.

There’s no doubt that bone broth’s popularity as a superfood is growing. More than a few New York City bars are even featuring bone broth shots and cocktails.² But there’s nothing “new” about it.

Bone broth may quite possibly be one of the oldest meals on record. Hippocrates was known to extol its virtues, and according to Dr. Kaayla Daniel, vice president of the Weston A. Price Foundation and coauthor (with Sally Fallon Morell) of the book Nourishing Broth:

“Bone broth goes way back to the Stone Age, when they were actually cooking broth in turtle shells and in skins over the fire.”³

Why Bone Broth Is Regarded as a Superfood

There’s something inherently soothing about sipping on a warm cup of broth, and it really does have medicinal potential.

For starters, bone broth is used as the foundation of the GAPs diet, which is based on the Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) principles developed by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. It forms the foundation because it is so healing to your gut.

The GAPS diet is often used to treat children with autism and other disorders rooted in gut dysfunction, but just about anyone with allergies or less than optimal gut health can benefit from it, as it is designed to heal leaky gut.

If your gut is leaky or permeable, partially undigested food, toxins, viruses, yeast, and bacteria have the opportunity to pass through your intestine and access your bloodstream; this is known as leaky gut.

When your intestinal lining is repeatedly damaged due to reoccurring leaky gut, damaged cells called microvilli become unable to do their job properly. They become unable to process and utilize the nutrients and enzymes that are vital to proper digestion.

Eventually, digestion is impaired and absorption of nutrients is negatively affected. As more exposure occurs, your body initiates an attack on these foreign invaders. It responds with inflammation, allergic reactions, and other symptoms we relate to a variety of diseases.

Leaky gut is the root of many allergies and autoimmune disorders, for example. When combined with toxic overload, you have a perfect storm that can lead to neurological disorders like autism, ADHD, and learning disabilities.

One of the main foods that you use is bone broth, because not only is it very easily digested, it also contains profound immune-optimizing components that are foundational building blocks for the treatment of autoimmune diseases.

Nutrients That Many Americans Are Lacking

Bone broth contains a variety of valuable nutrients of which many Americans are lacking, in a form your body can easily absorb and use. This includes but is not limited to:

Calcium, phosphorus, and other minerals	Components of collagen and cartilage
Silicon and other trace minerals	Components of bone and bone marrow
Glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate	The "conditionally essential" amino acids proline, glycine, and glutamine

These nutrients account for many of the healing benefits of bone broth. As Dr. Daniel told the Washington Post:⁴

“We have science that supports the use of cartilage, gelatin, and other components found in homemade bone broth to prevent and sometimes even reverse osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, digestive distress, autoimmune disorders, and even cancer.”

Additional benefits of bone broth include the following:

1. Reduces joint pain and inflammation, courtesy of chondroitin sulfate, glucosamine, and other compounds extracted from the boiled down cartilage and collagen.
2. Inhibits infection caused by cold and flu viruses etc. Indeed, Dr. Daniel reports chicken soup — known as "Jewish penicillin"—has been revered for its medicinal qualities at least since Moses Maimonides in the 12th century.⁵

Recent studies on cartilage, which is found abundantly in homemade broth, show it supports the immune system in a variety of ways; it's a potent normalizer, true biological response modifier, activator of macrophages, activator of Natural Killer (NK) cells, rouser of B lymphocytes, and releaser of Colony Stimulating Factor.

3. Fights inflammation: Amino acids such as glycine, proline, and arginine all have anti-inflammatory effects. Arginine, for example, has been found to be particularly beneficial for the treatment of sepsis (whole-body inflammation).⁶ Glycine also has calming effects, which may help you sleep better.
4. Promotes strong, healthy bones: Dr. Daniel reports bone broth contains surprisingly low amounts of calcium, magnesium and other trace minerals, but she says "it plays an important role in healthy bone formation because of its abundant collagen. Collagen fibrils provide the latticework for mineral deposition and are the keys to the building of strong and flexible bones."
5. Promotes healthy hair and nail growth, thanks to the gelatin in the broth. Dr. Daniel reports that by feeding collagen fibrils, broth can even eliminate cellulite too.

Kobe Bryant Swears By Bone Broth

Bone broth is also getting attention for its use in sports medicine. Genuine bone broth contains components of cartilage that may help your body make cartilage. In addition, Dr. Daniel notes that body builders have long used gelatin supplements to support muscle growth. She describes bone broth as “the raw food version of a gelation supplement.”⁷

Los Angeles Lakers player Kobe Bryant is among those who swear by bone broth, and he believes it has kept his NBA career sustainable. It’s a foundation of his pre-game meals. As ESPN reported:⁸

"I've been doing the bone broth for a while now," Bryant said. "It's great - energy, inflammation. It's great."

As Tim DiFrancesco, the Lakers' head strength and conditioning coach, said, "Everybody is looking for a magical elixir or some cure-all… but bone broth is where it's at."⁹ He told ESPN:¹⁰

“You could go into a store and on the shelf you’ve got this carton of vegetable stock or chicken stock, and that’s probably something that’s been flavored with salt and chicken-flavored bouillon cubes or something like that.

But there’s no actual vitamin, mineral nutrient value in there. It just tastes good because there’s enough salt in there. But when you make a bone stock the right way, it’s like liquid gold. And the way you know you have real stock on your hand is if you put it in the refrigerator overnight and it basically turns into Jell-O.”

Indeed, the more gelatinous the broth, the more nourishing it will tend to be. The collagen that leaches out of the bones when slow-cooked is one of the key ingredients that make broth so healing. According to Dr. Daniel, if the broth gets jiggly after being refrigerated, it's a sign that it's a well-made broth.

To make it as gelatinous as possible, she recommends adding chicken feet, pig's feet, and/or joint bones. All of these contain high amounts of collagen and cartilage. Shank or leg bones, on the other hand, will provide lots of bone marrow. Marrow also provides valuable health benefits so ideally you'll want to use a mixture of bones. You can make bone broth using whole organic chicken, whole fish or fish bones (including the fish head), pork, or beef bones. Vary your menu as the many types offer different flavors and nutritional benefits.

Use the Highest Quality Ingredients You Can Find

Perhaps the most important caveat when making broth, whether you're using chicken or beef, is to make sure the bones are from organically raised, pastured or grass-fed animals. As noted by Sally Fallon, chickens raised in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) tend to produce stock that doesn't gel, so you'll be missing out on some of the most nourishing ingredients if you use non-organic chicken bones.

If you can't find a local source for organic bones, you may need to order them. A great place to start is your local Weston A. Price chapter leader,¹¹ who will be able to guide you to local sources. You can also connect with farmers at local farmers markets. Keep in mind that many small farmers will raise their livestock according to organic principles even if their farm is not USDA certified organic, as the certification is quite costly. So it pays to talk to them. Most will be more than happy to give you the details of how they run their operation.

Homemade Chicken Bone Broth Recipe

The recipe that follows is from Hilary Boynton and Mary Brackett's GAPS cookbook, The Heal Your Gut Cookbook: Nutrient-Dense Recipes for Intestinal Health Using the GAPS Diet. For even more broth recipes, this book is an excellent resource.

Homemade Chicken Broth Ingredients 1 3- to 4-pound stewing hen, 1-2 chicken carcasses, or 3-4 pounds of chicken necks, backs and wings 4 quarts filtered water 2-4 chicken feet (optional) 1-2 chicken heads (optional) 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar 3 celery stalks, coarsely chopped 2 carrots, coarsely chopped 1 onion, quartered Handful of fresh parsley Sea salt Method: Put the chicken or carcasses in a pot with 4 quarts of water; add the chicken feet and heads (if you’re using them) and the vinegar. Let sit for 30 minutes to give the vinegar time to leach the minerals out of the bones. Add the vegetables and turn on the heat. Bring to a boil and skim the scum. Reduce to barely a simmer, cover, and cook for 6 to 24 hours. During the last 10 minutes of cooking, throw in a handful of fresh parsley for added flavor and minerals. Let the broth cool, strain it, and take any remaining meat off the bones to use in future cooking. Add sea salt to taste and drink the broth as is or store it in the fridge (up to 5 to 7 days), or freezer (up to 6 months) for use in soups and stews.

Low Vitamin D in Childhood Linked to Heart Risks Later in Life, and Raises Adults’ Risk of Severe Stroke and Cancer

By Dr. Mercola

Researchers such as Dr. Robert Heaney, who I previously interviewed in the above video, have now realized that vitamin D is involved in the biochemical “machinery” of all cells and tissues in your body, which is why it has such a potent impact on health and disease.

When you don’t have enough, your entire body will end up struggling to function properly, because all cells need the active form of vitamin D to open up the genome and access the information retained within its genetic plans.

When you’re deficient in vitamin D, your health can deteriorate in any number of ways from this lack of access to the cells’ genetic blueprint.

Researchers have previously pointed out that increasing levels of vitamin D3 among the general population could prevent chronic diseases that claim nearly one million lives throughout the world each year.

Chances are this number would reach even higher if more recent research were to be taken into account. Either way, compelling evidence suggests that optimizing your vitamin D can reduce your risk of death from any cause,¹ making it a foundational component of optimal health.

Childhood Vitamin D Deficiency Can Be Costly in Terms of Health

For years, it’s been known that children born to vitamin D-deficient mothers are at increased risk for type 1 diabetes. Vitamin D deficiency in childhood is also associated with more severe asthma and allergies.

Recent research also suggests that having low vitamin D levels in childhood may raise your risk of hardening of the arteries in middle-age. The study,² published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, involved nearly 2,150 people who were enrolled in 1980 at the age of 3-18. As reported by the New York Times:³

“All underwent periodic physical exams, including measures of serum vitamin D levels, blood pressure, lipid levels, diet, smoking, and physical activity and were examined up to age 45.

Doctors used ultrasound to examine arteries, including the carotid artery in the neck; thickening of the arteries is considered a marker of higher cardiovascular risk.

A vitamin D level of between 30 to 50 is generally considered adequate. Children in the lowest one-quarter for vitamin D levels, about 15 nanograms per milliliter, were nearly twice as likely to have thickening of the carotid artery as those in the other three quarters.”

According to lead author, Dr. Markus Juonala, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Turku in Finland, the findings suggest that vitamin D plays a role in long-term arterial health.

Here, they did not find that low vitamin D in childhood resulted in any specific heart conditions or stroke later in life, but other studies have indeed noted a strong connection between low vitamin D in adults and such health problems.

Low Vitamin D May Predict More Severe Stroke

According to veteran vitamin D researcher Dr. Michael Holick, research has shown that vitamin D deficiency can increase your risk of heart attack by 50 percent. Moreover, if you have a heart attack and you're vitamin D deficient, your risk of dying from that heart attack is upwards of 100 percent!

Similarly, findings presented at this year’s annual American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference suggest that people who have low vitamin D status are far more likely to suffer more severe strokes.

They also have poorer outcomes after suffering a stroke compared to those with more adequate vitamin D levels. As reported by the American Heart Association:⁴

“[Stroke] patients who had low vitamin D levels –defined as less than 30 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL) – had about two-times larger areas of dead tissue resulting from obstruction of the blood supply compared to patients with normal vitamin D levels...

For each 10 ng/mL reduction in vitamin D level, the chance for healthy recovery in the three months following stroke decreased by almost half, regardless of the patient's age or initial stroke severity.”

Virtually All Cancer Patients Have Low Vitamin D Levels

Low vitamin D is also strongly associated with an increased risk for well over a dozen different cancers, including breast and colon cancer. Theories linking vitamin D deficiency to cancer have been tested and confirmed in hundreds of epidemiological studies, and understanding of its physiological basis stems from more than 2,500 laboratory studies.

Its anticancer effects include the promotion of apoptosis (cancer cell death), and the inhibition of angiogenesis (the growth of blood vessels that feed a tumor), and the level of protection afforded by vitamin D can indeed be significant. For example:

• One recent meta-analysis⁵ found that having a high serum level of 25-hydroxyvitamin D was associated with a 25 percent reduction in relative risk of bladder cancer
• A 2007 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine⁶ concluded that a vitamin D level of more than 33 ng/mL was associated with a 50 percent lower risk of colorectal cancer
• Researchers^7,8 Joan Lappe and Robert Heaney found that menopausal women given enough vitamin D to raise their serum levels to 40 ng/ml experienced a 77 percent reduction in the incidence of all cancers after just four years’ of supplementation
• According to Carole Baggerly, founder of GrassrootsHealth,⁹ the evidence suggests as much as 90 percent of ordinary breast cancer may be related to vitamin D deficiency

Link Between Vitamin D Levels and Colorectal Cancer Strengthened

Not only does vitamin D protect against tumor proliferation in the first place, it also affects treatment outcome and recovery. The connection between vitamin D status and cancer survival was most recently demonstrated in research presented at the annual Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

Patients diagnosed with metastatic colorectal cancer who had higher levels of vitamin D had a far greater progression-free survival rate than those who were deficient. As reported by Clinical Oncology:¹⁰

“The study’s lead investigator, Kimmie Ng, MD, MPH... said the research adds to the existing evidence that vitamin D levels have an effect on cancer. Vitamin D is known to inhibit cell proliferation and angiogenesis, induce cell differentiation and apoptosis and have anti-inflammatory effects.

“Many of these processes are dysregulated in cancer, which led to the hypothesis that perhaps vitamin D had anticancer activity,” said Dr. Ng. Laboratory data support this hypothesis, with experiments demonstrating that administering vitamin D to mice with intestinal cancer reduces tumor burden.”

Nearly 1,045 patients with metastatic colorectal cancer were included in the study, and the median vitamin D level among them was just over 17 ng/ml. Few of them reported taking any kind of vitamin D supplement. Typically, anything below 20 ng/ml is considered a serious deficiency state that increases your chances of any number of health problems, including cancer. Many studies show that having adequate vitamin D is critical in order to optimize treatment outcome. Here, Dr. Ng noted that: “Patients who had levels in the highest quintile had a median survival of 32.6 months compared with 24.5 months for patients with levels in the lowest quintile.”

The Many Health Risks of Low Vitamin D

Vitamin D is one of the most well-researched nutrients out there, and the evidence overwhelmingly points to the fact that it is critical for optimal health and disease prevention. By the end of 2012, there were nearly 34,000 published studies on the effects of vitamin D, and there are well over 800 references in the medical literature showing vitamin D's effectiveness against cancer alone.

I’m thoroughly convinced that optimizing your vitamin D stores can go a long way toward preventing disease and living a longer, healthier life, as the known health benefits of vitamin D now number in the hundreds, if not thousands. Besides cancer and cardiovascular disease, other benefits of vitamin D include protection against:

Autoimmune diseases. Vitamin D is a potent immune modulator, making it very important for the prevention of autoimmune diseases, like multiple sclerosis11 (MS) and inflammatory bowel disease.

Lung disease. In those who are deficient, vitamin D supplementation may reduce flare-ups of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) symptoms by more than 40 percent.12 Other research13 suggests vitamin D may protect against some of the adverse effects of smoking as well.

Infections, including influenza. Vitamin D also fights infections, including colds and the flu, as it regulates the expression of genes that influence your immune system to attack and destroy bacteria and viruses. I believe it's far more prudent, safer, less expensive, and most importantly, far more effective to optimize your vitamin D levels than to get vaccinated against the flu.

DNA repair and metabolic processes. One of Dr. Michael Holick’s studies showed that healthy volunteers taking 2,000 IUs of vitamin D per day for a few months upregulated 291 different genes that control up to 80 different metabolic processes. This included improving DNA repair; having a beneficial effect on autoxidation (oxidation that occurs in the presence of oxygen and /or UV radiation, which has implications for aging and cancer, for example); boosting the immune system; and many other biological processes.

Brain health,(depression,14,15 dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease). Vitamin D receptors appear in a wide variety of brain tissue, and activated vitamin D receptors increase nerve growth in your brain. Vitamin D is therefore important for optimal brain function, mental health, and for the prevention of degenerative brain disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease. According to one recent study,16,17 seniors with low vitamin D levels may double their risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Another study18,19,20 found that people with the highest average intakes of vitamin D had a 77 percent decreased risk for Alzheimer's. Researchers believe that optimal vitamin D levels may enhance the amount of important chemicals in your brain and protect brain cells by increasing the effectiveness of the glial cells in nursing damaged neurons back to health. Vitamin D may also exert some of its beneficial effects on your brain through its anti-inflammatory and immune-boosting properties.

How Much Vitamin Do You Need?

Dr. Robert Heaney is a professor and a well-respected vitamin D researcher, having studied this nutrient for more than 50 years. In the interview above, he shares many of his insights into this question. As a general guideline, an ideal, and what needs to be reclassified as normal, vitamin D level is in the range of 40-60 ng/ml. According to Dr. Heaney, research has shown that 40-60 ng/ml is the level a nursing mother needs in order to ensure her milk will contain the vitamin D her nursing infant needs. The 40-60 ng/ml range is also the same range needed for thyroid health, and it’s the range found in tribal populations living on the equatorial plains of East Africa.

Dr. Heaney has pointed out new research showing that oral sources of vitamin D are much higher than previously thought, and this provides compelling justification for the use of oral supplementation. But virtually every expert I have asked does believe that vitamin D produced from the UVB exposure provides additional therapeutic benefits. But for most people, winter precludes anything other than to increase their oral vitamin D supplementation.

That said, sensible sun exposure appears to be the best way to optimize your vitamin D level. Dr. Heaney stresses that you need to get approximately 5,000 to 6,000 IUs of vitamin D per day from all sources – sun, supplements, and food – in order to reach and maintain a blood level of 40-60 ng/ml.

Keep in mind that the specific dosage is a very loose guideline, because people vary widely in their ability to respond to vitamin D. GrassrootsHealth—which Dr. Heaney is Research Director of—also has a helpful chart showing the average adult dose required to reach healthy vitamin D levels based upon your measured starting point. Ideally, make sure to monitor your levels at regular intervals, and take whatever amount of vitamin D3 you need to maintain a clinically relevant level year-round. Do remember to take vitamin D3—not synthetic D2—along with vitamin K2 and magnesium. To learn more about the reason for this recommendation, please see my previous article, “Magnesium—The Missing Link to Better Health.”

Sources

The Unexpected Implications of Industry Involvement in Trans Fat Research

By Dr. Mercola

I’ve written many articles about the bias inherent in industry-funded research. As a general rule, when research is funded by the industry, the results are likely to overwhelmingly favor the industry’s preconceived stance.

When unfavorable results emerge, confidentiality agreements typically have been signed that prevent the research from ever seeing the light of day.

However, in a paper that I will summarize in this article, titled: "We Spent a Million Bucks and Then We Had To Do Something: The Unexpected Implications of Industry Involvement in Trans Fat Research,"¹ author

David Schleifer points out that, sometimes, industry research may also be the very thing that compels an industry to make a better, safer product. Such was the case with trans fat, he claims, noting that:

“American food manufacturers long denied that transfats were associated with disease... But in 1990, a high-profile study showed that trans fats increased risk factors for heart disease more than saturated fats did.

Industry funded a US Department of Agriculture study that they hoped wouldexonerate trans fats. But the industry-funded... study also indicated that trans fats increasedrisk factors for heart disease more than saturated fats.

Industry quickly began developing trans fat alternatives. This confirmsthat corporations get involved in science in order to defend their products. But involvement in science can be the very meansby which corporations persuade themselves to change their products.”

Food Industry Interests Can Be Flexible...

Food manufacturers have had to disclose trans fat content since 2006, based on the emerging scientific consensus that trans fat consumption in fact increases your risk of heart disease. At least a dozen US states also restricted the use of trans fat in restaurants.

“Dow AgroSciences estimated a 50 percent decrease in the use of partially hydrogenated oils in North America between 2006 and 2008. From 2002 to 2009, trans fats were replaced in approximately 10,000 American food products,” Schleifer writes.

According to Schleifer, this change of heart came about as a result of the food industry’s own findings, which showed that trans fats are indeed worse than the saturated fats they were designed to replace.

His paper goes on to analyze the development of scientific claims about trans fats, with the goal of showing how industry science can, at times, lead to positive change.

“Paradoxically, I show that 'meddling' in science is precisely what led corporations to change their positions in the 1990s and replace trans fats in their products in the 2000s,” he says.

“I give an account of what might be called hegemonic power by showing that industrial actors indeed tried to discredit potentially damaging findings about trans fats. But in their efforts to discredit those findings, industry ended up funding research that showed trans fats increased the risk of heart disease more than saturated fats did.

Rather than manipulating scientific claims in order to defend their products, industry actors changed their products in light of the scientific claims that they participated in producing.”

Schleifer points out that, in the late '80s and early '90s, many consumer advocacy groups actually praised food companies for replacing saturated fats with trans fats, which was widely, albeit wrongly, believed to be healthier.

For example, the activist organization Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) actually notoriously promoted and defended the use of trans fats throughout the '80s, urging food manufacturers to switch from saturated fat to trans fat. At the time, CSPI “relied on the same government reports that industry actors used when they defended trans fats,” Schleifer says.

Once the tide began to turn away from trans fats, trans fat manufacturers and related trade associations did resist by discrediting and downplaying damaging evidence. Some even engaged in more unsavory tactics involving intimidating scientists who produced the damaging findings.

The reasons for such activities are manifold, but it usually boils right back down to money. New scientific claims can trigger costly regulations, and can impact sales, of course.

So clearly, financial incentives are front and center when the food industry meddles with nutritional research. However, conducting research is also one of the ways that corporations “develop, adjust, and redirect their courses of action,” Schleifer insists.

Dr. Kummerow’s Surprise

Schleifer’s article includes a summary of Dr. Fred Kummerow’s lipid research, which is detailed in my previous interview with him (featured above). Dr. Kummerow's work clearly demonstrated that it's not cholesterol that causes heart disease; rather it's the trans fats that are to blame. He was one of the first to make this association, and the first to publish a scientific article on it, in 1957.

Since then, research has repeatedly refuted the correlation between high cholesterol and plaque formation that leads to heart disease. Despite that, the saturated fat/cholesterol myth persisted far longer than seems reasonable, and in my view, industry resistance had an awful lot to do with that.

As a result, tens of thousands of lives have been cut short; the death toll rising with each passing year of inaction... Schleifer, on the other hand, is more forgiving in this regard, noting that:

“Kummerow’s story exemplifies the close connections between academic and industrial science and the sometimes hostile ways in which academics and industry interacted over trans fats...

In an article...[Robert Hastert of the Harshaw Chemical Company] discussed a contentious presentation by Kummerow at the 1974 AOCS meeting that associated trans fats with disease.

'Shouting matches between industry- employed oil chemists on the one hand and so-called ivory tower physiologists and nutritionists on the other are definitely nonproductive,' Hastert wrote.

But Hastert referred to Kummerow’s presentation as an upsetting development 'from within,' rhetorically including academics and industrial scientists as part of the same world. The fats and oils industry looks to the health professions for guidance. Tell us, with at least a reasonably united voice, what you want and what you don’t want...While we may appear grumpy at times, especially when we feel we have been blindsided by ivory tower investigators, we are listening.”

Industry Scientists Try to Maintain the Status Quo

While Hastert claims the industry was listening, a number of industry scientists have been accused of limiting research on trans fats and aggressively refuting negative findings as they cropped up. Two mentioned by Schleifer are J. Edward Hunter, employed by Crisco maker Procter and Gamble, and Thomas Applewhite, who worked at Kraft.

“Hunter, Applewhite,and others often argued that the experimental diets in trans fats studies did not accurately represent real American diets,” Schleifer writes. “Mary Enig published studies that associated trans fats with disease. Hunter, Applewhite, and others strongly criticized her claims....

While still a graduate student, Enig published an epidemiological article correlating trans fat consumption with cancer rates. Note that trans fats are usually associated with heart disease. Enig’s research associating trans fats with cancer is not unique, but it is rare. She has claimed that after her article was published, representatives from the major American edible oils trade association, the Institute of Shortenings and Edible Oils (ISEO), visited her office in person to intimidate her...

More than two decades later, Enig told a Gourmet magazine reporter, “They said they’d been keeping a careful watch to prevent articles like mine from coming out in the literature and didn’t know how this horse had gotten out of the barn”...

A Study Impossible to Ignore...

Under pressure from CSPI and the National Heart Savers Foundation, many food manufacturers began replacing saturated fats with trans fats in the late 1980’s. Then, in 1990, a study that has been retroactively regarded as the beginning of the end for trans fats was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)... Schleifer writes:

“High levels of 'bad' LDL cholesterol are thought to increase the risk of heart disease. But high levels of 'good' high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol are also thought to protect against heart disease. Some types of saturated fats, such as stearic acid, for example, increase good HDL cholesterol.

[Lead author of the NEJM study] Martijn Katan was interested in whether and how trans fats affected good HDL cholesterol. He said that he did not have sufficient funding to address that question until Unilever hired a chief of nutrition who was willing to fund the research that became the NEJM study.

Katan and his graduate assistant Ronald Mensink fed diets based on monounsaturated, saturated, and trans fats to human subjects for three weeks per diet. Katan said the subjects’ cholesterol measurements 'came out totally different from what I had expected and predicted.'

Trans fats raised bad LDL cholesterol and also 'turned out to really lower HDL fairly dramatically.' Katan’s experiment therefore suggested that trans fats increased the risk of heart disease more than saturated fats did. As per his agreement with Unilever, Katan showed them his results before publication. Like him “they were surprised. But they never tried to maneuver things or influence things... or to cover up.”

American organizations and trade groups, on the other hand, were quick to criticize Katan’s study, arguing that “the types and amounts of trans fats used in the Dutch study were not consistent with those found in the American diets.” However, the dam had been broken, and studies that followed only made the case against trans fats stronger. A couple of studies that helped shift the position in the US included Walter Willett’s 1993 study that related trans fat consumption directly to heart disease.

According to Willett’s team, consumption of partially hydrogenated vegetable oils causes more than 30,000 deaths per year, courtesy of the trans fats these oils contain. Joseph Judd’s study, commissioned by the US soybean industry and performed by USDA researchers, also played a key role in shifting perception about trans fats. Judd’s team reconfirmed Katan’s findings. This USDA study also appears to have been a key piece of evidence that finally changed CSPI’s stance on trans fat as well.

Industry-Funded USDA Study Shifts Industry Stance in the US

According to Schleifer, the edible oil industry immediately began pondering solutions when Katan’s study came out, should it be proven correct by other studies. Many food manufacturers had traded saturated fat for trans fat in the 80’s, and were now unsure of what to do next.

“How did suppliers, manufacturers, and trade groups persuade themselves that trans fats really were a problem?” Scheifer writes. “A trade association representative told me that she brought food manufacturers, oil suppliers, and trade associations together into a group that she called the Trans Fat Coalition specifically in order to coordinate research that would address Mensink and Katan’s study. She emphasized that collaborating across corporations is a normal part of how industries 'develop strategies on how to manage an issue.'

Another industry professional said that interfirm collaboration allows companies and trade associations to set industry-wide priori ties and to pool research funds. He explained that research committees meet regularly to talk about shared problems and opportunities, but that they exclude discussion of business in favor of science.

One industry professional who participated in the Trans Fat Coalition explained to me, 'The industry itself wanted to get to the bottom on what’s going on with trans fat and they spent several millions of dollars through USDA in order to get the best science.' The Trans Fat Coalition funded an existing USDA nutritional science laboratory to replicate Mensink and Katan’s experiment. This became known as the Judd study, after its lead author.

The industry coalition assisted Judd’s lab with research design and provided experimental materials meant to accurately represent the types and amounts of trans fats found in American diets. As one industry professional said, 'It was completely the belief of this group that the Mensink and Katan study was not well done... and [Judd] would show that it wasn’t true.' However, the Judd study in fact confirmed Mensink and Katan’s results.”

'We Spent a Million Bucks, and Then We Had to Do Something'

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published the Judd study in April 1994, which concluded that: “trans fats raise LDL cholesterol to a slightly lesser degree than do saturates, and... may result in minor reductions of HDL cholesterol... The present study, together with that of Mensink and Katan and other recent investigations, indicates that dietary transfatty acids may adversely affect plasma cholesterol risk factors for heart disease.”

One food industry employee interviewed by Schleifer claims that as soon as they were reasonably convinced about the health risks, they immediately set about to find a suitable replacement. According to Schleifer’s account, the interviewee stated that: “We spent a million bucks and... proved that the science was right, and then we had to do something.”

“Industry actors initiated the USDA Judd study specifically in order to disprove the Mensink and Katan study. This is troubling. But industry actors apparently felt they needed a scientific study, carried out in a nonindustrial laboratory, in order to know whether trans fats were a problem. This indicates the extent to which industry actors believe science matters,” Schleifer writes.

Should Industry Meddle with Science?

Schleifer believes the trans fat case shows two sides of the same coin. First, it confirms that industry indeed “meddles in science in order to defend their products.” But it also demonstrates that sometimes corporations will use negative findings to “persuade themselves that a product needs to be changed.” That’s a good thing. It’s unfortunate it doesn’t happen quicker, and more often, and in more branches of industry. I personally feel there are a number of industries that have and continue to fight tooth and nail against evidence showing their products to be very harmful. The tobacco- and chemical technology industries are but two examples where you’d be hard-pressed to find any real shifts in position based on their own research.

“This returns us to the question of why industrial actors recalculated their positions on trans fats instead of digging in and resisting,” Schleifer writes. “Trade associations, suppliers, and manufacturers apparently expected to profit or at least to avoid trouble by replacing trans fats. The Unilever chief nutritionist who facilitated the NEJM study commented to the Washington Post about trans fats, 'Unilever found that if you make yourself vulnerable by not being able to defend your product, you have big problems.'

But firms may be less likely to fight damning scientific findings when they can swap out troublesome aspects of their products and profit by doing so... Food companies may be particularly prone to introduce 'new and improved' products as part of their efforts to 'grow' their brands. Corporations may change products in order to get ahead of regulators and competitors. They may try to create new desires among consumers, whether for products free of trans fats, fortified with probiotic flora, or flavored with the latest antioxidant 'superfruit.'

Other industries may be less able to be flexible than the food industry... Social scientists cannot assume that industrial involvement in science skews the truth...Industrial involvement in science can have a variety of consequences.

These include disturbing instances of suppression but they also include changing how firms manufacture their products. Social scientists have to closely follow how scientific claims matter to industrial action. We have to be vigilant in watching not only what corporations do to scientific claims but also what they do on the basis of those claims. All commercial products are manufactured and marketed by economically interested and presumably greedy corporations. But interestedness does not mean that industrial actors will necessarily prefer to keep their products unchanged.”