As you may have seen, Mike Seidel, a Weather Channel reporter, is in the video below battling wind gusts, struggling to stay upright. He seems to be barely holding himself up. Then you see two people walk behind him in the background, having no trouble with the wind.

The video has gone viral and Mike Seidel is getting trolled relentlessly, and deservedly.

https://twitter.com/Limerickman/status/1040678564402814977

The weather channel is standing by their reporter. From TMZ:

The Weather Channel has an explanation … “It’s important to note that the 2 individuals in the background are walking on concrete, and Mike Seidel is trying to maintain his footing on wet grass, after reporting on-air until 1:00 AM ET this morning and is undoubtedly exhausted.”

The problem is, if it’s so hard to stand up on the grass (and it seems this may be true if his feet are sunk into the muddy ground as they appear to be) he should be able to easily see that the cameramen are having no problems being up on the concrete. If he was, in fact, exhausted and having such a hard time standing upright, why didn’t he just move?

Because this was more dramatic! There’s no other reasonable explanation.

This is how the 24-hour news cycle works. Adding drama is how they convince the public to back a war. This is what makes people think that things are so dangerous and kids shouldn’t be allowed outside by themselves. This is how they divide us politically, and how they keep so many of us frightened and voting against our best interests, and/or feeling apathetic and not voting at all.

And this is why people have lost faith in the news.

Here’s another example from 2008:

https://twitter.com/iamgavinjames/status/1041047974879617024

Gavin thinks this is from Hurricane Florence. He’s wrong. One would not be blamed for thinking this reporter is on his knees, but if you look at this post you’ll see he just picked a very deep spot to stand in. Anderson Cooper is seen in the video below defending himself after being trolled on Twitter. You be the judge.

We think he could have just as easily picked a spot the better represented the average depth of the flooding. If he wanted to show the extremes he could have then moved around to deeper and more shallow waters. We contend that the spot he picked was for dramatic effect.

Recommended: How To Heal Your Gut

Why did we post this? Because we believe that climate change is real and that it is a massive threat to humanity. And we believe that it’s news like this that sows discord, disbelief, and apathy in the public.

Bonus! Here’s more reason to hate the mainstream media:

In exchange for a shot that most recently rendered a mere 1 in 10 who people who receive it protected, you get an increased risk of actually getting the flu and exposure to side effects like headaches, fever, sepsis, convulsions, asthma, other respiratory problems, and paralysis. While many of those side effects can lead to permanent issues, a new study from the Kaiser Permanente Northern California finds that the vaccine’s ability to protect you from the flu may not be so long-lasting. The risk of getting the flu rose by 16 percent twenty-eight days after getting the vaccine, and that risk continued to increase throughout the flu season.

Related: Influenza Vaccine – A Comprehensive Overview of the Potential Dangers and Effectiveness of the Flu Shot

The Study

Published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, the Kaiser Permanente study looked at 44,959 individuals who had tested positive for the flu from September 2010 to March 2017. Subjects had been given the inactivated flu vaccine. Those who had been tested 42 to 69 days after being vaccinated had 1.32 times the odds of testing positive for any variation of influenza than those tested within 14-41 days of receiving the shot. Patients tested more than 5 months after their shot had 2.06 the odds of testing positive for the flu.

Related: How to Heal the Gut

The Pressure

The pressure to get the flu shot (or any vaccine) is intense. Many employers, especially in the healthcare field (go figure), require it, and advertisements and media proclaiming the importance of protecting yourself and the others around you from the flu are everywhere. If you’re in a situation where the flu shot becomes a must, it’s imperative you don’t treat it as actual protection from the flu. In fact, the first thing you need to do after getting the shot is getting the preservatives used in the vaccine out of your system.

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

The System

The flu shot is not about the flu. If it was, they would have dropped it a long time ago. It seemed like every article released about the vaccine last year included a quote from a carefully selected expert, designed to communicate to you how important it is to get the flu shot…in spite of this article you finished reading about how ineffective it is. This latest study is no different. Researchers concluded that health care providers should carefully consider the timing of the shot during flu season.

But let’s face it. If anything, the manufacturers of the flu vaccine will cite this study as a reason to vaccinate people more than once during flu season. Twice the profit and twice the protection! What could go wrong…??

Sources:

• Study: Flu vaccine protection starts to wane within weeks – CIDRAP
• Intra-season Waning of Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness – Oxford Academic
• Influenza Vaccine – A Comprehensive Overview of the Potential Dangers and Effectiveness of the Flu Shot – Organic Lifestyle Magazine

The gastrointestinal (GI) tract of a healthy mammal is home to a complex community of bacteria. This microbial community is often called “microbiota,” “gut flora,” or “beneficial bacteria.” These microbes have evolved with us to coexist in a mutually beneficial relationship.

An Introduction to Gut Microbes

We need beneficial gut microbes for proper B vitamin production, digestion, and assimilation. Some bacteria also synthesize vitamin K. In fact, we need bacteria for synthesization, digestion, and assimilation of many vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats, and many other nutrients. Healthy bacteria also keep the population of other microbes (like candida) down to healthy levels. Healthy bacteria colonies form a biofilm that keeps the intestinal wall healthy and acts as a barrier against pathogens. Healthy bacteria move slowly and crowd out unwanted pathogens. A healthy gut biofilm is a home to thousands of different beneficial bacteria, the more the better. And they don’t just reside on our gut. Some of them can and do pass through the gut wall and they live all over our body. It’s often said that bacteria in our body outnumber our own cells by about ten to one. That’s incorrect, but there are more bacteria cells than human cells in the human body. The ratio is about 39 bacterial cells to every 30 human cells.

If you have ever been to a bio-dentist, they may have shown you what your mouth bacteria looks like under a microscope. Generally, the fast-moving bacteria are up to no good. You can see these guys frantically swimming around looking for trouble, banging against the teeth and gums, maybe looking for a good spot to burrow in and make a home, feed, and reproduce. If you have teeth and gum issues try this: take the capsule of a probiotic, break it open, and empty the contents into your mouth. Leave it in there. Move it around. Swish it around when you’ve built up some saliva. You should notice that some of the pain subsides. Now picture how this works in your gut. Incidentally, oral health is a very good indicator of gut health.

Without enough healthy bacteria, the whole body suffers. Gut microbes can change brain chemistry and alter endocrine functionality. Depression is tied to irritable bowel syndrome. Autism is believed to be caused by or at least exacerbated by an unbalanced gut. In my experience, every single autoimmune disease resides in the body of someone with an unhealthy gut.

Hopefully, you’re getting an idea of how important healthy bacteria are to our health. We need them for good health for many reasons, and likely most of which we aren’t even yet aware of yet.

It should be noted that the phrases “good bacteria” and “bad bacteria” are pretty inaccurate. Bacteria are only responding to their environment. “Good” bacteria, under bad circumstances, will become “bad” bacteria very quickly.

Candida

We all have candida spores in our gut even if we’re healthy. They’re practically indestructible. Anything we could do to kill them would probably kill us. They can reside in the body dormant without causing problems for an estimated six months.

Antibiotics kill bacteria and antibiotics can also kill other pathogens including fungi. But yeast spores are left to rule. When there is an opportunity to flourish candida turns fungal, becoming pathogenic.

Common Causes of Candida Overgrowth

• Alcohol
• Antibiotics
• Vaccines
• Amalgam Fillings
• Refined foods
• Smoking

An often overlooked way that candida gets fed is damage to the body. Cells are mostly made up of glycogen and starch. Damaged, dying cells feed yeast and other pathogens.

Leaky Gut

The gut is permeable, so to some extent, it’s always leaky. A health gut biofilm doesn’t let unwanted things pass into the bloodstream. Some of the “good” bacteria will get through, but that’s ok. Remember, there are bacteria all over our body. We want the good guys, not the bad guys. If candida takes over, an abundance of candida increases zonulin levels, the substance that controls the tight junctions between enterocytes in the gut, which leads to weaker junctions and the development of leaky gut. And here’s a scary fact for you: candida filaments also penetrate directly through the wall of the gut lining and contribute to leaky gut in this manner as well. In other words, picture centipede looking things with very long legs that kind of drill into the gut lining. The intestinal wall will also get dry and cracked. All of this makes for a gut that is much more permeable than it should be. At this stage pathogens and undigested proteins make it into our bloodstream, overwhelming the body’s immune system. Proteins have to be broken down completely or else the body sees them as foreign proteins and reacts accordingly. This is how most allergies happen.

And that gut drilling thing candida does – it does it all over the body as well, opening up pathways for infection throughout the body.  It’s easy to see how candida wrecks havoc on the liver. Consider the gut-liver axis. 70% of the blood flow to the liver is flowing from the gut. The liver quickly becomes overwhelmed with the toxins produced by candida.

I could go on and on about candida, but I’m attempting to write my shortest gut-health article to date, so I’ll stop here. But if you want to know more, read Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections. I’ll bet it’ll blow your mind. Candida is a fascinating creature.

Supplements

If you want to see a list of the top 25+ supplements for killing fungi, this is your list. Below is a list I put together a supplement stack with just a few that work very well to put the gut back into homeostasis.

• Activated Charcoal: Binds with positively charged things in the gut, like candida in its pathogenic form, and many of the toxins it produces, which then gets defecated out of the body. (more on activated charcoal)
• Astragalus: A potent antimicrobial that also is anti-inflammatory, boosts the immune system, slows tumor growth, helps prevent and reverse diabetes, and more.
• Berberine: This plant-root alkaloid extract has confirmed and potent antiviral, antibacterial, and anti-fungal properties.
• Biotin: With the presence of the B vitamin, biotin, it is said that yeast is unable to change into its mycelium form. On the other hand, there are some studies that suggest candida can feed off of biotin.
• Black Walnut: Studies have shown that black walnut can effectively kill canker sores, herpes, and syphilis sores. The husks of black walnuts have potent anti-fungal powers; more powerful than many prescription drugs. Fungi and parasites thrive in an acidic environment.
• Caprylic acid: A the fatty acid in coconut which contains antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal properties. Coconut or coconut oil by itself does not have very strong antimicrobial properties.
• Chlorella: It’s not an anti-fungal, but chlorella is negatively charged like charcoal and has a host of other benefits that counter candida symptoms. Chlorella also helps remove heavy metals and limited amounts of positively charged candida from the blood.
• Cinnamon: A potent natural antifungal with tons of other health benefits. Read more on cinnamon.
• Clays: Like activated charcoal, bentonite clay can bind with candida and heavy metals and other positively charged items to pull them out of the body through defecation.
• Clove: This strong smelling spice contains some of the same compounds as oregano oil. Studies have shown that cloves contain powerful antimicrobial and anti-fungal compounds.
• Cranberry: There is nothing better for a urinary tract infection than unsweetened, unadulterated cranberry juice. Click for Recipe.
• Diatomaceous Earth: Often called DE for short, this supplement is another negatively charged chelator (like charcoal and bentonite clay, but not as effective in that way), that also kills pathogens, but candida biofilm protects itself well from DE. More on DE.
• Enzymes: Hemicellulase, protease, and Cellulase have been shown to break down the cells walls and the biofilm of candida. These must be taken within a protective capsule that will break apart in the gut and not the stomach acid. More on enzymes.
• Garlic: Allicin, a compound in garlic, has antifungal, antibacterial and antiviral properties, and garlic helps strengthen the immune system. Read more about garlic.
• Goldenseal: A popular herb that has been used by Native Americans for hundreds of years, with potent antimicrobial activity, including some pretty decent antifungal properties.
• Goldenrod: Goldenrod is antifungal, diuretic, diaphoretic, anti-inflammatory, expectorant, astringent, antiseptic, and carminative.¹⁰
• Magnesium: Breaks down the toxic metabolites (byproducts) of candida albicans. Read about homemade calcium and magnesium here.
• Molybdenum: Also breaks down the toxic metabolites (byproducts) of candida albicans.
• Mushrooms: Fight fire with fire, and fungi with fungi! Many mushrooms produce natural anti-yeast factors to prevent other fungi from taking over their turf. The reishi mushroom is well known throughout the world for its plethora of health benefits, including powerful antifungal properties, but there are many other mushrooms that help clean the gut as well.
• Lemongrass: Lemongrass oil is the most powerful antibacterial and antifungal essential oil.
• Neem: This plant’s properties include immunomodulatory, anti-inflammatory, antihyperglycaemic, antiulcer, antimalarial, antifungal, antibacterial, antioxidant, antimutagenic, and anticarcinogenic.
• Oil of Oregano: This extract is very well known for its ability to kill off pathogenic activity, and there are plenty of studies that demonstrate its efficacy.
• Olive Leaf Extract: This extract is known for killing fungal and pathogenic bacterial infections without harming healthy bacteria. I suspect this is because it’s weak and doesn’t penetrate biofilm.
• Pau D’Arco: Also known as Lapacho, this supplement has received worldwide attention in recent years due to the numerous studies proving its amazing health benefits including the ability to kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria and difficult fungal infections like candida.
• Probiotics: Most everyone knows to take probiotics to fight yeast infections, but make sure the probiotic is of quality. Lots of cheap probiotics break down in stomach acid and the ingredients end up actually feeding yeast. Also, they need to be able to pass through stomach acid and into the gut to do its job. Taking probiotics with antimicrobial supplements will reduce the effects of both.
• Spirulina: For purposes of candida killing, it works just like the other aforementioned algae, Chlorella. Check out How to Grow Spirulina at Home
• Turmeric: Turmeric is a potent antimicrobial herb with proven antifungal properties and a host of other amazing health benefits. Check out How to Optimize Curcumin.
• Undecylenic acid: This fatty acid is six times more effective than caprylic acid. It’s been shown in studies that candida cannot build a tolerance for undecylenic acid, which probably makes it the most potent candida killer on this list.
• Wormwood: This is a potent antimicrobial’s active ingredient is Artemisia, and it is better known the world over for its ability to kill parasites.
• Zinc: helps with protein digestion, enzymatic reactions, energy production, antioxidant functions, and it is imperative for proper mineral balance. It’s common to see a zinc deficiency in a candida-laden body.

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

I recommend taking the SF722, Berberine, MycoCeutics, and Microdefense with meals, and the Abzorb and Syntol separately, on an empty stomach (like in the morning and before bed). The Abzorb and the Syntol are a bit redundant, but I find good results using both if the budget can afford it. If money is really tight, just get the SF722 and put your money into your diet.

Diet

You could probably take lots of SF722 every day and eat like the average health-conscious person does and be fine. If you don’t want to take supplements forever, you’ll need to adopt a much healthier diet.

Here are three articles I put together on diet. This is indicative of how my family eats every single day. The first article has recipes for cranberry lemonade and salads.

• Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included
• Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet
• How to Make the Healthiest Smoothies – 4 Recipes

Make cranberry lemonade every day. The cranberry lemonade helps keep the kidneys and liver working optimally. These organs typically get sluggish quickly when lots of candida are killed. If salads are #1, this cranberry lemonade is #2, and supplements are a distant #3.

Eat a very large salad (7-9 cups) for breakfast. The salad has at least 10 different vegetables and a few different herbs.

Don’t let anyone cook or prepare your food for you. This means no boxes or cartons or almond milk. Make it yourself. No restaurants, not premade dinners, no prepackaged meals, your foods you buy should have only one ingredient.

Start off with cranberry lemonade and a huge salad every morning. For lunch, for those that aren’t very sick, do a smoothie or snack on some nuts and/or fruit, or we finish that massive breakfast salad.

For dinner, cook from scratch, which will take preparation and time, but it gets easier. Try rice and beans, quinoa, lentils, millet, and amaranth. Some of these foods are not recommended on candida-cleanse diets, but I feel they are beneficial when one is eating the aforementioned salads. Also, we add lots of raw vegetables and herbs to our dinners as well. For instance, the rice and beans go great with raw chopped tomatoes and avocado, diced onions and garlic, and shredded turmeric and ginger. Eat raw herbs and cooked herbs together for maximum health benefits.

The salads are the most important part of this protocol. More than supplements, more than anything save getting enough water, the salads are imperative. Eat lots of raw vegetables. Eat a variety of them. Your fridge should be full of produce! There is nothing more beneficially life-changing than developing a salad habit when the salads are big and diverse and homemade. They do more than any supplement or any other food to clean the intestinal walls of filth and develop a beneficial gut ecosystem.

For those with very serious gut issues, legumes and grains may be a no-no for the first few weeks at least, but when enough salad has been consumed, the gut should be able to reap many benefits from cooked foods like the dinner meals aforementioned. I recommend, for those who are very sick and who have a hard time digesting foods, to slowly add in the aforementioned dinner foods into salads first.

Sweet fruit should be severely limited, and for those who are chronically ill, avoided until the gut is working well. Grapefruit, cranberry, avocado, lime, and lemon do not fall under this category.

Juicing with fruits is not much better than refined sugar, so don’t make the common mistake of thinking a fresh-juice fast is going to get you well.

Modern fruit has too much sugar in it; I don’t recommend being a fruitarian, especially with an abundance of candida. The key to fixing the gut is a very wide variety of fresh raw vegetables and herbs. Some fruit is great, but too much fruit can send even a healthy gut into fungal overload.

Wheat and oats should be avoided until gut health is restored. Wheat and oats tend to be drenched in glyphosate before they are harvested, and wheat has a host of other issues regarding health. If you want to eat bread, make your own using heirloom seeds and old-school practices. Check out Gluten Intolerance, Wheat Allergies, and Celiac Disease – It’s More Complicated Than You Think for more information.

Variety

You need a lot of different kinds of bacteria to make a healthy gut colony. Different bacteria like different foods, and the most beneficial bacteria like the healthiest foods. Raw vegetables and herbs feed the gut the best, producing the healthiest bacteria. If you think about it, nature really wouldn’t work any other way. A lot of health practitioners want to limit the diet when someone is sick. They also often say to avoid raw produce. These two ideas are wrong! I work the other way. Limit sweets, including fruits, and eliminate refined and processed foods, but expand your healthy whole foods that don’t feed pathogens, and fresh raw produce is best.

Six Months

It takes around six months for spores to die off. It takes about as long for the gut lining to heal. Fortunately, you can build a healthy biofilm full of beneficial microbes much faster than that. Unfortunately, spores are ready to come to life as soon as they’re feed. For anyone with systemic fungal related health issues, it takes six months of being very careful and strict on the diet – six months from the day, after all, symptoms are gone – to really get rid of candida, other fungi, and chronic illness.

Sources:

• Scientists bust myth that our bodies have more bacteria than human cells – Nature
• Why gut bacteria are essential for a healthy immune system – Medical Express
• The role of gut microbiota in immune homeostasis and autoimmunity – NCBI

Florida has declared a state of emergency. The latest outbreak of algae has been around for almost a year with no sign of reprieve. Marine life is dying, people are having trouble breathing, and the economy is being negatively impacted. Businesses from the most affected counties are reporting a loss of nearly $90 million. How is this happening and why is it so dangerous?

There are two separate issues. There is freshwater algae bloom in Lake Okeechobee, the state’s largest lake. It’s a recurring bloom, but this year the bloom came earlier in the year and it now covers 90% of the lake. This blue-green alga is actually a type of bacteria known as cyanobacteria. These bacteria proliferate rapidly in warm, slow-moving, nutrient-rich waters. It relies on sunlight to survive and normally it can’t be seen by the naked eye. But it’s so dense that it’s easy to see in Lake Okeechobee. The bacteria, at this potency, produce dangerous toxins that kill wildlife and can make humans very sick.

In the southwest coast of the Gulf of Mexico, there is also the red tide, a term generally used to describe many different kinds of harmful algal blooms. This phenomenon happens all over the world, but along the coast of Florida, the most plentiful culprit is said to be algae called Karenia brevis. Red tide occurs naturally. There’s evidence of this phenomenon from at least 500 years ago. In the last 50 years, the blooms have become more and more frequent, lasted longer, and the algae is in much higher concentrations.

Related: Gluten Intolerance, Wheat Allergies, and Celiac Disease – It’s More Complicated Than You Think

This bloom is said to be responsible for the deaths of thousands of fish, 92 manatees, 300 sea turtles, and at least one whale shark. The odor from the algae and the dead sea creatures are reportedly still potent at least 10 miles away from the beach.

What’s causing both of these blooms today is a combination of environment and human activity.

The Farm Industry And Other Human Activities

The algae that cause Red Tide start growing dozens of miles offshore near the continental shelf. The blooms are not stimulated under normal conditions in open, well-circulating waters. But the conditions in the Gulf are not normal. Manmade chemical nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus-based fertilizers, glyphosate, and other herbicides and pesticides from farms are contaminating the Gulf. The fertilizers are feeding the algae, and the chemicals are shifting the balance to the kinds of algae that are damaging the ecosystem. These fertilizers would feed different types of algae and provide a balance that would not be a problem for marine life or for us, but the lack of current and the glyphosates are favoring the wrong type of algae. Also, a faster-moving current would draw those manmade chemical nutrients out into the ocean, but the slowing Gulf Stream current leaves those fertilizers closer to the coastline, bringing the algae to the shore.

Farm water runoff is also feeding the problem in Lake Okeechobee, and the lake’s ecosystem is also getting overwhelmed with runoff pollution from lawns (lawn fertilizer, weed killers) and septic systems from the surrounding communities. The lake provides the area with drinking water and it’s the source of agricultural irrigation for their $1.5 billion-a-year farming industry. Production includes sugar, vegetables, citrus fruits, and rice. More people are moving in and their agriculture business is growing.

Lake Okeechobee had already become a toxic petri dish for many strains of nasty microorganisms before Hurricane Irma caused flooding and which precipitated more pollution runoff into the lake, radically overwhelming the ecosystem.

Related: Glyphosate Found in the Majority of Oat-Based Products

Sugar

For 6,000 years, water from Lake Okeechobee flowed through the Everglades and then out into the Florida Bay. The sugar industry needed more farmland so the excess water that drained into the Everglades was diverted into the east and west coasts.

The same fertilizer used to grow sugar cane and other crops feed algae in the lake and also runs off into the ocean on both sides of Florida.

Big Sugar says that they are not responsible for most of the nutrients in the lake, which is true. A government report traced 10 percent of the phosphorous in Lake Okeechobee back to sugar farms in 2011. But the problem is not so much their fertilizer usage as it is their use of the land in the Everglades. Environmentalists want the sugar industry to return the land to the state so that the water can flow through and naturally be filtered by the Everglades.

Wetlands are very good at taking up those nutrients, so you have nice clean water released out of the wetlands. The problem is now the northern third of the Everglades has been drained and turned into these sugar cane fields. That’s what forces engineers to release the water to the east and the west.” – Dr. Brand

It’s easier said than done. The everglade land is some of the most fertile soil in the United States. If sugar cane crops are grown elsewhere in the U.S. there would most likely be a significant increase in fertilizer usage. In addition, the federal sugar subsidy stops American companies from buying sugar from other countries.

Related: Sugar Leads to Depression – World’s First Trial Proves Gut and Brain are Linked (Protocol Included)

Glyphosate

Dr. Seneff says that the cyanobacteria causing the “algae” bloom in the lakes have the ability to break down glyphosate and use its phosphorus. This gives the cyanobacteria a competitive advantage against other species in a body of water contaminated with lots of glyphosates. In an interview she states:

There are a lot of sugar cane fields surrounding Lake Okeechobee in Central Florida, and they are being sprayed with glyphosate before harvest as a desiccant. There’s also lots of glyphosate being used on those well-manicured lawns of multi-million dollar homes.”

Blue-green algae are always present in the mix, but without glyphosate, they don’t grow to such huge concentrations compared to the competing flora.”

In that same interview, the interviewer says that officials claim that the blue-green algae have nothing to do with the red tide, and asks Dr. Seneff what she thinks of this.

No, I don’t believe this! Again, very straightforward. The blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) are able to convert free nitrogen from the air into nitrates. Thus, they cause an excess of nitrates in the water, in addition to those nitrates that come from excess run-off from nitrate-based fertilizers. The excess nitrates provide essential nutrients for the red algae (Karenia brevis), that then grow to large numbers offshore, causing the red tide.” – Dr. Stephanie Seneff, Mom’s Across Amarica Interview

Ecowatch also reported on this phenomenon in 2016.

“It turns out that many cyanobacteria present in Lake Erie have the genes allowing the uptake of phosphonates, and these cyanobacteria can grow using glyphosate and other phosphonates as a sole source of phosphorus,” George Bullerjahn of Bowling Green State University, Ecowatch inteview

Recommnded: How to Heal Your Gut

Climate Change

According to a new study, an Atlantic Ocean current has slowed down, reaching a 1,000-year low. This reduces the movement of the water in the Gulf of Mexico. The Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico are becoming warmer and more stagnant. Warmer oceans also mean more torrential downpours with the potential for more frequent flooding and greater agriculture chemical runoff.

As the planet’s temperatures increase, many water systems become more hospitable to toxic algal blooms. The temperature of the ocean has increased by about 2 degrees since the year 1900. The temperature in the Gulf of Mexico is also climbing more rapidly, but it should be too warm for K. brevis, which thrives in water temperatures up to 83 degrees. The gulf can reach temperatures of 90ºF in warmer months like July and August. But new research shows that increased carbon dioxide allows the algae to grow and proliferate at higher temperatures. As anyone concerned with the state of our environment knows, we are massively increasing the levels of carbon dioxide in the air.

Conclusion

Experts say they have no idea when the toxic algae blooms will end. We also don’t yet know if this one will last longer than previous episodes. Many believe that the frequency of the red tide has increased, but historical records are not accurate enough to indicate for sure that the red tides are definitely more prevalent. This bloom Florida is dealing with now started in November of 2017. At the time of this article, it has lasted for a little more than ten months.  From late 2004 to early 2006 there was a 17-month long red tide in southern Florida, and a few years previous there was one that lasted for 21 months.

Sources:

• How Climate change is Making Red Tide Algae Blooms Even Worse – Washington Post
• Florida’s unusually long red tide is killing wildlife, tourism, and businesses – Washington Post
• Sugarcane Production in the U.S. by State – Statista
• Climate Change Indicators: Sea Surface Temperature – EPA
• Atlantic Ocean Current Slows Down To 1,000-Year Low, Studies Show – NPR

Missouri is the first state in the U.S. to ban the word “meat” on faux meat products like garden burgers and Tofurky. Using the term “plant-based meats,” and “vegan faux-meat” can find the business owner in jail for up to a year. This law was brought to you by The Missouri Cattlemen’s Association.

The legislation defines meat as ‘any edible portion of livestock or poultry carcass or part thereof’ and requires that any labeled meat product is derived ‘in whole or in part, from livestock or poultry.’ Violators of this definition will henceforth be subject to up to one year in prison and fines of up to $1,000.” – Forbe’s

Must Read: Meat and Dairy Industry On Course To Contribute More Global pollution Than OIL Companies

The law will also apply to “clean meat” which is produced by growing and multiplying cells in a lab. Animal rights organizations and environmental groups aren’t keen on the new law. It’s estimated that if we switched to eating lab-grown meat, we would cut agriculture emissions by 96%.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4nL_NtunKU

Must Read: FDA Commissioner to Issue New Non-Dairy Milk Guidelines

Missouri is the first state but not likely the last. The American beef industry has been lobbying to get “meat” banned from vegetable-based products for years, and meat industries want the ban to be nationwide.

The industry has cause for concern. TreeHugger says,

Americans ate 20 percent less beef in 2014 than they did in 2005. Veggie meat substitutes, by contrast, are a growing industry. And who knows what’ll happen when lab-based meats start making it into grocery stores.”

Air pollution leads to people losing the equivalent of one year of education, says a new study conducted in China. Developing countries are more likely to have poor air quality, and 95% of the world’s population is breathing unsafe air. This has resulted in an estimated 6.5 million premature deaths worldwide from air pollution in 2016. We’re aware of the toxic effects of air pollution on our health and environment, but this study looks at some of the more subtle side effects of unsafe air. A year’s worth of education is what people are losing on average. Xi Chen at Yale School of Public Health in the US, a member of the research team, said,

Polluted air can cause everyone to reduce their level of education by one year, which is huge…But we know the effect is worse for the elderly, especially those over 64, and for men, and for those with low education. If we calculate [the loss] for those, it may be a few years of education.”

The Susceptible

In addition to the elderly, at-risk populations include children, men, low-educated people, and individuals with mental disorders. This study also identified how air pollution impacts cognitive ability. Subjects were more likely to lose language ability, rather than math ability. Longer exposure also meant a greater decrease in these abilities and a greater likelihood of developing dementia and mental illness.

Recommended: Myth of Moderate Alcohol Benefits Debunked, and How Science Gets Corrupted

China

China is notorious for their poor air quality. More than half of the people that die from air pollution every year, more than three million people, live in China and India. The government has been focused on improving their air quality, closing down 500 factories, forcing 300,000 older cars off the roads, and reducing coal consumption by a whopping 30 percent. But that is likely not enough. Less than three years ago, the smog and air pollution in Beijing was at eight times the level considered healthy by the World Health Organization.

Can We Fix It?

Air pollution is a serious health hazard. Like many of the emerging causes of disease, it is a problem of our own making. Factories in all of their forms (industrial and farmed) have permanently altered our atmosphere and left billions worldwide at an increased risk of physical conditions like heart disease, emphysema, cancer, and asthma, among others. Studies have previously confirmed that air pollution can affect cognitive performance, but now the link between the loss of overall intelligence and air pollution has been drawn.

Recommended: Glyphosate Found in the Majority of Oat-Based Products

China has already put programs in place to combat air pollution. That will provide crucial intel into whether or not air pollution can be effectively dealt with for ourselves and the next generation.

Sources:

• Air pollution causes ‘huge’ reduction in intelligence, study reveals – Guardian
• Beijing creates anti-smog police to tackle air polluters – Guardian
• Pollution Linked to Nine Million Deaths A Year Worldwide – Organic Lifestyle Magazine
• Pollution linked to one in six deaths – BBC News

We’ve all heard many times that a glass of wine a day is good for you. Improbable, considering what alcohol does to the gut, but study after study seemed to verify alcohol’s heart-health benefits. The only problem was that the studies never actually said that moderate alcohol consumption is healthy. In fact, most studies simply pointed to potential benefits of red wine, and the studies were flawed in many ways, but the news ran with the idea that a regular drink is good for us because this is what most of us wanted to believe.

How Industry Corrupts Science

One recent study was attempting to lay the doubts to rest and confirm that a drink or two a day was, in fact, beneficial to our health. The problem is that this study was funded by the alcohol industry.

One of the many problems with previous alcohol studies is that if you compare a group of people who only drink a moderate amount to people who don’t drink you’re comparing people with restraint to people who may or may not have restraint with other lifestyle choices. A person who only has one glass of wine a day is likely going to have more willpower than the average person. For instance, maybe many members of the non-drinking control group don’t like alcohol but instead smokes and eats junk food all day.

A proper study on the effects of alcohol would randomly assign one group of people to drink a moderate amount while they assign another group of people to abstain. This is tough to do with a large enough control group, but in 2013 the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), set out to do just that. The Moderate Alcohol and Cardiovascular Health study was poised to be a breakthrough in public health. The 10-year, $100 million government trial is now underway.

The NIH is said to be one of the world’s foremost medical research centers. it’s a federal agency that invests more than $30 billion of taxpayer money into health research yearly. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism is an agency under NIH  that oversees the alcohol industry.

The idea is to pay thousands of people to drink in four continents. This amounted to 3,500 daily drinks for six years. The math proved to be incredibly expensive. NIH decided to rely on the alcohol industry to foot the bill. In October of 2017 Wired reported that,

Five corporations—Anheuser-Busch InBev, Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Heineken, and Carlsberg—have since provided a total of $67 million. The foundation is seeking another $23 million, according to its director of development, Julie Wolf-Rodda.”

In May of 2018, The New York Times published a scathing report that showed the NIH’s ties to the alcohol industry. The article opens with:

It was going to be a study that could change the American diet, a huge clinical trial that might well deliver all the medical evidence needed to recommend a daily alcoholic drink as part of a healthy lifestyle.

That was how two prominent scientists and a senior federal health official pitched the project during a presentation at the luxurious Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Fla., in 2014. And the audience members who were being asked to help pay for the $100 million study seemed receptive: They were all liquor company executives.

The Times article reported that documents and interviews proved that the NIH courted the alcohol industry with a plan to endorse moderate drinking as healthy. The alcohol industry previewed the trial design and was allowed to vet the researchers.

Besides the industry influence, two other major problems with the study include the fact that the study is too short to see increases in cancers and other health issues that could be linked to alcohol consumption and too many people are excluded from the study. People are not allowed to partake in the study if they have never had a drink or have a history of addiction, psychiatric care, liver problems, kidney problems, and certain cancers.

You’re picking off the people who are most likely to have the harms.” – Dr. Richard Saitz, chair of the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University

Incidentally, research has shown that alcohol consumption in any amount increases the risk of breast cancer.

A month after the Times article was published Stat News published an article titled, NIH rejected a study of alcohol advertising while pursuing industry funding for other research.

…at the 2015 meeting the director, George Koob, would leap out of his seat and scream at the scientists after their PowerPoint presentation on research the agency had eagerly funded on the association between alcohol marketing and underage drinking. ‘I don’t fucking care!’ Koob yelled, referring to alcohol advertising, according to the scientists.

Fortunately, thanks to all of the journalist reporting on this corrupt clinical trial, NIH terminated it last June.

A New Study Not Funded By Big Alcohol

It may not be wise to put any credence into a vaccination study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, but they aren’t tied to the alcohol industry. The Lancet has just published a study stating that all alcohol consumption is a health risk, moderate or not.

The Global Burden of Disease study looked at alcohol consumption in 195 countries between 1990 and 2016 and analyzed data or people ranging in age from 15 to 95. Researchers compared people who completely abstained from alcohol to those who had one alcoholic drink per day and to people who drank more.

With the non-drinking group, 914 people out of 100,000 developed an alcohol-related health problem such as cancer or suffered an injury. An extra four people would suffer an alcohol-related health problem or injury if they drank one alcoholic drink a day.

For people who had two alcoholic drinks a day, 63 more developed a condition within a year and for those who consumed five drinks every day, there was an increase of 338 people, who developed a health problem. Two alcoholic drinks a day equated to 63 more people developing a health condition, and five drinks every day increased the number of people who developed a health problem to 338.

The study reports:

Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for global disease burden and causes substantial health loss. We found that the risk of all-cause mortality, and of cancers specifically, rises with increasing levels of consumption, and the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero.”

To an individual, the one drink a day idea doesn’t look like much statistically but keep in mind, the study is looking at one year. It’s taking into account people’s drinking habits and health within one year’s time. This does not represent the likelihood that one may be diagnosed with cancer after drinking a glass of wine every day for a decade. It’s near certain that the longer one drinks regularly the greater the risk of adverse health effects. In addition, Prof Sonia Saxena points out that while, “One drink a day does represent a small increased risk but adjust that to the UK population as a whole and it represents a far bigger number, and most people are not drinking just one drink a day.”

Conclusion

Alcohol has a few health benefits, but this doesn’t make it healthy. Every health benefit alcohol can provide is better achieved through diet and exercise. To put it bluntly, nobody who suffers from chronic disease can get well while consuming alcohol.

Our biggest concern with alcohol consumption is that it severely disrupts the gut flora. Beneficial bacteria gets killed and washed away, as well as pathogenic microbes, but guess what gets left behind. Yeast. It’s incredibly difficult to kill Candida spores. Alcohol irritates the gut lining and harms the healthy gut microbiome. Then it raises blood sugar, and Candida is left to flourish in its wake. For more on how this works, check out Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections.