Last week the news told us to throw out your romaine lettuce. Food-safety investigators traced the recent romaine lettuce E. coli outbreak to growing fields in California, but regulators still say it’s unsafe to eat the leafy green in 10 states including New York. As a result of this, the FDA is interested in creating a new labeling standard that would require companies to show where their lettuce comes from. Let’s take a look at Food Poisoning and its link to factory farming, and then we’ll go over supplements that can kill food born pathogens.

• E. Coli

• Salmonella

• Campylobacter

• How Factory Farming Is Poisoning Our Vegetables

• How To Avoid Food Poisoning

• Supplements For Food Poisoning

E. Coli, Salmonella, and Other Foodborne Illnesses

The foodborne agents causing death the majority of deaths are Salmonella (31%), Listeria (28%), Toxoplasma (21%), Norwalklike Virus (7%), Campylobacter (6%), and STEC E. coli (4%) (Meade 1999).”

For most of these agents, the clinical case fatality rate from foodborne infection is less than 1% but note that for Listeria and Toxoplasma the clinical case fatality rate is 20%. Note also that these averages obscure strong relationships between important factors, such as age and co-morbidity, and disease risk. – John M. Gay

Not all E. coli is bad. You probably have more than one kind of E. coli in your gut right now. It’s a normal part of our healthy bacteria, and they help us digest food, amongst other things. E. coli O157:H7, on the other hand, is pathogenic and can cause bloody diarrhea, sometimes cause kidney failure, and even death.

Recommended: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

E. coli cause disease when the bacteria produces a toxin called Shiga toxin. These bacteria are called “Shiga toxin-producing E. coli,” or STEC for short. O157 is the most common STEC identified in the U.S.

When you hear news reports about outbreaks of E. coli infections, they are usually talking about E. coli O157.” – CDC

The CDC estimates that STEC causes 265,000 illness, 3,600 hospitalizations, and 30 deaths yearly in the U.S.

E. coli O157:H7 is believed to have evolved from E. coli O55:H7. That strain is also resistant to antibiotics and acidity and can be pathogenic, but O157 is more antibiotic resistant, more able to resist acidity, and more likely to make us sick. Antibiotic resistance allows the bacteria to not just survive, but to thrive in an environment where antibiotics are being administered. The reason for this is when you wipe out competing microbes, the few survivors can proliferate. Factory farming is likely to blame for much the E. coli in our lettuce, and it’s possible that the O157 variant wouldn’t even exist without factory farming.

E. Coli O157:H7 doesn’t always make us sick, but people with weaker immune systems are much more susceptible.

And there’s also the well-known bacteria, salmonella, which is said to be the most common cause of foodborne illness in the U.S. There are actually more than 2,000 different types of salmonella bacteria and these bacteria can cause several types of infection. Most often, these bacteria cause gastroenteritis, but they can also cause typhoid fever, a more serious infection.

Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium subtype DT104 appears to be the most likely Salmonella to give us serious trouble, It’s drug-resistant and becoming more and more widespread both in the U.S. and internationally. Again, we have factory farming to blame.

The CDC says that Salmonella is responsible for approximately 1.2 million illnesses a year in the United States, with 23,000 hospitalizations and 450 deaths. Most people infected with Salmonella develop diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps. The illness typically runs for 4 to 7 days, and most recover without treatment. Stomach acid tends to destroy Salmonella. One must consume a large amount of the bacteria for an infection to develop unless people have a deficiency of stomach acid. This makes those on acid-indigestion medications more susceptible.

We also have factory farming to thank for many of the Campylobacter outbreaks. Though it’s not commonly reported, Campylobacter bacteria infects an estimated 2.4 million people yearly, making it one of the most common foodborne illnesses, according to the CDC. It’s generally mild and often unnoticed but it can occasionally kill those with weak immune systems. Campylobacter lives in the intestinal tract of birds and can be transmitted from bird to bird through common drinking water and feces contact.

Norovirus, Toxoplasmosis, and Listeria round out the five most common culprits of food poisoning in America. Noroviruses and Toxoplasmosis aren’t infections that can be tied to factory farming. Listeria doesn’t have a mutated cousin that we can blame factory farming for, but just like with other foodborne infections, poor food handling, and poor animal welfare standards do play a large part, and factory farming is often responsible for contaminating produce with Listeria.

When medical researchers at the University of Minnesota took more than 1,000 food samples from multiple retail markets, they found evidence of fecal contamination in 69% of the pork and beef and 92% of the poultry samples. Nine out of ten chicken carcasses in the store may be contaminated with fecal matter. And half of the poultry samples were contaminated with the UTI-causing E. coli bacteria.” – Dr. Michael Greger

How Factory Farming Is Poisoning Our Vegetables

We believe that raw fruits, vegetables, and herbs are absolutely critical to achieving great health, especially when one is attempting to heal from disease. But the CDC reports that around half of all foodborne illnesses are actually caused by raw produce. How does this happen?

Cattle, pig, and poultry factories dump millions of gallons of putrefying waste into massive open-air cesspools, which leak and contaminate nearby water sources used for irrigating crops. That’s one of the most common ways that a deadly fecal pathogen like Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7 can end up contaminating our spinach.

Produce farmers weren’t required to test their irrigation water for pathogens like E. coli or Salmonella. But in 2011, after several high-profile disease outbreaks, Congress ordered a program requiring produce growers to begin testing their water under rules crafted by the Obama administration’s Food and Drug Administration. The program was just about to go into effect when Trump’s FDA, responding to pressure from the farm industry, delayed the water-testing rules for at least four more years. This decision was made six months ago.

On November 26th, the FDA announced that it had traced an E. coli outbreak in romaine lettuce back to growing regions in parts of central and northern California. A previous outbreak was traced back to Yuma farms in California, which were voluntarily testing their water for pathogens. Most of California’s farmers are now testing for pathogens in their water sources. It’s likely that the most recent contamination comes from a farm or farms that have been testing their water.

Villaneva and Gary Waugaman said the monthly testing is not foolproof; it minimizes, but doesn’t eliminate, the risks. Also, pathogens from livestock and other animals can get into crops from wind, dust and other means.” – Dirty Farm Water Is making Us Sick

It appears that even when the water is clean, local animals may be picking up pathogens from animal farms and depositing them into the produce farms.

How To Avoid Food Poisoning

Smaller farms are usually a safer bet but by no means is this a guarantee against foodborne pathogens. We recommend getting to know your local farmers at your local farmer’s markets. Ask questions.

Take steps to avoid cross-contamination. This is likely to be one of the biggest reasons people get sick from food pathogens. For example, researchers at the University of Arizona found more fecal bacteria in household kitchens than they found swabbing the toilets. The bacteria was found in dish towels, rags, sponges, and on the sink drains and cutting boards.

Many of the experts are recommending that everyone be sure to cook all of their vegetables and herbs. This may increase safety but it ignores long-term health. We don’t have an easy answer for this issue. We advise, first and foremost, to stay healthy! A healthy gut has a wide array of bacteria that can make it very difficult for pathogens to take over. A healthy gut provides the entire body with beneficial bacteria that work as part of our immune system, which limits pathogenic activity throughout the entire body. Strong stomach acid makes it very hard for salmonella and many other pathogens to even get to the gut. You need a healthy digestive system to fend off pathogens. And the way one develops a robust, healthy digestive system is, in large part, by eating a lot of raw fresh vegetables and herbs. Therein lies the catch. It’s almost as is Big Pharma designed factory farms. That’s not the case, but it is too convenient that the government entities telling us how to eat are basically bought off by the drug companies while they make recommendations that don’t take our long-term health into consideration.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut

Supplements For Food Poisoning

I recommend 100% pure cranberry juice to have on hand at all times. For anything kidney related, real unadulterated cranberry juice is a godsend. Cranberry juice can help alleviate UTIs, cramping, and diarrhea.

My favorite antibacterial, antifungal, antiparasitic, and antiviral supplement is Berberine. Many studies show how potent this herb is, and there have even been a few studies regarding its efficacy on foodborne pathogens, and it looks promising. I have taken it, personally, when I had minor food poisoning and it seemed to get rid of it quickly. I took ten of the 500mg capsules. My friend, who also ate at the same restaurant and suffered the same gastroenteritis did not opt for the naturopathic approach and did not fare so well. But, I also had a healthier gut to begin with.

Other options, which should be in every natural-based medicine cabinet, include activated charcoal (I recommend this Intestinal Detox which has activated charcoal in it), oil of oregano, and a mushroom complex (the first one on that list is my favorite). It’s also a good idea to take a probiotic before and after eating at restaurants or anytime you could catch a foodborne pathogen. Activated charcoal is also used in hospitals for food poisoning. It will attach to toxins and allow your body to flush them out easily. oil of oregano and the mushroom complex are strong antimicrobials, though Berberine is even stronger. A probiotic can help digest food and make it much more difficult for pathogens to colonize.

Takeaways

The most important thing we can do is stay healthy (or get healthy), and vote with our wallets. Get to know your local farmer’s markets, get to know the farmers, and START GROWING YOUR OWN FOOD! If you don’t have any space for a garden, start growing sprouts.

Sources:

• Is it safe to eat romaine lettuce yet? Here are latest details about E. coli outbreak – lohud.
• CDC Acknowledges Role of Farms in Antibiotic Resistance – Food Safety news
• Epidemic Salmonella typhimurium DT 104—a truly international multiresistant clone – Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy
• A beef-associated outbreak of Salmonella Typhimurium DT104 in The Netherlands with implications for national and international policy – NCBI
• Campylobacter, E.Coli and Salmonella – Heal Ed
• You Won’t Believe How Much Poultry Farm Waste is Allowed in the Chesapeake – Without Penalty – One Green Planet
• Chickens – Farm Sanctuary
• Reduction of fecal coliform, coliform and heterotrophic plate count bacteria in the household kitchen and bathroom by disinfection with hypochlorite cleaners – NCBI
• Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs – Federal Registry
• Standards for the Growing, Harvesting, Packing, and Holding of Produce for Human Consumption; Extension of Compliance Dates for Subpart E – Federal Registry
• 5 people died from eating lettuce, but Trump’s FDA still won’t make farms test water for bacteria – Real News

One of Trump’s campaign promises was to lower drug prices. Trump said they were “getting away with murder.” He has not accomplished his pledge, and new tax filings may reveal why he instead gave the pharmaceutical companies a tax break. In 2017 Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America gave $2.5 million to a pro-Trump advocacy group called America First Policies Inc.

Topping America First Policies’ known donor list for its first year of operation is the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a trade group representing the drug company industry’s lobbying interests, which disclosed giving $2.5 million to America First Policies in a new tax return obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics and first identified by Maplight.” – Open Secrets

Drug prices have not come down and are in fact on a steep rise, but Trump has falsely taken credit for lowering drug costs.

Recommended: How To Heal Your Gut

There were fewer price increases this year from January through July than in comparable prior-year periods, but companies still hiked prices far more often than they cut them. This year through the end of July, there were 4,412 brand-name drug price increases and 46 price cuts. To put it another way: For every price decrease over those seven months, there were 96 price hikes.” – Associated Press

Recommended: How to Detox From Plastics and Other Endocrine Disruptors

While Trump has moved to allow limited negotiation in some parts of Medicare, he has rejected the larger policy he campaigned on, leaving it out of his prescription drug proposal released earlier this year.” – Captian & Main

Source:

• Trump Group Takes In Millions From Big Pharma As Drug Makers Continue To Raise Prices – Medium

Antibiotics are designed to kill bacteria. Probiotics are beneficial bacteria. Doctors, concerned that probiotics can weaken the effectiveness of antibiotics, have sometimes warned patients not to take probiotics while on an antibiotic regimen or while on chemotherapy.

But now the mainstream medical opinion has shifted. With conventional researchers and doctors developing a deeper understanding of the importance of gut bacteria and the role it plays in our immune system, many doctors now recommend taking probiotics during antibiotic and chemo regimens. Apparently, the probiotics do not significantly affect the drugs if taken two or three hours after the drugs are administered (some say to wait two hours, some say three). In fact, studies have shown that probiotics can even increase the success rate of these treatments while potentially alleviating diarrhea and other side effects.

Probiotics are typically transient. Most do not colonize well, if at all, and the ones that are more likely to won’t colonize at all under antibiotic use or chemotherapy. But even if a probiotic can’t colonize effectively, with continued administration, it’s presence can keep pathogenic organisms from proliferating without disrupting existing beneficial gut bacteria.

So how do we protect or rebuild a healthy gut microbiome? The best way to get a healthy bacterial ecosystem to develop in the gut is to eat large salads like this one every day. Antifungal supplements (like SF722) and beneficial mushrooms can also help keep the gut flora healthy and ward off infections. But no supplement compares to eating right. Doing the right supplement with a healthy diet is great, but if money is too tight to do both, put that money towards the right diet.

For more information, be sure to check out the following:

• Chemotherapy Detox
• How To Heal Your Gut
• Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections
• Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included

It seems Monsanto sold to Bayer just in time. Monsanto was sued by Dewayne Johnson on the grounds that the weedkiller Roundup caused his cancer, and now Bayer is dealing with the fallout from the $289 million dollar verdict that has since been reduced to $78 million. Bayer says that pending lawsuits from 9,300 plaintiffs are also alleging that glyphosate causes cancer. The company reported this in late October.

Experts have stated that these lawsuits (with more to come) could end up costing Bayer billions of dollars. Bayer stated that hundreds of scientific studies show glyphosate is safe to use.

We continue to believe that we have meritorious defenses and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in all of these lawsuits.” – Bayer’s chief executive Werner Baumann

In a telephone conference, Baumann has also been quoted as saying,

Glyphosate is an indispensable chemical for modern agriculture that is safe to use, very effective and saves resources. When used appropriately, glyphosate is a completely safe and good product. Completely safe.”

Glyphosate is Roundup’s active ingredient and it’s the most popular weed killer in the United States. The EPA maintains that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic to people. But the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said in 2015 that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic.” And the EPA had labeled glyphosate as a carcinogen in 1985, but the FDA reversed their position in 1991.

Related: GMO Potatoes Are Here – How To Avoid Them

California has glyphosate listed as a chemical known to cause cancer under Prop 65.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who was involved in the glyphosate lawsuit (the Miller Firm says he was at the trial but not on the trial counsel team), is well known for raising awareness regarding vaccine damage (he is often cited as an anti-vaxxer but he is not). Kennedy Jr. now claims to have obtained incriminating documents regarding Monsanto’s business practices in Europe.

What we have is the tip of the iceberg. And in fact we have documents now in our possession, several hundreds of documents, that have not been declassified and some of those are explosive.” – EuroNews

It’s being reported that the European Union is likely to withdraw the license for Roundup before the year is over.

In addition to the glyphosate lawsuits, Monsanto’s dicamba herbicide is causing trouble across farm country:

It’s happening again. In states from Mississippi to Indiana, some US soybean farmers are seeing a troubling sight: Previously healthy plants begin to look wan, their leaves puckering into a cup-like shape. Similar symptoms are hitting trees, ornamental and garden plants, flowers, berries, and vegetables.” –Mother Jones

Related: How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

Additional Sources:

• Monsanto owner Bayer hit by new wave of lawsuits over Roundup weed killer – RT
• U.S. EPA says glyphosate not likely to be carcinogenic to people – Reuters
  

There are more microbial cells than human cells in our bodies. Collectively the microbes are called the microbiome. Many different kinds of bacterial and non-bacterial organisms make up this microbiome. We breathe in and swallow some of them, but most are produced in our gut based on the foods we eat. Most of these microbes are in our gut, but they also reside almost everywhere else in the body. Our gut supplies our body with these microbes. In other words, even a healthy gut leaks. Beneficial microbes crowd out pathogens and help keep infections from setting in all over the body. A gut teeming with pathogenic activity supplies the body with pathogens. It’s imperative that the gut houses a diverse, healthy microbiome for the body’s immune system to function properly.

Candida resides in a healthy human gut, in the yeast form. A healthy gut colony will keep this yeast in check. In an unhealthy gut, yeast is allowed to flourish. It converts into its fungal form, grows filamentous, burrows into the gut lining, and then deposits yeast spores into the bloodstream. This also causes the gut to become “leaky”, which is to say it’s much more porous than it is supposed to be, and consequently, undigested proteins and pathogens leak into the bloodstream. This causes an immune response. If we didn’t live in such an antibacterial world with such an incredible abundance of sugars, candida would not thrive like this, but it is a tremendously versatile and opportunistic pathogen when left unchecked.

If candida is allowed to take over the gut and form its own biofilm, it becomes incredibly difficult to kill. The spores produced are nearly impossible to kill. For more on this, check Why is Candida So Hard To Kill. It’s freaky what these microbes can do!

Inflammation

An abundance of candida in the body is known to cause chronic inflammation, but what’s less common knowledge is the feedback loop this creates.

Pathogens feed off of sugars, starches, and fats (lipids). Our cells are made up of sugars, starches, and fats. Some pathogens prefer one over the other. For instance, Lyme bacteria want starches, and candida loves sugars.

Pathogens flourish in a damaged body and the presence of these pathogens causes more inflammation. When cells die, they also trigger an inflammatory response. Chronic inflammation also causes more cellular damage, leading to more cellular die-off. A chronically inflamed body is a damaged body with a lot of damaged and decaying cells that are feeding pathogens creating a positive feedback loop.

Related: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

Alcohol

Alcohol kills beneficial bacteria in the gut. It can kill fungi too, but candida spores are virtually indestructible and its biofilm can protect the microbe from alcohol as well. In other words, you’re disrupting your beneficial bacteria which allows candida to flourish. Alcohol can also raise your blood sugar which can feed candida and other pathogens through the body.

Alcohol also damages cells.

Antibiotics

Antibiotics kill bacteria, leaving fungal infections to flourish. Some antibiotics also kill fungi including candida, but nothing adequately kills fungal spores. And even if something did, they’ll be back faster than a healthy bacterial ecosystem could develop to curtail the candida and other pathogens.

Vaccines

Research has shown us that some vaccines will disrupt the gut’s microbiota. In addition to that, one’s gut microbiota affects how the host interacts with vaccines. A less healthy bacterial colony in the gut is more likely to lead to an immune response with inflammation throughout the body, which in turn can also, eventually disrupt the gut microbiota. Intestinal injuries caused by the rotavirus vaccine have been added to the government compensation program for adverse events. With the recent findings of how vaccines are more likely to cause damage with an undeveloped gut microbiome, scientists are very interested in how gut bacteria and vaccinations interact. We should see a lot more scientific discoveries about this issue in the near future.

Amalgam Fillings

When dental amalgam fillings are in the mouth, tiny particles break free and mercury vapor is released, inhaled, and swallowed. Incidentally, the mercury release is 50 times higher for those who have mercury fillings capped with gold. For a multitude of reasons, the body can’t get rid of mercury easily.

Mercury suppresses the immune system and creates an environment that is not friendly for beneficial bacteria, but candida doesn’t mind it. In fact, candida and many other fungi love toxic heavy metals and actually thrive with mercury present.

“Mercury fed Candida become more and more virulent and eventually penetrates the intestinal walls and invades the cells. These fungal microorganisms become quite at home in the cell, and can easily be considered a principle characteristic of cancer.” – Dr. Mark Sircus

Antiacids

Many people are under the mistaken impression that all disease needs acidity to thrive. This is not true. It depends on the disease. Candida likes alkalinity. The presence of candida can help to make the body very acidic, but the areas where fungal candida thrives will be less acidic. Antacids raise the PH (less acidic) of the entire digestive tract. This can cause candida to infect the stomach, which is normally far too acidic for it.

All Pharmaceuticals

Virtually all pharmaceuticals, from vaccines to Aspirin, have toxic properties which cause cellular damage that pathogens including candida will feed off of.

Smoking

Sugar is added to tobacco products. We’re not sure if inhaling the smoke from burning sugar can feed Candida or other pathogens, but it wouldn’t be surprising if it does. Regardless, the toxicity of tobacco products causes other problems that promote Candida overgrowth (and other pathogenic activity).

Smoking adds a plethora of toxic heavy metals into the body, and yeast, as mentioned above, likes toxic heavy metals. Smoking and the use of other tobacco products also affect liver function.

Every time you light a cigarette, nicotine triggers the liver to dump a large amount of glycogen into the blood stream. The blood sugar level is brought up too high, so the body calls on the pancreas to bring it back down.” – Cynthia Perkins, Holstic Help

Smoking affects the entire body, not just the liver and lungs. Smoking damages cells and causes inflammation and constriction everywhere. It also inflames and constricts the intestinal tract (if you smoke, you may notice the need to have a bowel movement after smoking). Some confuse this with “relaxing the bowels” but the truth is there is less room for digestion and so the stool is evacuated before digestion is complete. Smoking also causes rectal discharge. And smoking constricts and inflames the kidneys as well, which has the opposite effect compared to the intestinal tract. Kidneys process fluid at a slower rate and fluids can become rancid and infectious.

Juicing

Juicing has lots of benefits, but that carrot, beet, apple juice can do more harm than good for some people with an abundance of Candida in their gut. Juicing removes the fiber and other nutrients from the fruits and vegetables, and these nutrients are needed to feed a healthy gut microbiome. What’s left are sugars. If you’re just juicing kale, turmeric, lemons, collards, and garlic, or something like that, feel free to keep on juicing. But if you’re sweetening your juices with sweet fruits or carrots or beets, it doesn’t take much to make candida happy.

Fruit

We’re not saying that fruit is bad, but anyone who is suffering from an over-abundance of candida needs to lay off the fruit (not including lemons, limes, cranberries, granny smith apples, and other non-sweet fruits). Fruit is much sweeter than it used to be. Even on an all-natural, unrefined, raw food diet, we have way more access to sugar than our paleolithic ancestors did. Google wild bananas and check out what watermelon used to look like. Not only was fruit seasonal and harder to come by, but it was also much more fibrous and mealy, and much less “fruity.”

Condiments

Many condiments including salad dressings, mustards, ketchup, and hot sauces have sweeteners in them. Even without sweeteners, they are typically refined and processed with the addition of too many unnecessary ingredients. Read the ingredient labels. Better yet, make your own condiments, and use more herbs and better cooking methods to add flavor to your meals.

Organic Junk Food

Refind and processed foods fed pathogens including candida. Let’s take chips for instance. Chips often have sugar in them, including the organic varieties, but even those sugar-free brown rice and bean chips can still feed candida. Brown rice is ok for most people who aren’t very ill. When digesting brown rice, provided the gut has enough bacterial activity to do the job properly, fiber-loving gut microbes get to eat and proliferate first, before the sugar and starch molecules are exposed. But if you grind brown rice into a flour to make chips or pasta with it, you’re exposing the sugars and starches. The digestive process is altered. This is why it’s better to eat, cook with, and chew your own whole foods. Looking at those same chips as an example, the bean flour used is laden with enzyme inhibitors (unless the corporation making the food soaked and sprouted those beans properly, which is doubtful!) Enzyme inhibitors disrupt healthy gut microbiome, inhibit nutrient assimilation, and damage the digestive system. Similar examples exist for almost every single pre-packaged, processed food item in your organic health-food store.

Conclusion

When you’re chronically ill, forget the store-bought cereal, boxed nut milk, nut butters, chips, “healthy” chocolates, and food bars. To build up healthy bacterial colonies in the gut, you a variety of need whole foods. Nothing helps to grow a healthy microbiome like huge, diverse salads. Check out this article, Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting for a recipe for gut-healing salads and be sure to read How To Heal Your Gut.

Fungal Supplement Stack – Knock Out Yeast, Candida, Mold, Fungus

The first three should be plenty for most people, but for really prominent fungal issues or for impatient people with a bigger budget I’d recommend all of these:

• Formula SF722 – Thorne Research
• Abzorb Vitamin & Nutrient Optimizer (500mg) HCP Formulas
• Syntol AMD – Arthur Andrew Medical
• Berberine 500mg – Thorne Research
• MycoCeutics MycoPhyto Complex – EcoNugenics
• MicroDefense – Pure Encapsulations

Sources:

• The inflammatory response to cell death – NCBI
• Does alcohol affect blood sugar levels in diabetes? – Medical news Daily
• Influence of the microbiome on response to vaccination – NCBI
• Your Gut Microbiome Could Affect Vaccines’ Effectiveness – Discover
• What do the bacteria living in your gut have to do with your immune system? – The Conversation
• Seven-Valent Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine and Nasopharyngeal Microbiota in Healthy Children – CDC
• More Evidence Links Gut Microbiome to Autism – NEJM
• The Candida Mercury Link – Lotus Dental
• How Nicotine Affects Candida Overgrowth – Holistic Health

Imagine you have a pain in your chest and fear it might be a heart attack. When you get to the emergency room they run their incredibly expensive tests and then, to your great relief, they tell you that your heart is just fine. It was just indigestion. If you need another reason to stay as healthy as possible, now insurance companies may not pay for your emergency room visit. Some insurance companies are telling you that you need to properly diagnose yourself before heading to the emergency room.

With the price of emergency care skyrocketing, a new report says that some insurance companies won’t pay the claim if it is deemed that the patient did not have an emergency after all.

The new analysis shows that the criteria used by one large insurer, if expanded nationally, could result in denial of payment for nearly 16 percent of ER visits, even though these patients may have the same symptoms when they get to the ER as actual emergency cases, researchers report in JAMA Network Open.” – Reuters

Anthem Inc. insures one in eight people in the U.S. They started a policy of denying coverage for ER visits the company decides are unnecessary. The policy started in three states in 2017 and has expanded to a total of six states in 2018.

A certain proportion of emergency room visits are unnecessary and there are people who use the emergency room as if it were their primary care or only doctor. And there is a certain amount of resentment as this creates crowding in the emergency room and slows things down for people who have true emergencies. But this situation reflects a constellation of underlying problems for which neither the patients nor the emergency rooms are to blame.” – Albert Wu of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore (Reuters)

It’s increasingly important to keep yourself healthy. We recommend starting with the following:

• How To Heal Your Gut
• Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included
• Stop Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

Chemotherapy drugs kill pathogens and beneficial bacteria, and they add a heavy toxic burden to the body. The circulatory system, endocrine system, lymphatic system, and every other system will be overwhelmed with toxins after using chemotherapy drugs, and soon the body will be inundated with pathogenic fungi. While chemotherapy will likely kill fungus, the fungal spores survive. And when there is nothing left to keep them in check, the spores will turn fungal and flourish. We recommend healing the gut and detoxifying the liver to recover from chemotherapy. Diet is crucial to this program, and we recommend continuing on with this diet to avoid another cancer diagnosis.

Gut Health 102

Gut bacteria defines your health. Science is in the process of figuring this out. One big reason gut bacteria is paramount to good health is that your gut bacteria do not stay in your gut. Our microbes that proliferate in our gut reside throughout our whole body. A healthy gut pushes healthy microbes into the bloodstream. It follows that an unhealthy gut ecosystem will leak unhealthy (pathogenic) microbes into the body.

They say that your gut comprises 80% of your immune system. That’s sort of true. A healthy gut has thousands of different bacteria that live in harmony. A less healthy gut has fewer kinds of bacteria inside. Fungi and other pathogens will easily flourish in such a gut. When there is an injury in the body pathogens and beneficial bacteria do the same thing; they feed off of the sugars and starches of the dead and decaying cells. Pathogens cause more damage to the area, beneficial bacteria do not. Because of how beneficial bacteria works, they make it difficult for pathogens to flourish. A healthy gut feeds the body a colony of beneficial microbes that help keep pathogenic activity from proliferating.

Diet

Beneficial bacteria like healthy food. Pathogens like unhealthy food. Your diet should primarily consist of the healthiest foods, lots of raw vegetables and herbs. We recommend 80% raw vegetables and 20% cooked vegetables and healthy whole grains like quinoa, brown rice, amaranth, and millet. Raw produce is high in fiber, which is essential for gut health. Fiber not only moves toxins through the bowels, but it also provides the perfect environment for healthy bacteria to thrive. Buy organic whenever possible, but small farms at your local farmer’s market may have organic food that they don’t certify (certification can be expensive).

Choose a wide variety of nutrient-dense foods. Eat huge salads every day with at least 12 different vegetables and a few fresh herbs. Pack your gut with raw vegetables and herbs every day and your gut will produce a variety of beneficial bacteria. There is no shortcut to this!

If you eat meat, make sure you choose organic meat. You do not want to eat meat from diseased animals fed hormones and antibiotics. Avoid processed foods, and do not eat any foods with artificial flavorings, colorings, preservatives, MSG, or trans fats. Avoid all GMOs. And do not let anyone cook your food for you. No rice cakes, no organic chips, no restaurant food, get completely well before you splurge. We also recommend cranberry lemonade made with stevia to help detoxify the kidneys and the liver. Check out Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included and Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet for more on diet.

Supplements To Kill and Prevent Yeast, Candida, Mold, Fungus

Chemotherapy will leave a body ripe for fungal infections, but a body with cancer was a body that was probably already dealing with fungal issues. The supplements below will help properly balance the gut’s ecosystem. SF722 kills all fungi, and it works amazingly well. Berberine is a potent antimicrobial. The Candida Complex and the Microdefense are two good supplement complexes that eliminate pathogens as well. Syntol and Abzorb are probiotics. In the past doctors have warned against using probiotics during chemo treatments but now well-informed doctors are recommending that probiotics should be taken a few hours after chemotherapy drug administrations for better treatment outcomes. Abzorb also has a systemic enzyme that will help break down Candida along with many other benefits.

• Formula SF722
• Syntol AMD Probiotic
• Berberine 500mg
• Candida Complex
• MycoCeutics MycoPhyto Complex
• MicroDefense
• Abzorb

Related: How To Heal Your Gut

Liver Cleanse

The cranberry lemonade recipe mentioned in Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting is very beneficial for the liver and kidneys. If money is tight, put the money towards food first, and just get the SF722 and the Abzorb, above. But if it’s affordable, we also recommend a liver detox with  Shillington’s Blood Detox Tea, (and/or formula) Shillington’s Liver & Gallbladder Tea (and/or formula), and Mother Earth Organic Root Cider – Barrier Island Organics.

Enhanced Golden Milk Tea Recipe

This is a new twist on an ancient way of experiencing the benefits of turmeric. Ideally, use all fresh, unadulterated herbs whenever available. This will help detoxify the body, and it feels really good.

• 1 cup of warm Coconut Milk
• 1 ounce of turmeric juice, or 1 tablespoon of freshly grated turmeric (both should be with skin)
• 1 teaspoon ground Cinnamon
• 1 ounce of ginger juice or 1 tablespoon of freshly grated ginger (both should be with skin)
• 1 pinch of black pepper
• Pinch of cayenne pepper

Mix it all up and drink. For the drink to be warm, warm up the coconut milk only, but be careful not to cook the other ingredients. Add them in when the coconut milk is not too hot to drink so as to preserve enzymes and other fragile micronutrients.

Related: Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

Conclusion

It all comes down to gut health. We can’t harp on this enough. For healing from chemotherapy to preventing cancer, gut health is paramount. Don’t skip and don’t skimp on the salads. If you do nothing else from this article, we hope you’ll start eating large, diverse salads as often as possible. Salads change the gut ecology for the better. Nothing else makes as big of a difference.

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