Herbed Chicken Salad Recipe

By Dr. Mercola

Chicken salad is mentioned in US cookbooks dating back to the early 1800s,¹ but it’s likely this traditional dish came to be long before that. It’s said the Chinese were actually the first to mix together chicken with oil and spices, creating the first variation of Asian chicken salad.

American chicken salad, at its most basic level, is a mixture of chicken and mayonnaise (or a similar “binder”) along with various additions like celery and onions. It was reportedly first served in America at a Rhode Island meat market called Town Meats in 1863. The owner mixed leftover chicken with mayonnaise, tarragon and grapes and customers loved it.²

If you’re looking for a filling and healthy lunch or dinner, try the herbed chicken salad recipe below,³ and be sure to keep reading for tips on how to make classic chicken salad healthier than ever.

Healthy Herbed Chicken Salad Ingredients: 1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves 1/4 cup basil leaves 1/2 cup fresh dill sprigs 2 oil-packed anchovies, drained 1 small garlic clove 1⁄3 cup homemade mayonnaise (based on avocado or olive oil and egg, see below) 1⁄3 cup raw sour cream 2 Tbs. lemon juice Freshly ground black pepper 1 lb. cooked organic, free-range chicken, shredded 2 jarred roasted red peppers, well-drained and chopped (or substitute fresh roasted peppers) 3 inner celery ribs with leaves, thinly sliced 8 cups mixed salad greens 1/2 lb. tomatoes, chopped Procedure: Make the herbed mayonnaise: In a food processor, pulse the herbs, anchovies, and garlic until coarsely chopped. Add the mayonnaise, sour cream, and lemon juice and process until smooth. Season to taste with the pepper. In a large bowl, toss the herbed mayonnaise with the chicken, peppers, and celery. Serve on the salad greens and garnish with the tomatoes.

The Quality of Your Chicken Matters

One factor that will make or break the quality of your chicken salad is, not surprisingly, the chicken. Be prepared that if you watch the video above – a clip from Food, Inc. that shows the reality of industrial chicken farms or CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) – you may lose your appetite.

You’ll see chickens with oversized breasts, which distort their body proportions so badly they can barely walk. You’ll see chickens that are diseased and dying (or already dead), all packed into a huge dark pen. This is inhumane, clearly, but it’s also unhealthy – grossly so.

Nearly all (99 percent) of American chickens come from CAFOs like the one in the video above (or worse). These animals are typically fed genetically engineered (GE) corn and soybeans, which is a far cry from their natural diet of seeds, green plants, insects and worms.

Byproducts of processing, such as chicken feathers and other animal parts, can also be added to the feed. This unnatural diet further exacerbates disease promulgation.

To prevent the inevitable spread of disease from stress, overcrowding, lack of vitamin D (as CAFO chickens may never see the light of day), and an unnatural diet, the animals are routinely fed antibiotics.

Those antibiotics pose a direct threat to human health, and contaminate the environment when they run off into lakes, rivers, aquifers, and drinking water. According to a landmark "Antibiotic Resistance Threat Report" published by the CDC, at least 2 million Americans become infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year, and at least 23,000 of them die as a direct result of those infections.⁴

According to a University of Florida report that reviewed data on the 14 pathogens that cause 95 percent of total cases of food-borne illness, poultry was found to cause more food-borne disease than any other food, amounting to $2.4 billion in costs of illness.⁵

The primary bacteria to blame were Campylobacter, followed by Salmonella.  Campylobacter bacteria are found on chicken carcasses in slaughterhouses and in commercial poultry products – including on the outside of poultry packaging – where they can easily infect you, your children or even your pets.

This Is How Chicken Is Supposed to Be Raised...

I strongly encourage you to avoid CAFO chicken and instead choose food sourced from local farms that are raising chickens the right way. The chickens should be allowed outside and they should be able to roam and eat insects and other natural foods. Please watch my video above with farmer Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm to see how this looks in the real world.

Fortunately, finding high-quality pastured chickens (and organic eggs) is relatively easy, as virtually every rural area has small farmers with chickens. If you live in an urban area, visiting the local health food stores and farmers' markets are typically the quickest route to finding high-quality local chicken sources. If you’re buying chicken from a typical grocery store, be aware that labels can be misleading. Look for organic “pasture raised” poultry – and follow up with the producer to find out exactly how much time the chickens spend on pasture.

How to Make Homemade Mayonnaise

The other factor that can make or break the health value of your chicken salad is the mayonnaise. Most prepared mayos are made with primarily GE soybean oil, one of the most harmful oils you can eat. This type of oil, whether partially hydrogenated, organic, or made from newer soybean varieties modified in such a way as to not require hydrogenation, are highly processed and wreak chaos in your body at the cellular level, paving the way for problems ranging from obesity and diabetes to reproductive disorders and heart disease.

The majority of soybeans grown in the US are genetically engineered and, as a result, are saturated with dangerous levels of the herbicide glyphosate, which has been linked to a growing list of serious health problems. Even though you may not consider mayonnaise a sweet product, most commercial varieties also contain high fructose corn syrup or other forms of fructose, which adds to the toxic load on your liver.

If you think you can't live without your mayo, consider using an organic variety made with olive oil or grapeseed oil. Many people also enjoy mashed avocado in place of mayonnaise, or you can simply make your own homemade mayo. Mayonnaise is easy to make in a blender and, when made with healthy oils and fresh, organic eggs, is actually good for you. If you make your own, it won't last as long but it will taste much better, and you just make smaller batches.

Good mayo requires only a few basic ingredients: olive oil, organic egg yolks, vinegar or lemon juice, mustard, and a little unprocessed salt. Whip the ingredients together (adjust the amounts to your taste) and you have a spread that’s not only good for you, but tastes so delicious you won’t ever want to go back to the store-bought version.

Poached or Roasted? What’s the Best Way to Prepare Chicken for Chicken Salad?

If you’re a seasoned cook or foodie, you may be familiar with the debate over poached or roasted meat for chicken salad. The former, poached, yields a moist, smooth chicken salad while the latter, roasted, adds flavor and more texture. There’s no “right” answer, and you might end up using whatever type you have on hand. Making chicken salad is an excellent way to use up leftover roast chicken, and if you’re in a pinch some health food stores have organic rotisserie chicken already cooked. 

Perhaps the best way to prepare the chicken for your chicken salad, however, is to poach the meat in the process of making a healthy bone broth using a whole chicken. You’ll know the meat is ready when it starts to separate from the bone. Simply remove the chicken for your chicken salad and continue simmering the broth (which you can later eat alone or make into a chicken soup).

Research Proves Causation—Sugar Consumption Increases Risk for Chronic Disease

By Dr. Mercola

What is the proper role of sugar in our society? It used to be a condiment; now it’s a diet staple. Mounting evidence clearly shows that refined sugar is a primary factor causing not just obesity, but also chronic disease.

According to Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco (USCF), sugar acts as a chronic, dose-dependent liver toxin (poison) when consumed in excess.

You might recognize Dr. Lustig from one of the most popular YouTube videos on sugar that has over 5 million views. You might also have seen him on 60 Minutes, which ran a report on the dangers of sugar in 2012.

You might also have seen him sparring with Stephen Colbert or Bill Maher. Or you might know him from his book, Fat Chance.

Never before have humans consumed as much sugar as we do today, and the ramifications of this dietary change are quite clear. Fructose, found in most processed foods, is by far the worst form of sugar, causing the greatest amount of harm in the shortest amount of time.

For example, in one clinical trial, test subjects who consumed high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) developed higher risk factors for cardiovascular disease in just two weeks.

Chronic Disease Has Risen in Lockstep with Sugar Consumption

Historically, sugar was used as a condiment. As early as 1200 BC, India developed a process to extract cane juice, called khanda, which is where we got the word “candy” from.

"It was for nobility and it was hard to come by, until about year 1700, when the pot still allowed for mass production of refined sugar. It was still extraordinarily expensive until the middle of 18th -19th century," Dr. Lustig says.

"At that point, we started seeing it appearing in various venues. We started seeing the growth of American sugar industry in Louisiana, Texas, and Hawaii. That's when we started seeing chronic metabolic disease.

In fact, the very first demonstration of an increase in chronic metabolic disease was in 1924, when Hayden Emerson, the commissioner of health of New York City, noticed a seven-fold increase in diabetes rate in the [city’s] population.

Then in 1931, Dr. Paul Dudley White (cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital) called attention to the fact that we had an epidemic of heart disease.

Finally, in 1988, we learned about the advent of adolescent type 2 diabetes. These are the three seminal hallmarks of chronic metabolic disease pervading our population. It goes up in lockstep with our increase in per capita sugar consumption.”

The bottom line is that sugar used to be something we added to coffee and tea. We had full control over the amount we ate. Today, we consume about 20 times more sugar than our ancestors did, and we have very little control over the amount since it’s become a diet staple.

It’s now found in virtually every processed food you can think of. On average, sugar makes up 15 percent of total calories consumed (about 19.5 teaspoons per day), and your liver, which processes sugar, simply cannot handle that kind of load. When you overload your liver in this way, you inevitably end up with chronic metabolic disease.

"Basically, sugar is metabolized virtually identically to that of alcohol, and we are now seeing diseases in children that we never saw before, and they are alcohol-related diseases, like non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes.

Kids don’t drink alcohol but they certainly consume sugar, and that’s the point,” Dr. Lustig says. “Sugar is the alcohol of the child. And we are all overdosed.

We have gone beyond our limits and we are now evidencing a massive increase in chronic metabolic disease that is chewing through the health care resources of every developed and developing country on the planet, and this is unsustainable."

Insulin Resistance—A Hallmark of Metabolic Syndrome

According to Dr. Lustig, whatever organ becomes insulin resistant ends up manifesting its own chronic metabolic disease. For example, when you have insulin resistance of the liver, you end up with type 2 diabetes.

When you have insulin resistance of the brain, you end up with Alzheimer’s disease. Insulin resistance of the kidney leads to chronic renal disease, and so forth. All of these diseases are insulin resistant states. The question is what causes the insulin resistance in the first place?

"[W]e have some new data that we are very excited about, which demonstrate that if you overload the mitochondria, the little energy-burning factories within cells, in any given organ, you'll end up manifesting various forms of chronic metabolic disease," Dr. Lustig says.

“The chemical that overloads the mitochondria best is trans-fats. But the chemical that overloads the mitochondria next best is sugar. Trans fats and sugar pretty much characterize the processed food diet.”

In November 2013, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) removed trans fats from the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) list. This is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, instead of reverting back to healthy saturated fats like coconut oil, lard, and butter, trans fats have been replaced with other non-saturated vegetable oils, that when heated, produce toxic aldehydes which cause cellular damage.  

We may not realize the full ramifications of this switch until a decade or two down the line. Sugar, on the other hand, is going to be even more difficult to dislodge from the food system.

According to SugarScience.org, added sugars hide in 74 percent of processed foods under more than 60 different names.¹ And yet, getting rid of the excess sugar in processed food is exactly what needs to be done.

"As long as sugar is on that (GRAS) list, the food industry has license to use as much as it wants to in any given food stuff. So, sugar has become the biggest problem in our diet since the advent of trans fats," Dr. Lustig says. "Granted, there are many problems with processed food. There's too much of five things and too little of three things.

There's too much trans fats; too much omega-6 fatty acids (which are pro-inflammatory); too much branched-chain amino acids (which also overload your liver and cause chronic metabolic disease)... too much alcohol, and too much sugar.

On the too-little side, there's too little fiber, too few micronutrients, and too little omega-3 fatty acids, which are anti-inflammatory. Processed food has a zillion things wrong with it. Unfortunately, processed food is what we subsidize. Processed food is what we expect people to consume because of 1) expense and 2) shelf life. That’s making a fortune for the food industry, but it’s killing us.”

Is There a Safe Threshold for Sugar?

According to Dr. Lustig, trans fats are “without question consumable poison.” But is sugar as bad or worse than trans fat? Dr. Lustig says no, it’s not worse, because while there is no threshold at which trans fats are safe, there may be a threshold below which sugar will not cause a problem. While there are individual differences, as a general rule the safety threshold for sugar appears to be around six to nine teaspoons (25-38 grams) of added sugar per day.

“That’s what the data suggest, because your liver does have the capacity to metabolize fructose, as long as the mitochondria don’t get overwhelmed,” Dr. Lustig says. “So as long as you keep it below the threshold, above which toxicity would occur, I think that, probably, sugar is okay.”

Whether or not you're insulin resistant will play a role, as insulin resistance generates hyperinsulinemia. Hyperinsulinemia means that there's more insulin at the fat cell, which means you'll shunt more energy into those fat cells because that's what insulin does. Insulin resistance is clearly associated with weight gain. But while many believe that insulin resistance is the result of weight gain, recent data argues against that notion, Dr. Lustig says. Instead, the data shows that insulin is what drives the weight gain.

When your liver turns excess sugar into liver fat and becomes insulin resistant, that generates hyperinsulinemia, and hyperinsulinemia drives energy storage into body fat.

Currently, about two-thirds of the American population is overweight. About one-quarter to one-third is diabetic or prediabetic, and another quarter of the population is hypertensive. Many also have high serum triglycerides.  Insulin resistance is a component of all of these health issues. According to Dr. Lustig, the data shows that at least 50 percent of Americans have some form of insulin resistance—whether you’re overweight or not—and that is what’s driving our seemingly out-of-control disease statistics.

Metabolic Disease in America

As Dr. Lustig notes, if you were to do a Venn diagram^2,3 of the United States population, you'd have 240 million adults in that diagram, divided into two circles. One circle would be about twice as big as the other: the obese population forming a smaller circle of about 30 percent, and the non-obese population forming a larger circle of about 70 percent. Eighty percent (57 million people) of the obese population is metabolically ill. They have insulin resistance that manifests itself in a myriad of ways, including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, heart disease, cancer, and dementia.

"The standard mantra is, 'If they would just diet and exercise, they wouldn't be obese and we could solve this problem,'" Dr. Lustig says. "This is patently untrue. It is true that 80 percent of the obese population is metabolically ill. But that means that 20 percent of the obese population is not. They're metabolically healthy. They are called metabolically healthy obese. They will live a completely normal life, die at a completely normal age, and not cost the taxpayer a dime. They are just fat. They're not contributing to our runaway medical train, as it were."

Conversely, it turns out that of the 70 percent that are of normal weight (168 million people), 40 percent of them (67 million people) have insulin resistance on lab testing, and they manifest aspects of the metabolic syndrome as well. They too get type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and dementia. The prevalence of metabolic disease among normal weight people is not as great as among obese people—40 percent versus 80 percent—but they do get ill and there are far more people in this group.

“When you do the math, there are more thin sick people than there are fat sick people,” Dr. Lustig says.  “The thin sick people are actually costing more, and when you do the math on the two together, the sick population is 124 million—that’s more than half of the US adult population. It turns out the thin sick people are costing us more...

And you can't attribute this to gluttony and sloth or diet and [lack of] exercise, because they're normal weight. If it's not about behavior, then there's only one other option: it must be about exposure. This is an exposure that obese people are exposed to and it's an exposure that even normal weight people are exposed to. That is called the Western diet. The Western diet is replete with sugar. Sugar is mechanistically the thing that drives this insulin resistance."

How Do You Resolve Insulin Resistance?

The answer can be summarized in two words: real food. According to Dr. Lustig, the overwhelming majority, 60-70 percent of the patients seen in his clinic are there as a result of their processed food diet.

"What we have to do is we have to move them back [to real food], and what we do is we explain what real food is. A lot of kids don't even know what real food is. A lot of kids think that fruit flavored yogurt is real food; it is not. We explain that yogurt is sour milk [it's not sweet]... So if you want yogurt, have plain yogurt and throw whole fruit in, just like what Europeans do. That's called real food."

Intermittent fasting may be another way to address insulin resistance. Although Dr. Lustig doesn’t think most people have to go this far, he believes it can work for some. When you fast, your liver burns off the available liver fat. So you’re temporarily depleting your liver fat stores, restoring metabolic stability to your liver and improving hepatic insulin sensitivity. That said, he believes that the long-term answer for most people lies simply in eating real food.

"I think you can do this rationally, by eating properly all the way through the week rather than having to do intermittent fasting. I think, ultimately, the goal is get the liver fat down. And since the cause of the liver fat is dietary sugar, via the process of De novo lipogenesis... once you get rid of the sugar, the liver fat will go down, and we have data that supports that, both in adults and in children... I think, ultimately, what you have to do is get the liver fat down. Will intermittent fasting do that? Yes, it will. But will eating properly do that too? It does it even better," he says.

"What we tell people are these very simple rules, all of which are evidence-based: get rid of every sugared beverage in the house. Then, eat your carbohydrate with fiber. Whole food is okay because the fiber mitigates the negative effects of the fructose on hepatic metabolism, because it reduces the rate of absorption... We don't tell people they can't eat sugar. But they have to eat sugar in a form that nature provided it, and it's called whole fruit."

The Importance of Exercise

Exercise is also an important component. Interestingly, Dr. Lustig notes that exercise works not by promoting weight loss; rather its benefits are related to the fact that exercise promotes muscle gain. It may be a fine distinction, but one worth noting nonetheless. There is a transcription factor known as Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1-alpha (PGC-1α), which is involved in mitochondrial biogenesis. When you turn up PGC-1α, you make more mitochondria. Increasing your sympathetic muscle tone. This is what exercise does, it turns on PGC-1α. So, in short, exercise increases muscle mass, which increases mitochondria, and this in turn improves insulin sensitivity.

"Every doctor who tells their patient, 'Well, if you'd exercise, you'd lose weight.' Given what we know now, this statement is tantamount to malpractice, because it isn’t true. There are no studies that show [exercise leads to weight loss]. Yet, exercise is the single best thing you can do for yourself and we should be promoting it, but we have to explain to patients what the outcome variable they should be looking at is. And the outcome variable is belt size [waist size], because they will reduce their visceral fat. They will lose inches, not pounds. And losing inches means improved metabolic health," Dr. Lustig explains.

Research Proves Causation—Sugar Definitely Increases Risk for Disease

At present, there are 15 agencies and 51 separate agreements controlling food regulatory activities in the US, and according to Dr. Lustig, “no one knows what the other hand is doing, and the food industry takes complete advantage of this.” Dr. Lustig and many others are pushing for a national food policy. He also insists that “it’s time for us to take food back as a mode of therapy.” And if food is medicine, doctors really must be taught a thing or two about nutrition...

“We have the data. We don’t have correlation anymore. Now, we have causation. We have causation for sugar and obesity (although sugar is not the only cause). We have causation for sugar and diabetes, for heart disease, and for fatty liver disease... We now have causation. It’s time to do something about it.”

For example, a paper by Yang, et al, published in JAMA Internal Medicine last year looked at consumption of added sugar over two decades, as a percentage of total calories, concluding that it significantly contributed to cardiovascular deaths. People who consumed 30 percent of their daily calories as added sugar (like many teenagers are) had a four-fold greater risk of dying from heart disease.

"If you think we got a problem now, wait until our teenagers hit heart disease age; things are really going to be even worse shortly," he notes. "Food should confer wellness, not illness, and it used to. But then, the food industry got involved. And now it confers illness, not wellness. We have to take back our food."

To counter the propaganda provided by profit-driven industry interests, dozens of scientists at three American universities—including Dr. Lustig—have created a new educational website called SugarScience.org,⁴ aimed at making independent research available to the public. To learn more about what the science really says about sugar, I highly recommend browsing through the site.

Documentary “Shots in the Dark” Delves into Catastrophic Vaccine Reactions

By Dr. Mercola

As a result of today's skyrocketing rates of chronic disease and disability among children, including autism, some scientists are questioning the safety of large-scale vaccination programs.

In spite of serious adverse effects among some particularly vulnerable people—many of whom are children—public health officials and many doctors giving vaccines continue to bury their heads in the sand, refusing to even acknowledge there's a problem.

The featured documentary, "Shots in the Dark: Silence on Vaccine," takes a hard look at vaccine toxicity and its impact on families. Although released in 2011, the concerns raised are still relevant today.

Current research casts a shadow of doubt about vaccines being as safe as people have been led to believe. Several concerned scientists and many vaccine safety critics are sounding the alarm in hopes of gaining the attention of a public that tends to believe, without question, what doctors and the media say—that vaccines are unquestionably safe for everyone.

Certainly the original intention behind mass vaccination programs was a noble one—to reduce the spread of dangerous infections and increase our children's odds of living long, healthy lives.

However, cases of severe, debilitating vaccine-triggered illnesses are becoming less of a rarity and lead to the logical conclusion that we may be trading artificial, temporary vaccine acquired immunity for life-long illness and disability.

Vaccine Safety Studies Severely Outdated – By Almost 100 Years!

There is increasing evidence that vaccines cause children to suffer more adverse reactions than any other pharmaceutical product.

Some of the recent research points to vaccines playing a key role in cases of autism, multiple sclerosis, Guillain-Barre syndrome and other major illnesses, particularly among individuals who are predisposed to react adversely to vaccine components.

Vaccines contain a variety of toxic compounds, including thimerosal (a mercury-containing preservative) and aluminum hydroxide, the most commonly used adjuvant which may be even more dangerous than mercury.

Vaccines are a $30 billion per year industry. Decades ago there used to be dozens of vaccine manufacturers, but today just five big drug corporations dominate the lucrative world vaccine market: Pfizer, Merck, Sanofi Pasteur, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline.

Vaccine manufacturers, government health officials, medical trade associations and the majority of physicians reject outright any suggestion of a cause-and-effect relationship between vaccines and serious illness, relying on poorly designed studies, some dating back to the late 1920s.

With the scientific advancements over the past century, those studies are seriously dated. For example, in the 1920s we had no idea that certain compounds interact to produce toxic and mutating effects on human DNA.

There is no way to predict how vaccines may be causing new mutations and damaging you or your child's DNA because it simply hasn't been studied. There is much we didn't know then about how the brain and immune systems develop and function, and much we still don't know.

Today, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)¹ recommends 69 doses of 16 vaccines for your child, starting on his or her day of birth and continuing through age 18—including 49 doses before the age of six. This is more than double the number of vaccines prescribed 30 years ago.

Such a regimen typically manipulates and deals a heavy blow to your child's developing immune system, raising his or her risk for development of brain dysfunction and autoimmune disorders.

Vaccine Adjuvants Linked to Dangerous Gene Mutations

The official line is that vaccines don't cause a type of brain and immune dysfunction that is labeled by doctors as "autism" or "autism spectrum disorder." However, rates of autism, along with many other chronic immunological and neurological diseases have exploded over exactly the same time period that our infants and children have been hit with increasing numbers of vaccines.

Autism rates are approximately 200 times higher than they were 30 years ago. In 1985, autism affected one child in 10,000 in America. In 2014, it was one in 50. Senior MIT Research Scientist Stephanie Seneff estimates that, based on current projections, half of all children will have autism by the year 2025! ²

Vaccine advocates claim that autism is a "genetic disease," but that's an outdated model. Emerging evidence suggests that autism is actually an epigenetic disease—meaning, autism is triggered by de novo mutations that change a child's genes.

But what's causing these mutations and DNA changes? They are likely caused by a number of coexisting factors, related to the toxic nature of our modern world. Environmental chemicals and other toxins can turn genes on that would ordinarily be dormant, and turn genes off that would normally protect you.

For example, some researchers have correlated elevated autism rates with the introduction of vaccines that use human fetal cell lines and retroviral contaminants. There is also scientific evidence that the mercury preservatives and aluminum adjuvants in vaccines are creating health problems.

Scientist Finds Direct Evidence of Mercury Overload in Autistic Children

Human exposures to mercury and aluminum have increased dramatically over the past 30 years. The human body isn't equipped to break down and eliminate these heavy metals, so they tend to accumulate in tissues over time. It's been a challenging task for scientists to tease out exactly what effect this increased mercury load has on long term health.

For example, researchers have found that some people have a more difficult time excreting mercury from the body than others potentially due to genetic or other biological differences. Accumulation of mercury in the human body can have devastating effects on health.

Dr. Robert Nataf, Director of the Philippe Auguste Laboratory in Paris, France, was tasked with exploring the biology of children diagnosed with autism. He found direct evidence of mercury toxicity in the children, who had elevated porphyrin levels. Porphyrins are essential compounds that help you fight toxins, and he found porphyrins specific to mercury elevated in autistic children, which suggests mercury overload.

Prior studies have shown that when a person has mercury poisoning, the body's cells cannot build the intercellular transport network (microtubules) necessary to get substances made by the cell to where they are needed. The result of this blockage can be chronic illness. In the documentary, Dr. Nataf uses this metaphor: "Mercury is like a highway accident. The result is a weakening of the cell's functioning. When a cell weakens, it starts making mistakes, creating malformations."

Aluminum Adjuvants May Cause Your Body to Attack Itself

Total Video Length: 41:58

Download Interview Transcript

In the video above, Dr. David Ayoub discusses how the aluminum in vaccines may be even more dangerous than mercury. Aluminum is to your brain and central nervous system as cigarette smoke is to your lungs, producing tremendous oxidative stress. When you review the signs and symptoms of aluminum toxicity, they are quite similar to the symptoms of autism, ADHD, Alzheimer's, ALS, Parkinson's and other neurological diseases.

Aluminum hydroxide is the oldest and most commonly used vaccine adjuvant and is considered "safe," in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary. An adjuvant's role is to hyper-stimulate the immune system to mount a strong antibody response to the lab altered virus or bacteria introduced into the body by a vaccine. It was once thought that the body eliminated aluminum hydroxide within a few days of an aluminum containing vaccine being injected into it, but scientists now know this isn't necessarily true.  For genetic or biological reasons that we don't yet understand, some people appear predisposed to poor aluminum detoxification, so it accumulates in their tissues and leads to myalgias, fatigue, cognitive deficiencies and other health problems.

Although somewhat rare, another illness that can result from injected aluminum hydroxide is macrophagic myofasciitis³ (MMF), marked by disabling pain in your muscles, skin and fascia. Muscle biopsies of those with MMF show dark fibrous structures in the cytoplasm of their macrophages, proven to be aluminum hydroxide. The macrophages in their muscle tissue form masses called granulomas, and the resulting inflammation causes widespread pain throughout their bodies.

The aluminum vaccine adjuvant is doing what it was designed to do, telling the immune system to mount a strong response, but when aluminum is lodged in your muscle, your body can attack itself and elicit a classic autoimmune reaction. Aluminum can travel around your body easily, unimpeded, piggybacking on your iron transport system. It crosses biological barriers that normally keep other types of toxins out, such as your blood-brain barrier. Over time, aluminum can accumulate in your brain and cause brain inflammation. Aluminum toxicity may be contributing to the Alzheimer's epidemic, as well as other neurological and immune disorders commonly seen today.

Vaccines May Contain Six Times More Aluminum Than Labels Say

If you go by the aluminum content on vaccine labels, the amount kids are getting is excessive, but if you add in the aluminum NOT listed on the labels—"accidental exposure" due to contamination—it's a much more serious problem. Dr. Ayoub cites one study that found five to six times more aluminum in vaccines than what was actually listed on the labels. Vaccines are not the only source of aluminum exposure—it's present in the air, water, food, beverages, cosmetics, anti-perspirants and other consumer products. Not surprisingly, as children's aluminum burden has increased, so has the prevalence of childhood neurological disorders.

Can Vaccines Cause Permanent Brain Damage?

Although there are a number of biological mechanisms that have been implicated in facilitating vaccine-induced brain inflammation and immune dysfunction, clues about the effects of heavy metal toxicity on your brain can be found in the relatively new field of neuroimmunology. The brain's immune system is comprised of cells called microglia, which function similarly to the macrophages found in other parts of the body. You have as many microglia in your brain as neurons—they cover nearly all of your brain tissue, and they are mobile, moving about in order to identify and destroy foreign particles that pose a threat to your neurons.

Playing a key role in your brain's immune response, microglia produce a number of inflammatory molecules. This inflammatory response is a two-edged sword. If inflammation does not resolve, it can damage cerebral tissue—damage that CAN be permanent. When microglia are confused, they sometimes become "hyperactive" and attack everything, which can lead to cognitive deficiencies, demyelination, permanent brain damage or even death.  This is how vaccine adjuvants may cause permanent brain damage, especially among infants and children with genetic susceptibilities and underlying neurological or immune system disorders that may or may not have been diagnosed.

If your child has a hypersensitive immune response pattern that's different from the norm, he or she may be at increased risk for suffering a vaccine reaction.  At the present time, it is well known that the large gaps in vaccine safety science mean that doctors have few ways to reliably predict which child is going to experience such a reaction. Parents are seldom warned of all vaccine risks, even when their child has had a previous vaccine reaction or has a known neurological or immune system disorder that has the potential to raise those risks!

Most Adverse Vaccine Reactions Are Never Connected

Proving causation is extremely difficult with vaccine reactions. Unless symptoms of a vaccine reaction are immediate and dramatic, parents and doctors may not connect a child's health deterioration to vaccinations a child received. When parents report a reaction to their child's physician, they are typically told the illness couldn't possibly be related to the vaccine – it is just a "coincidence" say most pediatricians. Only the most extreme, dramatic and life-threatening vaccine reactions end up in federal vaccine court—the ones where the "dots" are easily connected. Unfortunately, at that point the damage is already done, and all too often it's permanent.

The CDC's VAERS database (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System)⁴ lists 8,000 different adverse vaccine reactions, from localized swelling and anaphylactic shock to autism, coma and death.⁵ Because of the factors already discussed, the actual number of reactions is probably much higher than the database reports. The vast majority of adverse reactions are never reported.

Government's Best Kept Secret: The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program

Given the furor that erupts when anybody publicly questions vaccine safety, you would think that US government officials are certain that vaccines are safe for everyone. But in reality, they've known about serious vaccine risks for decades and they know that some people are more susceptible to having vaccine reactions that lead to permanent injuries and death.  

At the insistence of vaccine manufacturers pressing Congress for a shield from vaccine injury lawsuits, 30 years ago Congress established the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). Vaccine injury cases are adjudicated in the US Court of Claims, also known as "Vaccine Court."⁶ The VICP is supposed to provide non-adversarial, expedited financial compensation for vaccine victims according to provisions in the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act,⁷ which absolved vaccine manufacturers, pediatricians and other vaccine providers of nearly all responsibility and liability for vaccine injuries and deaths.

Unfortunately, two out of three vaccine victims applying to the VICP are turned away empty-handed. Very few families ever see a dime from this program, or they have ridiculously long waits for their cases to be heard and settled. Many parents are unaware that the compensation program even exists and miss the short filing deadlines for filing a vaccine injury claim in the VICP (two years following a vaccine death and three years following the first symptom of a vaccine injury).

The families seeking compensation are in vaccine court not because they were opposed to vaccination but because of what happened when they DID vaccinate their children. In the documentary "Bought," vaccine safety activist Dawn Loughborough says this about VICP:

"We used to have this idea we were protecting children from infectious diseases. And we created the National Vaccine program with children in mind, but somewhere in time protecting the program became more important than what's happening to our children."

Do No Harm?

Another issue standing in the way of ensuring that pharmaceutical products licensed by the FDA are safe is ensuring that those who are involved in the licensing and safety monitoring process are free from conflicts of interest. For example, there is evidence that individuals with ties to the pharmaceutical industry occupy a significant number of seats on FDA advisory committees that review new prescription drug licensing applications.

Apparently, conflicts of interest are rampant with a recent published study⁸ revealing that on average, 13 percent of the members of FDA advisory committees in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) have a financial interest in the company whose drug is up for committee review. The Precautionary Principle—establish safety first—has been replaced with do whatever it takes to rush a drug to market.

Then, when it has been found to cause severe and sometimes fatal health outcomes, like Vioxx, health officials simply deal with the fallout later. And then there is the pharmaceutical lobby, arguably the most powerful lobby in Washington with more than 600 lobbyists doling out funds to political candidates of both parties—in exchange for their loyalty, of course. This is why getting anything done in Congress that the drug industry doesn't want done is next to impossible.

Please Share Your Story

It's about time we had some good science to accurately assess how many people are being injured by vaccines, and who is most at risk.  The vaccine injured cannot be swept under the rug like nothing more than "statistically acceptable collateral damage" from one-size-fits-all vaccination policies.

If you or a family member has suffered a serious vaccine reaction, injury, or death, please report it and talk about it. If we don't share information and experiences with one another, then everybody feels alone and afraid to speak up. If you have a different perspective on a vaccine story that appears in your local newspaper, write a letter to the editor. Make a call to a radio talk show that is only presenting one side of the story. We cannot allow the drug companies and medical trade associations funded by drug companies, or public health officials promoting vaccine mandates, to dominate the conversation.

The Year in Sleep

By Dr. Mercola

Considering how important sleep is for survival, very little is known about how much sleep humans actually get each night. There are surveys that have been done, of course, but most of these rely on self-reporting of sleep time, which can be notoriously inaccurate.

If you go to bed at 10 pm and get out of bed at 7 am, you might say you’ve slept for nine hours. In reality, you probably spent at least 15-30 minutes falling asleep and may have woken during the night once or more.

With the advent of fitness-tracking wristbands such as Jawbone’s UP24, however, we now have access to actual sleep data (and more) from wristband users. The data is quite useful on a personal level.

Newer devices, like Jawbone’s UP3 that should be released in early 2015, can even tell you what activities led to your best sleep and what factors resulted in poor sleep. However, it’s also fascinating on a larger scale, as the data reveal insights into sleep patterns from around the world.

What Influences Sleep Patterns Around the Globe?

Jawbone impressively collected data from 1 million UP users (I was one of them) in 2014, revealing a “year in sleep.” There were some differences by country, but three events seemed to influence sleep patterns the most in all countries tracked:

• Sporting events
• Time changes
• Holidays

In the US, for instance, Americans tend to sleep longer on three-day weekends and holidays (like Thanksgiving weekend). Brian Wilt, principal data scientist at Jawbone, detailed 9 more fascinating facts about sleep habits from around the world:¹

1. United States: The practice of moving clocks ahead one hour for daylight saving time in the spring leads to the worst sleep of the year (with Americans losing about 13 minutes of sleep that night).
2. Canada: Canadians woke up 39 minutes early and lost 30 minutes of sleep to watch hockey during the Winter Olympics hockey finals.
3. Germany: Germans lost about an hour of sleep the night their team won the 2014 World Cup.
4. Italy and France: Residents of these countries sleep in much later during the week in August, when most take vacation and businesses often shut down.
5. Russia: Russia made a permanent switch to “winter time” in October 2014, allowing Russians to wake about a half-hour later each day.
6. Japan: People in Japan lost sleep during the World Cup matches, as they had to get up very early to watch the games.
7. Australia: Australians tend to have earlier bedtimes and later wake times in August, and the opposite during December.
8. United Arab Emirates: During the holy month of Ramadan, people stay up close to two hours later because eating before sundown is forbidden.²
9. United Kingdom: The worst night of sleep in the UK was June 14, the night of the England-Italy match during the World Cup. Residents lost an average of 23 minutes of sleep.

Fitness Tracker Data Reveal Most Sleep-Deprived Cities and More

What else can fitness tracker data reveal? Jawbone analyzed data for tens of thousands of Americans in 21 US cities to reveal the most sleep-deprived areas.

What they found was that sleep times were remarkably similar, ranging from a low of 6.82 hours in Houston, Texas to a high of 6.93 hours in Orlando, Florida. On average, that’s just over 6.8 hours of sleep a night.³ Beyond this, the data reveal how natural disasters impact your sleep.

During the South Napa earthquake that hit Northern California in 2014, 93 percent of wristband wearers near the epicenter suddenly woke up at 3:20 am, when the quake hit.⁴ Not surprisingly, most of them had a hard time going back to sleep afterward, and 45 percent of those near the epicenter did not go back to sleep for the rest of the night.

Also interesting, the data can reveal routines and characteristics about different cities. Wilt summed up data of sleep patterns among seven US cities, collected on March 31, 2014, which he described as a “typical night.”

“New Yorkers work hard and play hard, and they’re the first to bed and among the first to rise. Users in Tokyo are among some of the last to go to bed and the first to wake up, since they only average 5 hours and 46 min of night sleep. Dubai has the most leisurely sleep schedule, with 10% of users still asleep by 11am.

In Beijing, you can see workers taking their afternoon workplace naps. We can also see people in Madrid taking their afternoon sleep (although it’s much more common on weekends, with greater than 10% of UP wearers logging a siesta). Only a maximum of 95% of a city is asleep at any given time, since the early risers are awake before the last to sleep are in bed.”⁵

How Much Sleep Are YOU Getting?

You may be surprised at how little sleep you’re actually getting. When I first started using a fitness tracker, I was striving to get 8 hours of sleep, but my Jawbone UP typically recorded me at 7.5 to 7.75.

I have since increased my sleep time, not just time in bed, but total sleep time to over 8 hours per day, and the fitness tracker helped me realize that unless I am asleep, not just in bed, but asleep by 10 pm I won’t get my 8 hours. Gradually I have been able to get this down to 9:30 pm.

So even if you go to bed at a reasonable hour, you might still be lacking in sleep. Aside from using a fitness tracker, how can you tell if you’re getting enough? And how much do you actually need?

Dr. Rubin Naiman -- a clinical psychologist, author, teacher, and the leader in integrative medicine approaches to sleep and dreams – recommends to simply sleep "enough hours so that your energy is sustained through the day without artificial stimulation, with the exception of a daytime nap," which he believes you are biologically programmed for.

I agree with this functional description rather than trying to come up with a specific numeric range. I would add to that guideline, however, the suggestion to watch out for physical or biological symptoms.

For example, when I push myself and don't get high-quality sleep or enough sleep, I'm predisposed to postprandial hypoglycemia. In other words, I have low insulin resistance so when I sleep poorly, it doesn't take much sugar or carbs for it to be easily metabolized and drop my blood sugar—which also makes me really sleepy. When I get enough sleep, I'm far less susceptible to it.

Pay attention to clues your body may be giving you. For instance, if you need an alarm clock to wake up, and you wake up feeling tired and groggy, you probably need to go to sleep earlier (or get more restful sleep).  It’s also said that if you fall asleep within a few minutes of your head hitting the pillow, you’re probably sleep deprived. A well-rested person will take about 10-15 minutes to fall asleep at night.⁶

The Risks of ‘Just Getting By’ on Minimal Sleep

If you’re tired during the day, there’s a good chance you need to get more sleep. Even if you think can “get by” on five or six hours a night, you’re not fooling your body. Sleep deprivation has the same effect on your immune system as physical stress or illness,⁷ which may help explain why lack of sleep is tied to an increased risk of numerous chronic diseases. Sleeping less than six hours per night more than triples your risk of high blood pressure, and women who get less than four hours of shut-eye per night double their chances of dying from heart disease.⁸

According to research from Great Britain, poor or insufficient sleep is actually the strongest predictor for pain in adults over 50,⁹ and people with chronic sleep problems may develop Alzheimer's disease sooner than those who sleep well.¹⁰

Poor sleep can actually impact virtually every aspect of your health, and the reason for this is because your circadian rhythm (sleep-wake cycle) actually "drives" the rhythms of biological activity at the cellular level. Hence disruptions tend to cascade outward throughout your entire body. For example, besides making you more susceptible to physical aches and pains, interrupted or impaired sleep can also:

• Increase your risk of cancer
• Harm your brain by halting new neuron production. Sleep deprivation can increase levels of corticosterone (a stress hormone), resulting in fewer new brain cells being created in your hippocampus
• Contribute to a pre-diabetic state, making you feel hungry even if you've already eaten, which can lead to weight gain
• Contribute to premature aging by interfering with your growth hormone production, normally released by your pituitary gland during deep sleep (and during certain types of exercise, such as high-intensity interval training)
• Increase your risk of dying from any cause

How to Get Truly Restorative Sleep

Download Interview Transcript

Last year I interviewed Dan Pardi on the topic of how to get restorative, health-promoting sleep. Pardi is a researcher who works with the Behavioral Sciences Department at Stanford University and the Departments of Neurology and Endocrinology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. According to Pardi, the following three factors are key to determining how restorative your sleep is:

1. Duration— i.e. the number of hours you sleep. Sleep requirements are highly individual, and can change from one day to the next, depending on factors like stress, physical exertion, illness, and pregnancy, just to name a few. But, on average, most people need about eight hours of sleep per night.
2. Timing—i.e. the habit of going to bed at approximately the same time each night. Even if the duration of sleep is the same, when the timing of your sleep is shifted, it's not going to be as restorative.
3. Intensity—This has to do with the different stages that your brain and body goes through over the course of the night, the sequence of them, and how those stages are linked. Some medications will suppress certain phases of sleep, and certain conditions like sleep apnea will lead to fragmented sleep. With these scenarios, even if you're sleeping for an adequate duration and have consistent timing, your sleep will not be as restorative.

If you have these three areas covered and you’re still not sleeping well, maintaining a natural rhythm of exposure to sunlight during the day and darkness at night is one crucial foundational component to consider. The reason why light exposure during the daytime is so important is because it serves as the major synchronizer of your master body clock. To maintain healthy master clock timing, aim to adjust your light exposure to a more natural light rhythm, where you get bright light exposure during the day and limited blue light and bright light exposure once the sun sets.

Pardi recommends getting at least 30-60 minutes of outdoor light exposure during daylight hours in order to "anchor" your master clock rhythm. The ideal time to go outdoors is right around solar noon but any time during daylight hours is useful. Once the sun has set, the converse applies. After sunset you want to avoid light as much as possible in order for your body to secrete melatonin, which helps you feel sleepy.

Ready for the Best Night’s Sleep You’ve Had in a While?

Small adjustments to your daily routine and sleeping area can go a long way to ensure uninterrupted, restful sleep and, thereby, better health. I suggest you read through my full set of 33 healthy sleep guidelines for all of the details, but to start, consider implementing the following changes:

• Avoid watching TV or using your computer in the evening, at least an hour or so before going to bed. These devices emit blue light, which tricks your brain into thinking it's still daytime. Normally, your brain starts secreting melatonin between 9 pm and 10 pm, and these devices emit light that may stifle that process. Even the American Medical Association now states:¹¹

“…nighttime electric light can disrupt circadian rhythms in humans and documents the rapidly advancing understanding from basic science of how disruption of circadian rhythmicity affects aspects of physiology with direct links to human health, such as cell cycle regulation, DNA damage response, and metabolism.”

• Make sure you get BRIGHT sun exposure regularly. Your pineal gland produces melatonin roughly in approximation to the contrast of bright sun exposure in the day and complete darkness at night. If you are in darkness all day long, it can't appreciate the difference and will not optimize your melatonin production.
• Sleep in complete darkness, or as close to it as possible. The slightest bit of light in your bedroom can disrupt your body’s clock and your pineal gland's melatonin production. Even the tiniest glow from your clock radio could be interfering with your sleep, so cover your radio up at night or get rid of it altogether. Move all electrical devices at least three feet away from your bed. You may want to cover your windows with drapes or blackout shades. If this isn’t possible, wear an eye mask.
• Install a low-wattage yellow, orange, or red light bulb if you need a source of light for navigation at night. Light in these bandwidths does not shut down melatonin production in the way that white and blue bandwidth light does. Salt lamps are handy for this purpose. You can also download a free application called F.lux that automatically dims your monitor or screens.¹²
• Keep the temperature in your bedroom no higher than 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Many people keep their homes too warm (particularly their upstairs bedrooms). Studies show that the optimal room temperature for sleep is between 60 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Take a hot bath 90 to 120 minutes before bedtime. This increases your core body temperature, and when you get out of the bath it abruptly drops, signaling your body that you are ready to sleep.
• Avoid using loud alarm clocks. Being jolted awake each morning can be very stressful. If you are regularly getting enough sleep, you might not even need an alarm.
• Get some sun in the morning, if possible. Your circadian system needs bright light to reset itself. Ten to 15 minutes of morning sunlight will send a strong message to your internal clock that day has arrived, making it less likely to be confused by weaker light signals during the night. More sunlight exposure is required as you age.
• Be mindful of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in your bedroom. EMFs can disrupt your pineal gland and its melatonin production, and may have other negative biological effects as well. A gauss meter is required if you want to measure EMF levels in various areas of your home. Ideally, you should turn off any wireless router while you are sleeping. You don’t need the Internet on when you are asleep.

Advances in Understanding of Depression Offers New Hope

By Dr. Mercola

Depression is thought to affect about one in 10 Americans.¹ In 2010, antidepressants were the second most commonly prescribed type of medication in the US,² hinting at the severity of the problem.

Contrary to popular belief, depression is not likely caused by unbalanced brain chemicals; however there are a number of other biological factors that appear to be highly significant. Chronic inflammation is one. As noted in the featured article:³

“George Slavich, a clinical psychologist at the University of California in Los Angeles, has spent years studying depression, and has come to the conclusion that it has as much to do with the body as the mind.

‘I don’t even talk about it as a psychiatric condition anymore,’ he says. ‘It does involve psychology, but it also involves equal parts of biology and physical health.’

The basis of this new view is blindingly obvious once it is pointed out: everyone feels miserable when they are ill. That feeling of being too tired, bored and fed up to move off the sofa and get on with life is known among psychologists as sickness behaviour.

It happens for a good reason, helping us avoid doing more damage or spreading an infection any further. It also looks a lot like depression.”

One researcher even goes so far as to suggest depression should be rebranded as an infectious but non-contagious disease,⁴ while the author of the featured article playfully compares depression with an allergic reaction—in this case “an allergy to modern life”—considering the many environmental factors that are known to cause inflammation, from diet to toxic exposures and stress.

Scientists have also found that your mental health can be adversely impacted by factors such as vitamin D deficiency and/or unbalanced gut flora—both of which, incidentally, play a role in keeping inflammation in check, which is really what the remedy to depression is all about.

Inflammation and Depression

As discussed in an article by Dr. Kelly Brogan, depressive symptoms can be viewed as downstream manifestations of inflammation.

“The source itself may be singularly or multiply-focused as stress, dietary and toxic exposures, and infection... [I]nflammation appears to be a highly relevant determinant of depressive symptoms such as flat mood, slowed thinking, avoidance, alterations in perception, and metabolic changes,⁵” she writes.

Certain biomarkers, such as cytokines in your blood and inflammatory messengers like CRP, IL-1, IL-6, and TNF-alpha, show promise as potential new diagnostic tools, as they’re “predictive⁶ and linearly⁷ correlative” with depression.

For example, researchers have found⁸ that melancholic depression, bipolar disorder, and postpartum depression, are associated with elevated levels of cytokines in combination with decreased cortisol sensitivity (cortisol is both a stress hormone and a buffer against inflammation). As explained by Dr. Brogan:

“Once triggered in the body, these inflammatory agents transfer information to the nervous system, typically through stimulation of major nerves such as the vagus, which connects⁹ the gut and brain. Specialized cells called microglia in the brain represent the brain’s immune hubs and are activated in inflammatory states.

In activated microglia, an enzyme called IDO (indoleamine 2 3-dioxygenase) has been shown¹⁰ to direct tryptophan away from the production of serotonin and melatonin and towards the production of an NMDA agonist called quinolinic acid that may be responsible for symptoms of anxiety and agitation.

These are just some of the changes that may conspire to let your brain in on what your body may know is wrong.”

Using Brain Scans to Help Choose Treatment Type

Speaking of biomarkers, research¹¹ by Dr. Helen Mayberg, a professor of psychiatry at Emory University, may also pave the way toward a more refined and customized treatment plan. Her research is discussed in the video above.

Dr. Mayberg has identified a biomarker in the brain that can be used to predict whether a depressed patient is a good candidate for medication, or might be better off with psychotherapy. As noted by the New York Times:¹²

“Patients who had low activity in a brain region called the anterior insula measured before treatment responded quite well to cognitive behavior therapy (CBT} but poorly to Lexapro; conversely, those with high activity in this region had an excellent response to Lexapro, but did poorly with CBT....

[T]he insula is centrally involved in the capacity for emotional self-awareness, cognitive control and decision making, all of which are impaired by depression. Perhaps cognitive behavior therapy has a more powerful effect than an antidepressant in patients with an underactive insula because it teaches patients to control their emotionally disturbing thoughts in a way that an antidepressant cannot.”

The Links Between Gut and Mental Health

A number of studies have confirmed that gastrointestinal inflammation specifically can play a critical role in the development of depression, suggesting that beneficial bacteria (probiotics) may be an important part of treatment. For example, a Hungarian scientific review¹³ published in 2011 made the following observations:

1. Depression is often found alongside gastrointestinal inflammations and autoimmune diseases as well as with cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, type 2 diabetes and also cancer, in which chronic low-grade inflammation is a significant contributing factor.  

   Thus researchers suggested “depression may be a neuropsychiatric manifestation of a chronic inflammatory syndrome.”

2. An increasing number of clinical studies have shown that treating gastrointestinal inflammation with probiotics, vitamin B, vitamin D, may also improve depression symptoms and quality of life by attenuating pro-inflammatory stimuli to your brain.
3. Research suggests the primary cause of inflammation may be dysfunction of the “gut-brain axis.”

Your gut is literally your second brain -- created from the identical tissue as your brain during gestation -- and contains higher levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is associated with mood control.

It's important to understand that your gut bacteria are an active and integrated part of serotonin regulation and actually produce more serotonin than your brain. Optimizing your gut flora is a key part of the equation to optimize your levels. If you consume loads of processed foods and sugars, your gut bacteria will be severely compromised because processed foods tend to decimate healthy microflora. This leaves a void that is filled by disease-causing bacteria and yeast and fungi that will promote inflammation and decrease the health of your second brain.

Low-Sugar Diet Is an Important Anti-Depressant Tool

Besides distorting your microflora, sugar also triggers a cascade of other chemical reactions in your body known to promote both chronic inflammation and depression. For starters, excessive sugar consumption leads to elevated insulin levels. That can have a detrimental impact on your mood and mental health by causing higher levels of glutamate to be secreted in your brain, which has been linked to agitation, depression, anger, anxiety, and panic attacks.

Sugar suppresses activity of a key growth hormone called BDNF (brain derived neurotrophic factor) which promotes healthy brain neurons. BDNF levels are critically low in both depression and schizophrenia, which animal models suggest might actually be causative.

Cultured and fermented foods, on the other hand, help reseed your gut with a wide variety of healthy bacteria that promote mental and physical health as long as your keep your sugar and processed food intake low. For instance, one 2011 study¹⁴ found that the probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus has a marked effect on GABA levels in certain brain regions and lowers the stress-induced hormone corticosterone, resulting in reduced anxiety- and depression-related behavior.  So the three-prong dietary answer for treating depression is to:

1. Severely limit sugars, especially fructose, as well as grains, as all forms of sugar feed pathogenic bacteria in your gut. The easiest way to do this is to avoid processed foods, and start cooking from scratch using whole ingredients. As a standard recommendation, I suggest limiting your daily fructose consumption from all sources to 25 grams per day or less.
2. Avoid foods with genetically engineered ingredients, as they too have been implicated in the destruction of gut flora, along with promoting chronic inflammation. Keep in mind that conventionally-grown foods may also be contaminated with glyphosate, which has been found to selectively destroy beneficial, health-promoting gut bacteria, so ideally, you’ll want to make sure as much of your food as possible is organically grown to avoid pesticide exposure.
3. Introduce fermented foods into your diet to rebalance your gut flora.

Beware that your gut bacteria are also very sensitive to and can be harmed by the following, all of which should be avoided:

Antibiotics, unless absolutely necessary (and when you do, make sure to reseed your gut with fermented foods and/or a probiotic supplement)	Conventionally-raised meats and other animal products, as CAFO animals are routinely fed low-dose antibiotics, plus genetically engineered grains
Chlorinated and/or fluoridated water	Antibacterial soap

Vitamin D Deficiency Predisposes You to Depression

Vitamin D deficiency is another important biological factor that can play a significant role in mental health. In one 2006 study,¹⁵ seniors with vitamin D levels below 20 ng/ml were found to be 11 times more prone to be depressed than those with higher levels. It’s worth noting that the mean vitamin D level was just under 19 ng/ml, which is a severe deficiency state. In fact, 58 percent of the participants had levels below 20 ng/ml. A 2007 study¹⁶ suggested that vitamin D deficiency is responsible for symptoms of depression and anxiety in patients with fibromyalgia. Vitamin D deficiency is also a well-recognized cause in Seasonal Affective Disorder¹⁷ (SAD). A double-blind randomized trial¹⁸ published in 2008 also 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.”

More recently, researchers¹⁹ found that seniors with depression had vitamin D levels that were 14 percent lower than those who were not depressed. Here, those with vitamin D levels below 20 ng/ml had an 85 percent increased risk of depression, compared to those with levels above 30 ng/ml. Yet another paper²⁰ published in 2011 noted that:

“Effective detection and treatment of inadequate vitamin D levels in persons with depression and other mental disorders may be an easy and cost-effective therapy which could improve patients’ long-term health outcomes as well as their quality of life.”

Based on the evaluation of healthy populations that get plenty of natural sun exposure, the optimal range for general physical and mental health appears to be somewhere between 50 and 70 ng/ml. So, if you’re depressed, you’d be well advised to get your vitamin D level checked, and to address any insufficiency or deficiency. The D*Action Project by GrassrootsHealth is one cost effective testing solution. As for optimizing your levels, sensible sun exposure is the ideal way. Alternatively, use a tanning bed with an electronic ballast, and/or an oral vitamin D3 supplement.  GrassrootsHealth has a helpful chart showing the average adult dose required to reach healthy vitamin D levels based upon your measured starting point. Keep in mind that if you opt for a vitamin D supplement, you also need to take vitamin K2 and magnesium, as these nutrients work in tandem.

There Are Many Alternatives to Drug Treatment

Antidepressant drugs come with a long laundry list of risks, and are therefore best left as a last resort, if all else fails. Medical journalist and Pulitzer Prize nominee Robert Whitaker has detailed the many drawbacks and benefits of various treatments in his two books: Mad in America, and Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, noting that physical exercise actually comes out on top in most studies—even when compared against antidepressant drugs.

Exercise primarily works by helping to normalize your insulin levels while simultaneously boosting “feel good" hormones in your brain. But researchers have also discovered that exercise allows your body to eliminate kynurenine, a harmful protein associated with depression.²¹ And, again showing the link between inflammation and depression, your body metabolizes kynurenine in the first place via a process that is activated by stress and inflammatory factors... While I addressed several dietary factors to restore health to your gut, I also recommend supplementing your diet with a high quality animal-based omega-3 fat, such as krill oil. This may be the single most important nutrient for optimal brain function, thereby easing symptoms of depression. Vitamin B12 deficiency can also contribute to depression, and affects one in four people.

Last but not least, make sure you get enough sleep. The link between depression and lack of sleep is well established. Of the approximately 18 million Americans with depression, more than half of them struggle with insomnia. While it was long thought that insomnia was a symptom of depression, it now seems that insomnia may precede depression in some cases.²² Recent research also found that sleep therapy resulted in remarkable improvements in depressed patients. The take-home message here is that one or more lifestyle factors may be at the heart of your depression, so you’d be well advised to address the factors discussed in this article before resorting to drug treatment—which science has shown is no more effective than placebo, while being fraught with potentially dangerous side effects.

Corn Syrup Is More Toxic Than Refined Sugar, Researchers Conclude

By Dr. Mercola

Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, has been a pioneer in decoding sugar metabolism.

He’s become quite well-known in recent years for stating that excessive amounts of sugar in your diet has toxic effects. He’s also pointed out that processed fructose is far worse, from a metabolic standpoint, than refined sugar.

Now, new research^1,2 from the University of Utah confirms Dr. Lustig’s stance, showing that corn syrup is more toxic to female mice than table sugar. Not only did corn syrup adversely impact the animals’ rate of reproduction, it also caused premature death.

From a chemical standpoint, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is similar to table sugar, but it does contain higher levels of fructose.

Manufacturers have long claimed that HFCS contains at most 55 percent fructose (and 45 percent glucose). This is very close to white sugar, which contains about 50 percent fructose (and 50 percent glucose).

That said, tests have revealed that the fructose level in HFCS can reach as high as 65 percent. It is this elevated fructose level is one piece of the explanation for why HFCS is so much worse for you than refined sugar.

Corn Syrup Found to Be More Toxic Than Table Sugar

According to senior author Wayne Potts,³ “this is the most robust study showing there is a difference between high-fructose corn syrup and table sugar at human-relevant doses.” As reported by Reuters:⁴

“The study showed that female mice fed a diet which contained 25 percent of calories from added fructose and glucose carbohydrates known as monosaccharides that are found in corn syrup died at a rate 1.87 times higher than female mice on a diet in which 25 percent of calories came from sucrose.

The mice on the fructose-glucose diet produced 26.4 percent fewer offspring than their counterparts on the diet containing added table sugar...

The study suggests humans, especially women, could face adverse health effects tied to consuming too much corn syrup, which is found in many processed food products...

Between 13 and 25 percent of Americans are estimated to eat diets containing 25 percent or more of calories from added sugars, according to the paper.”

According to the authors of this paper, 42 percent of the added sugar found in the US diet comes from corn syrup; 44 percent comes from sucrose. The remaining 14 percent of added sugars are in the form of natural sweeteners such as honey, molasses, and fruit. .

Worldwide however, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) accounts for only eight percent of added sugar consumption, so Americans are far more likely to consume excessive amounts of HFCS than many other nationalities, and our disease statistics tend to mirror that as well.

High fructose consumption is in fact a primary contributor to most chronic disease states, starting with insulin resistance, which can then progress into related diseases like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and more.

Heart Failure Patients with High Blood Sugar Have Higher Risk of Early Death

In related news,⁵ researchers claim that testing blood sugar levels of patients suffering heart failure can help identify those at greatest risk of death. According to the study’s lead author Dr. Douglas Lee:⁶

"Our findings suggest that the measurement of blood sugar levels in all patients arriving at emergency departments with acute heart failure could provide doctors with useful prognostic information and could help to improve outcomes in these patients.

Among patients without pre-existing diabetes, the majority (51 percent) had blood glucose levels on arrival at hospital that were within 'normal' limits but greater than 6.1 millimoles per liter (mmol/L) [110 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL)].”

Among non-diabetics, the risk of death within one month of their heart failure was 26 percent higher among those with even slightly elevated blood sugar levels, compared to patients whose blood sugar levels were in the low-normal range.

Those with blood sugar levels nearing the criteria for diabetes had a 50 percent higher risk of death within the month following their heart failure. Elevated blood sugar levels were also associated with a higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

American Agricultural Policies Promote High Disease Rates

There's a common belief that healthy food is inherently more expensive, and thus can only be for the wealthy. But healthy food could easily be more affordable for everyone, were it not for agribusiness CEOs, their lobbyists, and the politicians in their pockets.

Both corn and sugar beet crops are heavily subsidized in the US. The reason why buying a loaf of processed white bread is cheaper than buying a pound of broccoli is directly related to agricultural subsidies, which favor all the ingredients that make up a junk food diet.

As noted by Business Insider,⁷ the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) spends nearly $1.3 billion a year on subsidies for our most commonly used junk food ingredients, including corn, wheat, soy, and sugar beets.

Sugar used to be a condiment; now it’s a diet staple. According to SugarScience.org, added sugars hide in 74 percent of processed foods under more than 60 different names.⁸

If subsidies were really based on nutritional value, then neither corn nor sugar beets would fit the bill... As it stands, agricultural subsidies are used to grown ingredients that form the very foundation of a junk food diet.

US Sugar Industry Enjoys a Particularly Sweet Deal...

Interestingly enough, processed food could be even cheaper than it already is. Not that this would necessarily be a positive thing, but it highlights the fact that processed junk foods are a real profit center—both for food industry and our politicians.

According to University of Michigan–Flint economist Mark J. Perry,⁹ US policies such as minimum price guarantees for domestic sugar, along with high tariffs for imported sugar, ends up costing American consumers about $3 billion per year in inflated processed food prices. As noted in a recent article by Reason Magazine:¹⁰

“Taking candy from a baby is easy. Taking sugar from a senator? Not so much... [I]t's not just the nation's 3,913 sugar beet farms and 666 sugarcane farms that crave the sugar program's artificially sweetened revenues. The program also persists because it offers a steady source of money to elected officials.

In a June 2014 report, Bryan Riley, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, noted that while sugar constitutes just two percent of the total value of US crop production, the nation's sugar farmers account for 35 percent of the crop industry's total campaign contributions and 40 percent of its lobbying expenditures.

Over the years, major sugar companies such as American Crystal Sugar and Florida Crystals have donated millions of dollars to individual candidates and political action committees. According to OpenSecrets.org, the industry as a whole has donated $41.7 million since 1990.”

Processed foods have become such major profit centers, food manufacturers have absolutely no incentive to switch to selling whole, unadulterated foods. I believe our food system can be changed, but only if enough people understand the simple truths of healthy eating and refuse to buy sugar-laden processed foods. Four years ago, Dr. David Ludwig, a Harvard-affiliated pediatrician, wrote a commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA),¹¹ offering concrete suggestions to turn this disease-producing diet trend around, such as:

• Restructuring subsidies
• Regulating the marketing of food to children
• Adequately funding school lunch programs
• Using existing and future technologies to allow the food industry to retain profits while producing more healthful products

Those are all good suggestions, but while politicians debate and search for their moral compasses, I would suggest doing your own homework and changing your own diet.

Do You Know How Much Sugar You Consume Every Day?

We’ve long acknowledged that the Western diet is associated with increased rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and cancer. Yet the conventional paradigm is extremely reluctant to accept that it is the sugar content of this diet that is the primary culprit. Doctors and health officials alike are still trying to convince you that you can have your cake and eat it too, as long as it’s “in moderation.”

The crux of the problem is that if you eat a diet consisting primarily of processed foods, moderation immediately goes out the window, because virtually all processed food items contain some form of added sugar. Oftentimes, just ONE food item can contain an entire day’s worth of sugar!

Sweetened beverages may be among the worst culprits. Take Vitamin Water, for example. One 20 oz bottle contains around 30 grams of sugar,¹² which equates to THREE Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnuts. That one bottle alone is also TWICE the daily recommended fructose allowance for people with insulin resistance, and it’s five grams over the limit for non-insulin resistant folks! On average, sugar makes up 15 percent of total calories consumed in the US (about 19.5 teaspoons per day), and your liver, which processes sugar, simply cannot handle that kind of burden.

When you overload your liver in this way, you inevitably end up with chronic metabolic disease. According to available data, the safety threshold for sugar appears to be around six to nine teaspoons (25-38 grams) of added sugar per day. Any more that, and you’re setting yourself up for an insulin resistance. And again, processed fructose tends to cause more severe metabolic dysfunction than regular sugar, in part because it’s more readily metabolized into fat than any other sugar.

The fatty acids created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat droplets in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Insulin resistance in turn progresses to metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. The metabolism of fructose by your liver also creates a number of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and causes gout.

To Avoid Chronic Disease, Be Mindful of Your Fructose Consumption

Mounting evidence clearly shows that refined sugar and processed fructose are primary factors causing obesity and chronic disease, including heart and cardiovascular disease. A paper by Yang, et al, published in JAMA Internal Medicine last year looked at consumption of added sugar over two decades, as a percentage of total calories, concluding that it significantly contributed to cardiovascular deaths. People who consumed 30 percent of their daily calories as added sugar (like many teenagers are) had a four-fold greater risk of dying from heart disease.

The evidence is quite clear: If you want to normalize your weight, and dramatically reduce your risk of diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s, you need to address your processed food consumption. Refined sugar, processed fructose, grains, and other sugar-forming starchy carbohydrates are largely responsible for your body's adverse insulin and leptin reactions, which underlie these and other chronic disease states.

If you’re insulin/leptin resistant, have diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, or are overweight, you’d be wise to limit your total sugar/fructose intake to 15 grams per day until your insulin/leptin resistance has resolved. This applies to at least half of all Americans. For all others, I recommend limiting your daily fructose consumption to 25 grams or less, to maintain optimal health. The easiest way to accomplish this is by swapping processed foods for whole, ideally organic foods. This means cooking from scratch with fresh ingredients. My free nutrition plan offers a step-by-step guide to feed your family right.

Healthy Diet Summary

Remember, processed foods are the main source of all the primary disease-promoting culprits, including high fructose corn syrup and other sugars, processed grains, trans fats, artificial sweeteners, and other synthetic additives that may aggravate metabolic dysfunction. Since you’re cutting out a lot of energy (carbs) from your diet when you reduce sugars and grains, you need to replace them with something. The ideal replacement is a combination of:

• High quality healthy fat (including saturated¹³ and monounsaturated). Those with insulin resistance benefit from upwards of 50-85 percent of their daily calories in the form of healthy fats. Good sources include coconut and coconut oil, avocados, butter, nuts, and animal fats. (Remember, fat is high in calories while being small in terms of volume. So when you look at your plate, the largest portion would be vegetables.)
• As many non-starchy vegetables as you want
• Low-to-moderate amount of high quality protein. Substantial amounts of protein can be found in meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, legumes, and nuts. When selecting animal-based protein, be sure to opt for organically raised, grass-fed or pastured meats, eggs, and dairy, to avoid potential health complications caused by genetically engineered animal feed and pesticides.

Most Americans eat far too much protein, so be mindful of the amount. I believe it is the rare person who really needs more than one-half gram of protein per pound of lean body mass. Those that are aggressively exercising or competing and pregnant women will need about 25 percent more, but most people rarely need more than 40-70 grams of protein a day.

To determine your lean body mass, find out your percent body fat and subtract from 100. This means that if you have 20 percent body fat, you have 80 percent lean body mass. Just multiply that by your current weight to get your lean body mass in pounds or kilos. To determine whether you’re getting too much protein, simply calculate your lean body mass as described above, then write down everything you’re eating for a few days, and calculate the amount of daily protein from all sources.

Again, you’re aiming for one-half gram of protein per pound of lean body mass, which would place most people in the range of 40 to 70 grams of protein per day. If you’re currently averaging a lot more than that, adjust downward accordingly. You could use the chart below or simply Google the food you want to know and you will quickly find the grams of protein in the food.

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