Despite warnings about the levels of arsenic in U.S rice potentially increasing cancer risk, a study by Harvard has shown that long term consumption of rice (white or brown) was not associated with a risk of developing cancer.

That being said, the levels of arsenic in brown rice has still been a cause for concern. Do the benefits of brown rice outweigh the risk?

My Daily Dozen recommendation of at least three servings of whole grains a day was associated with a 10 percent lower risk of dying from cancer, a 25 percent lower risk of dying from heart attacks or strokes, and a 17 percent lower risk of dying prematurely across the board, whereas rice consumption in general was not associated with mortality and was not found to be protective against heart disease or stroke.

Do the Pros of Brown Rice Outweigh the Cons of Arsenic?

Related: Stop Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

Many studies have found brown rice to have benefits. One study showed an improvement in insulin levels after five days of eating brown rice compared to white rice. Another study showed that eating a cup of brown rice a day could reduce weight, BMI, and diastole blood pressure.

You should be prioritizing fresh produce above grains in your diet to be as healthy as possible but you don’t have to completely cut out brown rice. Lundberg Farms, in California, produces brown rice with low levels of arsenic and continues to find ways to lower their arsenic levels further.

Related: Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included

Following the ban of Donald Trump on Twitter, the Polish government has announced that it will be making censorship by big tech companies illegal.

“Algorithms or the owners of corporate giants should not decide which views are right and which are not. Censorship of free speech, which is the domain of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, is now returning in the form of a new, commercial mechanism to combat those who think differently.”

Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki

Donald Trump is not the only person experiencing censorship by big tech companies like Twitter and Facebook. Doctors who have spoken out against the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 protocol, journalists and whistleblowers such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, and media organizations who go against the mainstream, are all among groups experiencing censorship. Censorship isn’t a partisan issue. Both those on the left and right who speak out against the mainstream are experiencing censorship.

Researchers at Harvard University and the French National Institue of Health and Medical Research have found that regular use of bleach and other disinfectants may increase your chances of developing fatal lung disease.

Research shows that people who used harsh cleaning products such as bleach, once a week, had up to a 32% increased chance of developing fatal lung disease. Researchers looked at more than 55,000 nurses in the U.S, because they use disinfectants to clean on a regular basis. Of the 55,000 nurses, 37% use disinfectants to clean surfaces on a weekly basis, and 19% used them to clean medical instruments weekly.

Related: How to Use Vinegar and Baking Soda to Clean Your Home

Fatal lung disease, also known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, is present in 1.2 million people in the U.K and kills 25,000 people a year in the U.K.

To the best of our knowledge we are the first to report a link between disinfectants and COPD among healthcare workers, and to investigate specific chemicals that may underlie this association…Some of these disinfectants, such as bleach and quats, are frequently used in ordinary households, and the potential impact of domestic use of disinfectants on COPD development is unknown…Earlier studies have found a link between asthma and exposure to cleaning products and disinfectants at home, such as bleach and sprays, so it is important to investigate this further

Study: Weekly Use of Disinfectants Greatly Increases Your Risk of Fatal Lung Disease

Twitter and other social media apps have banned president Trump from their platforms after claims that his posts have “incited violence”. This is following the raids on the capitol earlier this month.

Image credit:  (Kyle Phillips / The Transcript)

Following the president’s ban on social media, many people have joined the free speech platform “Parler”. Parler was started in 2018 by John Matze “After being exhausted with a lack of transparency in big tech, ideological suppression and privacy abuse”.

But Matze doesn’t want the app to be just an echo chamber for conservative voices. Personally, he says he doesn’t like either political party and he wants to see more healthy debate. He’s so intent on getting some liberals onto the platform that he’s offering a $20,000 “progressive bounty” for an openly liberal pundit with 50,000 followers on Twitter or Facebook to start a Parler account.

Trump fans are flocking to the social media app Parler — its CEO is begging liberals to join them

Most recently Parler was banned on both the google play store and the apple store and then taken offline by Amazon.

OLM is completely against sponsorship. Being an organic health magazine, we’ve experienced our fair share of censorship. Rather it be from Facebook or Google, our content about big Pharma, vaccines, and holistic healing, is often censored.

Recommended: How to Eliminate IBS, IBD, Leaky Gut 

Experts are now estimating that 129 billion face masks, and 65 billion gloved, are being disposed of globally each month. Surgical masks weigh approximately 3.6g, equating to 451,500 tons of masks thrown away each month.

Conservationists and non-governmental organisations are increasingly concerned that a lot of the plastic waste, especially pandemic-related waste, is ending up in landfills, waterways and oceans, adding to the millions of tonnes of plastic waste already dumped into the world’s oceans every year

Three million masks every minute: How Covid-19 is choking the planet

It’s not uncommon for masks to end up in the ocean where animals get tangled up in the elastic ear loops of the mask. Animals can choke on masks and gloves that end up along shorelines.

Related: Natural Coronavirus Prevention

Disposable surgical masks are made of polypropylene, a type of plastic. This type of plastic is unsuitable for recycling and does not break down easily.

If you have to wear a face-covering when going out, consider a reusable one. If you find yourself with a surgical mask that you have to dispose of, be sure to cut the ends of the ear loops off the mask so marine life doesn’t get tangled up in them.

California health officials have called for a temporary halt of a specific lot of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine after severe allergic reactions took place.

One clinic reported 10 allergic reactions within 24 hours, where state officials were only expecting to see 1 allergic reaction per 100,000 people.

More than 330,000 doses of vaccines from this particular lot have been distributed to 287 health care providers throughout California.

“Out of an extreme abundance of caution and also recognizing the extremely limited supply of vaccine, we are recommending that providers use other available vaccine inventory and pause the administration of vaccines from Moderna Lot 041L20A until the investigation by the CDC, FDA, Moderna and the state is complete. We will provide an update as we learn more.”

CA calls for pausing distribution on one lot of Moderna vaccine after allergic reactions reported

Despite stringent lockdown and mask policies, California is quickly approaching three million coronavirus cases.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GORf7q81IY

Related: How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children

I used to have terrible anxiety. Throughout high school, I had panic attacks so severe I felt like I couldn’t breathe. At my worst, I would shut down, in tears, unable to take a deep breath, while my whole body shook. The pit in my stomach would get so heavy I was sure I would be sick. Sometimes, I did get sick.

Image credit: Antonioguillem/Adobe Stock

I remember the progression from being a nervous person to realizing I had anxiety, to being able to recognize I was having a panic attack. Yet, I didn’t even realize how bad it was because I was used to living with chronic pain. But when I was 16, I had a severe panic attack, severe enough that I finally thought to myself, “This is not normal, and I am not okay. I can’t live like this.” It was another two years before I fixed the root of the problem.

For two years after that debilitating panic attack, I would practice deep breathing, and on rare occasions, take an anxiety pill to try and help calm my nerves. Unfortunately, my endocrine system was so messed up, there wasn’t much I could do to quell the anxiety without fixing the root of the problem.

I also used to weigh 320 pounds. I woke up anxious; I went to bed anxious. Every moment of my life was full of anxiety. After graduating from high school, I began to learn about the endocrine system. I’ve learned how my toxic lifestyle (diet, prescription drugs, and poor sleep habits) caused my hormonal imbalance and was at the root of my anxiety and numerous other health problems. If you would like to take a deep dive into how hormones work and how to fix the endocrine system, check out the following article:

The endocrine system is the collection of glands and glandular organs that produce hormones to regulate metabolism, tissue function, growth and development (which includes repair), sexual function, reproduction, sleep, mood, the immune system, and more.

HOLISTIC GUIDE TO HEALING THE ENDOCRINE SYSTEM AND BALANCING OUR HORMONES

My anxiety was caused by two major things that were totally within my control:

• Poor diet
• Poor sleep

I’ve learned that my endocrine system was functioning so poorly because of my diet and poor sleep, which was also affected by my poor diet.

Diet

Diet is imperative to fixing the endocrine system and getting rid of anxiety. Just like with most everything else, it starts in the gut. When I eliminated refined sugars, gluten, and processed foods, I felt better within days. When I started eating a salad and drinking a gallon of cranberry lemonade every day, my life changed for the better, irrevocably.

We have an excellent article about the hormonal system that I urge anyone to read if they want to learn how to balance and heal the endocrine system. It goes into why diet is paramount to healing the gut, the endocrine system, and chronic illness in general:

As OLM always says, it starts with diet. Supplemental therapies are much more effective with a healthy diet, and for most people, the right diet is all they need. But there are plenty of people who do not have access to healthy foods, and there are many who have such a depleted endocrine system that the body is just plain going to need a lot of help.

HOLISTIC GUIDE TO HEALING THE ENDOCRINE SYSTEM AND BALANCING OUR HORMONES

Two months after fixing my diet, I decided to fast for a week. Within days my depression was back. I wasn’t as anxious as I had been, but the anxiety made it difficult to talk about how I was struggling. I had stopped eating vegetables, and I had stopped working out. I don’t think my gut was healthy enough for me to reap the benefits of fasting. A week later, the first thing I ate was a salad. I felt better immediately. As I incorporated exercise back into my life, my anxiety continued to fade.

I start to feel a little anxious when I don’t eat well enough as well as when I don’t take time to get enough sleep. When I say I’m not eating well I should be clear. My idea of junk food is stuff like homemade pesto with brown rice pasta, or organic brown rice chips with a chunk of goat cheddar cheese. Sometimes we make raw food chocolate pie or sourdough bread. While the average person wouldn’t notice any problems with these foods, and may even feel better compared to a typical diet, I get anxious when I eat wheat or pre-packaged processed “healthy” snack foods.

Sleep

Throughout high school, I would regularly sleep between 12-14 hours a day. I would often joke with my friends about how much sleep I got. While they were on one end of the spectrum, pulling all-nighters, I was on the other end, sleeping as much as possible. None of us were healthy. I struggled with depression throughout high school. I was always exhausted, no matter how much I slept.

Fixing your sleep schedule can be difficult or impossible if you’re not taking care of yourself in other ways. I sleep well when I eat well. Exercise helps, too. When I mess up my sleep schedule (which doesn’t happen often, but it does happen), I find that exercise is the best way to help me get back on track. No matter how mentally tired I am at the end of the day, I can still have a hard time falling asleep if I don’t go for a run or work out in some other way.

I also find that having a set bedtime and wake-up time helps. I generally go to bed by 9:30 or 10:00 every night. My wake-up time is not yet as consistent. Sometimes I’m up at 6:00 am, but other times, if my REM sleep is off, or I’m working out very hard, I can sleep past 8. I’m almost always awake by 9.

I find that my sleep schedule and my endocrine system are intertwined. It can be a vicious cycle when things aren’t going well! An unhealthy endocrine system makes it difficult to impossible to fix one’s sleep schedule, and a messed up sleep schedule makes it difficult to impossible to have a healthy endocrine system.

I find it interesting to pay attention to what happens when I don’t get enough sleep, and I get to experiment with this regularly. I have friends in college who often aren’t ready or able to talk or hang out until 8:00 or 9:00 pm when I’m ready to go to bed. And sometimes I can’t help myself, and I find I’ve pulled all-nighters or had too many consecutive days running on 3-4 hours of sleep while sticking to my very healthy diet.

when I don’t get enough sleep, the first thing that happens, obviously, is exhaustion. I have a hard time focusing and I feel very drained. Then I notice the anxiety. I notice a small pit in my stomach at the thought of doing something I don’t want to do. Something as simple as going on a run when I don’t want to can cause a slight twinge of anxious nausea.

The longer I go without sleep the worse my anxiety gets. It goes from that small twinge of nausea to a constant knot in my stomach at the thought of the unknown. My heart rate will spike unnecessarily at any unease. Happy excitement can turn into anxiety very quickly.

After one all-nighter or 2 days with less than 6 hours of sleep, I notice the bags under my eyes. They’re faint. Someone who doesn’t know me might not even notice them, but they’re there. Shortly after the sun comes up, I can barely see the purple-blue hues beginning to appear under my eyes.

I also experience dizziness when standing up if I’m not getting enough sleep. Recently, for two weeks, I did not get nearly enough sleep and was alternating between all-nighters and getting a couple of hours of sleep a night. Every time I stood up I would get lightheaded. I nearly fainted twice. There are multiple factors that go into this, but I believe that had I been getting proper sleep, it wouldn’t have been a problem. Since correcting my sleep schedule, the issues have gone away.

Conclusion

I remember what it was like to have severe anxiety. I know how hard it can be to treat. I find that like almost all other things health related, it starts in the gut. Fixing anxiety can take time. My panic attacks went away within days of fixing my diet, but it took months of regular exercise and a healthy diet to fix my endocrine system enough to alleviate my anxiety completely.

• The Effects of Anxiety on the Endocrine System
• Anxiety disorders are linked to inflamed thyroid glands
• 10 Ways to Naturally Reduce Anxiety