Too Much Sugar Can Lead to a Higher Risk of Cancer – Study Confirms

A nine-year study by scientists in Belgium found that excess sugar consumption stimulates tumor growth and increases your risk of cancer. Scientists focused on the Warburg Effect, a phenomenon where cancer cells consume glucose and turn it into tumor-feeding lactic acid. According to one of the study’s researchers, Professor Johan Thevelein:

Our research reveals how the hyperactive sugar consumption of cancerous cells leads to a vicious cycle of continued stimulation of cancer development and growth. Thus, it is able to explain the correlation between the strength of the Warburg effect and tumor aggressiveness. This link between sugar and cancer has sweeping consequences. Our results provide a foundation for future research in this domain, which can now be performed with a much more precise and relevant focus.”

Related: Healthy Sugar Alternatives & More

The study used yeast cells to examine the connection between Ras protein activity and the sugar metabolism in yeast. Ras proteins send important signals controlling growth between cells, and mutated versions of these genes are frequently found in tumors. In this study, excess sugar caused the yeast tested to produce overactive Ras proteins.

Professor Thevelein summarized the study,

The main advantage of using yeast was that our research was not affected by the additional regulatory mechanisms of mammalian cells, which conceal crucial underlying processes. We were thus able to target this process in yeast cells and confirm its presence in mammalian cells. However, the findings are not sufficient to identify the primary cause of the Warburg effect. Further research is needed to find out whether this primary cause is also conserved in yeast cells.”

Related: Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases

Too much sugar can increase your risk of cancer and promote tumor growth. This sugar is being consumed through any variety of foods. You could then be forgiven for assuming that a diet with too much sugar is more likely to cause cancer. Yet the Mayo Clinic places that idea firmly in the cancer myth column, which brings up an important question.

Related: Cure Cancer Naturally

As more research confirms that our health is first and foremost a direct product of what we eat, will our current food and medical system be able to acknowledge that before it’s too late?

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Oversized Eyedrops – Another Way Pharmaceutical Companies Ripoff Consumers

For those who use eyedrops, you may have noticed that it’s nearly impossible to get the entire drop into the eye without spilling. This is by design. For those who don’t use eyedrops, kudos. It’s a racket either way.

NPR reports,

Eyedrops overflow our eyes because drug companies make the typical drop – from glaucoma drugs that cost hundreds of dollars to a cheap over-the-counter bottles – larger than a human eye can hold. Some are so large, that if they were pills, every time you swallowed one, you’d toss another in the garbage.”

Glaucoma specialists Dr. Alan Robin says his patients struggle to make the expensive bottles of medication last. He wants drug companies to design a dropper-bottle to produce smaller drops. The drug companies don’t seem to care.

They had no interest in people, their pocketbooks or what the cost of drugs meant.”

Pharmcuticle companies make it hard for consumers to trust conventional medicine when they continue to put profits before our wellbeing. Is this the business mentality we want to see from companies producing vaccines for children?

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https://youtu.be/q7MlYsKP680?t=2m36s



White Pigment In Processed Food Worsens Inflammatory Bowel

White coloring pigments in foods like marshmallows, gingerbread men, and doughnuts typically contain titanium dioxide – a nano-particle metal that food industries argue is harmless to ingest. Once again, reports are surfacing that these tiny metal particles can cause intestinal stress.

In July 2017 Medical News Today reported:

Recently, researchers from the University of Zurich in Switzerland have looked at what happens when the digestive system absorbs nanoparticles of titanium dioxide. Their findings suggest that foods containing titanium dioxide could be particularly harmful for patients with IBD.

This new study, which was led by Dr. Gerhard Rogler, is published in the journal Gut.

The scientists focused their efforts on the NLRP3 inflammasome, which is a protein complex released by the non-specific immune system to flag up potential threats. When activated, the NLRP3 inflammasome triggers inflammation as a way of counteracting the perceived hazard.

“This shows that [titanium dioxide] particles can be absorbed from food under certain disease conditions,” says Dr. Rogler.

The researchers also noted that patients with forms of IBD absorb a significant amount of titanium dioxide in their bloodstream because their intestinal barrier is damaged.” – Medical News Today

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WHO Says the World Will Run Out of Antibiotics Able to Treat Bacteria Superbugs

Antibiotic-resistant infections are on the rise. The World Health Organization released a list of the 12 different bacteria strains that could pose the highest level of risk to human health. The list, divided into three sections based on how critical the threat is, represents health problems the WHO feels we should be solving. Conventional medicine is not likely to have those answers. WHO, publishers of the “priority pathogens” list, reports that there are not enough new antibiotics in development to adequately combat these microbes, and the rate that bacteria develops resistance at will outpace new drug development soon.

Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Are and Will Be a Big Problem

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria is scary. The leading cause of death worldwide, ischaemic heart disease, claims 8 million people. If we continue at the current rate of prescribing antibiotics for people, animals, and livestock, 10 million people will die of antibiotic-resistant infections by the year 2050. WHO’s top three “priority pathogens” are Acinetobacter baumannii, pseudomonas aeruginosa, and enterobacteriaceae (E.coli). All three of these infections have already demonstrated significant resistance to antibiotic treatments.

Related: After Taking Antibiotics, This Is What You Need To Do To Restore Healthy Intestinal Flora

What’s Going On With the New Drugs?

So let’s talk about the new antibiotics. Of the 51 antibiotics and biologicals currently in development to treat these “priority pathogens,” the WHO only classifies 8 of them as innovative. The other 25 are modifications of existing treatments and will only function as stop-gap measures.

Why aren’t more antibiotics in the pipeline when numerous health organizations have explicitly stated the worldwide need for them? There isn’t a good answer to that questions, although profit margins are the most likely answer. Antibiotics aren’t meant for long-term use, and the decade long research and development period affects pharmaceutical companies’ return on investment. Drug companies are also reluctant to manufacture orally administered antibiotics, their most accessible form.

Fourteen percent of the drugs currently in development make it to market, and medical professionals argue that needs to change. But fewer drug hurdles are not the answer. More antibiotics aren’t the answer either.

Related: How C. Diff Infections Decrease with Fewer Antibiotics

Why Antibiotics Don’t Work Even When They Work

Doctors did not regularly prescribe colistin. Although powerful, it’s an older drug and causes severe kidney damage. That changed when resistance to modern, more highly-regarded antibiotics became more commonplace, and colistin became the antibiotics of last resort. Now that has changed. Chinese pig farmers used colistin when doctors stopped prescribing it, and the first colistin resistant gene was recorded in November 2015. The gene has spread worldwide, and scientists and healthcare professionals don’t have an answer yet.

Related: How to Detoxify From Antibiotics and Other Chemical Antimicrobials

Should antibiotics be part of the answer though? Drug-resistant strains of bacteria generally occur in people who are already sick and those with weak immune systems. Sick people are given antibiotics. Antibiotics eliminate beneficial bacteria, and damage the immune system. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria has developed in response to an overuse of antibiotics. It’s naive to imagine a world where we go cold-turkey on antibiotics, but every antibiotic usage is giving like the strongest bacteria another opportunity to figure out to survive treatment.

A Few Tips to Not Need Antibiotics

The first step to getting rid of antibiotic use is build up your immune system naturally. If you don’t get sick, there is no need for antibiotics. To do that, you need an immune system ready to take on anything. It’s easier to make and stick to a series of small changes, and there are plenty ways you can start building your immune system today with items found at the average grocery store.

Certain herbs, especially garlic, are your new best friends.

Oregano, calendula, echinacea, and goldenseal are some relatively accessible herbs that boost the immune system. Even easier to find? Garlic. Raw garlic can be added to salads, in snacks, and on dinners. Infections want an easy target, and the allicin found in garlic is a powerful deterrent to those harmful pathogens. If you have a mouth infection, chewing on raw garlic can be beneficial.

Tighten up your diet, and learn to love salads.

Eat as many whole, homemade foods as possible. Your meal prep should become a vegetable version of the will it float game from the Letterman version of the Late Show – Will. It. Salad! The answer is usually yes. The more fresh vegetables, the better. My favorite way to break up that monotony is with homemade hummus, quinoa, fresh tomatoes, and lemon juice. Refined sugar in its many forms damages the body, feeding fungus, bacteria, viruses, and other parasites while lowering the body’s immune system.

Prioritize your sleep.

Sleep deprivation causes an estimated 100,000 car accidents every year. Businesses in U.S. lose 411 million dollars a year due to a lack of sleep. It also makes you more susceptible to pathogens and infection. Lack of sleep suppresses the immune system. According to Diwakar Balachandran, director of the Sleep Center at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, “A lot of studies show our T-cells go down if we are sleep deprived…and inflammatory cytokines go up.” The ultimate in sleeping resets is electronic-free camping for a few days, but most people aren’t able to regularly do that. Popular herbal treatments include B vitamins, healthy fats like vitamin D, tryptophan, valerian root, and chamomile root.

Related: Some Antibiotics May Blind, Cripple, or Kill You

The Creation of Superbugs and Superweeds – Another Strike Against GMOs

Supporters of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) say that they lower the use of pesticides and benefit the environment. However, the record demonstrates that there are growing negative environmental impacts from GMOs. One major problem caused by the widespread use of GMOs, and the herbicides and pesticides they were developed to withstand, is the emergence of superweeds and superbugs – plants and insects now resistant to these chemicals.” – GMO Inside.org

Personal Preparedness

The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and climate change are linked by more than factory farming. We need to rethink the way we prepare for both of these things. The WHO is looking for antibiotics, but antibiotics have played a critical part in developing these bugs. Our food and environment dictate our health, and we have more control over that than modern medicine would have you believe.

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Climate Change Causing Less Nutrition, More Sugar In Our food

How Excess Carbon Dioxide Diminishes Nutrients in Plants

Our food system has become a game of Jenga, and we’re running out of blocks to pull from the bottom. Disease and challenging growing conditions threaten popular foods like coffee, chocolate, bananas, and wheat. Bees, nature’s perfect pollinator, are stressed and disappearing rapidly. Plants are also less nutritious, thanks to climate change.

Climate change leads to more carbon dioxide in the environment. Plants enjoy the extra food, growing more quickly, but they are unable to sustain that growth. Too much carbon dioxide affects the amount of macro and micronutrients that in plants. What we eat contain fewer nutrients than ever before due to their “junk food” diet. Do we need to put plants on a low-carb diet?

The Deets

Scientists know that foods are less nutritious than they used to be but previously attributed that discrepancy to modern agriculture’s preference for higher yield crop varieties. Irakli Loladze, a mathematician studying the effect of CO2 on pants for 15 years, finds that climate change has an equal or greater effect on plant health and nutrition content.

Every leaf and every grass blade on earth makes more and more sugars as CO2 levels keep rising…We are witnessing the greatest injection of carbohydrates into the biosphere in human history―[an] injection that dilutes other nutrients in our food supply.”

How diluted are we talking here? A 2017 research paper estimated that by 2050, many of the staple crops we rely on like rice, wheat, barley, and potatoes will lose 7.6%, 7.8%, 14.1%, and 6.4%, of their protein, respectively. This is devastating news for countries that rely on those crops for protein. Eighteen countries could lose more than five percent of their dietary protein, and 148.4 million people will also be at risk.

Plants are also losing many of the essential micronutrients we need. One in three people is deficient in zinc. The concentration of calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc, iron, and other minerals in the food we eat has by 8% because of rising carbon dioxide. Scientists and climate deniers alike agree the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is still growing. Will we be able to counter the effects that has on the food we eat?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igLaQ4Gi_0Y

No Easy Solutions, No Quick Fixes

Farming takes time, and results from changes are not always apparent. A new crop takes 15 to 20 years to arrive in stores. Other potential fixes like mass scale composting or reducing carbon dioxide in the air are also time-consuming processes. The well-being of the food we eat and our food system are deteriorating in a world where fewer people have the resources to produce their own food. Are we at the point where we are unable to stay healthy through food alone? Only time will tell…yet it’s the biggest unknown in this entire equation.

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Dicamba Lawsuit Against Monsanto, BASF, and DuPont Filed as Farmers Deal With Drift

There have been rumblings from farmers dealing with the damage caused by herbicide dicamba for quite some time now, and (legal) shots have now been fired. On Monday, a complaint against Monsanto, BASF, and DuPont was filed in Southern Illinois on behalf of Brian Warren, owner of Warren Farms in Broughton, IL. Filed by an attorney from Classaction.com, Rene Rocha, the lawsuit alleges that dicamba was deceptively marketed as “low-volatility”, a claim that the 2,242 farmers currently dealing with crops ruined by the herbicide would dispute.

Related: Monsanto’s Glyphosate, Fatty Liver Disease Link Proven – Published, Peer-reviewed, Scrutinized Study

Dicamba has been touted as a replacement for glyphosate, whose effectiveness is dwindling as glyphosate-resistant, “super weeds” like Palmer amaranth become more common. For a new product launch, companies commission their own tests and share them with regulatory agencies. Conversations with scientists responsible for initial safety tests run by Monsanto have revealed that the company specifically did not allow them to test their new version of dicamba for volatility. The Environmental Protection Agency allowed to company to release the herbicide anyway.

Currently, more than 3 million acres of crops have been damaged by dicamba drift. States with substantial acreage devoted to growing soybeans, like Iowa, are experiencing record numbers of complaints from farmers. According to Scott Partridge, Monsanto’s vice-president of global strategy, as much as three-fourths of the problems occurring with dicamba application are caused by operator error. This actually makes sense.  The insert that accompanies XtendiMax seems more suited for a meteorologist, with instructions like “If fog is not present, inversions can also be identified by the movement of smoke from a ground source or an aircraft smoke generator…” and a chart designed to inform farmers of the ideal wind speed to apply the product during (3 and 10 miles an hour).

Related: Understanding and Detoxifying Genetically Modified Foods

Where is the Recourse?

If your neighbors have applied the product incorrectly (and they likely have: check out these instructions!), you don’t have much recourse. Insurance companies are unlikely to find in your favor, and Monsanto has made it clear where they feel the blame lies. In fact, the damage caused by dicamba is likely to be a good thing for Monsanto. Farmers hoping to avoid a repeat of this year’s devastated crops could end up purchasing dicamba-resistant crops.

So we arrive back at the newly filed lawsuit. Farmers like Brian Warren who sue frequently lose, or spend so much money and time in court with biotech companies that a win ends up costing more than the initial loss. At this point, many farmers will have to write off this year’s crops and make a big decision about next year. They can purchase dicamba-resistant seeds and grow the demand for a product that isn’t safe and doesn’t behave as promised or they can potentially lose their livelihood. What kind of choice is that?

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Thousands of Farm Raised Salmon Escape in the Pacific Northwest

In the fish version of a great escape, thousands of Atlantic salmon have escaped from their holding pen at a fish farm in Washington state. The official estimate is currently at 4000 to 5000 escapees, and crews are currently working to recover as many fish as they can. Even so, this is hardly good news for anyone involved, as the invasive Atlantic salmon may breed with native Chinook salmon and pose a threat to the food supply. There were higher than usual tides in the area due to the eclipse, but most of the experts investigating the breach conclude that the culprit was faulty holding pens.

No Concrete Answers

Cooke Aquaculture, the owners of the farm the salmon escaped from, are not sure of the number of fish that escaped, leaving marine ecologists and Washington state wildlife officials to guess at the extent of the damage done. Wildlife officials have invited fishers in the area to help in the repair effort. In a statement from Ron Warren “Our first concern, of course, is to protect native fish species…So we’d like to see as many of these escaped fish caught as possible.” There is the possibility that these escaped fish will also pass diseases onto the delicate Pacific salmon populations.

Future Implications

Michael Rust, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researcher, brings up a good point when he points out that these fish are unlikely to pass on diseases to other salmon, saying “These things are kind of couch potatoes. They are domesticated. Imagine a dairy cow getting lost out in the Serengeti. It doesn’t last very long.”

Perhaps a salmon disease epidemic is unlikely with these particular fish, but there is no way to measure the effect it would have on the animals consuming it. This also calls into question the industry’s ability to handle the ramifications of the new genetically modified salmon, the first genetically modified animal available for consumption. Many of the supporters of the fish claim the chance of escape will be unlikely should feel very uneasy after a mishap of this magnitude.

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