Depression. You’d think we all have the same definition for this word, but we don’t. Misery, the blues… Many people think a sad emotional state is equivalent to clinical depression. It is not.
To meet the diagnosis of a depressive episode the following criteria listed in the DSM-V must be met:
Five (or more) of the following symptoms have been present during the same 2-week period and represent a change from previous functioning; at least one of the symptoms is either (1) depressed mood or (2) loss of interest or pleasure. Note: Do not include symptoms that are clearly due to a general medical condition, or mood-incongruent delusions or hallucinations.
Depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day, as indicated by either subjective report (e.g., feels sad or empty) or observation made by others (e.g., appears tearful). Note: In children and adolescents, can be irritable mood.
Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities most of the day, nearly every day (as indicated by either subjective account or observation made by others).
Significant weight loss when not dieting or weight gain (e.g., a change of more than 5 percent of body weight in a month), or decrease or increase in appetite nearly every day. Note: In children, consider failure to make expected weight gains.
Insomnia or hypersomnia nearly every day.
Psychomotor agitation or retardation nearly every day (observable by others, not merely subjective feelings of restlessness or being slowed down).
Fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day.
Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt (which may be delusional) nearly every day (not merely self-reproach or guilt about being sick).
Diminished ability to think or concentrate, or indecisiveness, nearly every day (either by subjective account or as observed by others).
Recurrent thoughts of death (not just fear of dying), recurrent suicidal ideation without a specific plan, or a suicide attempt or a specific plan for committing suicide.
The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning.
The symptoms are not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition (e.g., hypothyroidism).
All, or nearly all, of the symptoms people experience during depression or any other mental disorder, are symptoms every person experiences at one time or another. The difference between normal experience and a disorder is the constancy, severity, and combination of symptoms.
Normal experience does not include two straight weeks of sadness so intense it results in an inability to function at work while it is impossible to sleep (or to get out of bed). In addition there is a sudden dramatic loss of weight, movements become slow and deliberate, and thoughts of death or suicide crowd out every thought not associated with self-loathing. (This is an example of five symptoms from the list).
Depression is associated with low serotonin levels and high cortisol levels. Serotonin is known as the feel-good neurotransmitter while cortisol is a hormone known as the stress hormone.
Conventional Treatment for Depression
Since depressed feeling and depression are not always one in the same, what we call depression can be viewed on a continuum. Severe symptoms meeting the criteria for clinical depression would be on one end of that scale while sadness or the blues while general dissatisfaction with life would be at the other. And yet, regardless of where a person is on that scale, there is a high probability that a doctor will prescribe anti-depressants if the patient requests them. Hopefully, psychiatrists would not be as quick to prescribe them.
Generally, any good doctor will at least mention eating a healthy diet, getting exercise, and sleeping 8 hours a night. But too often that prescription pad is pulled out to “help.” Anti-depressants, taken to decrease suicidal thoughts and feelings, can increase suicidal and homicidal thinking and have been linked to both suicides and to most of the mass murder incidents that have occurred in the last few decades.
Alternative Treatment for Depression
As with all aspects of physical and mental health, healing begins with a truly healthy, nutrition-packed diet and exercise.
Diet
A truly healthy diet consists of 80% fresh, raw, organic produce, more vegetables than fruit, a wide variety of foods, healthy fats, and pure water. (Check out the 80% Raw Food Diet for more information).
When any body system is not working properly, increase nutrition and detox. A great way to increase nutrition is to add nutritional powder to your daily routine in juice or a smoothie. To learn how to make your own Total Nutrition Powder, check out Total Nutrition, Make Your Own Multivitamin and Mineral Formula.
More of Shillington’s Recipes:
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When you are eating an organic 80% raw diet that includes plenty of clean water, and foods like onions, garlic, turmeric, and cilantro, you are detoxing on an ongoing basis. But a thorough bi-annual detox is extremely beneficial.
Eating right is more than adding the right foods to your diet. It is just as important, if not more important, to remove the food from your diet that you shouldnoteat. Avoid all artificial flavors, colors, and preservatives, MSG, trans fats, and GMOs. Do not eat corn syrup. Unless it is organic, it’s genetically modified. Avoid or seriously restrict caffeine. Avoid sugar. Conventional sugar has no nutritive value. It harms the body and the immune system in a number of ways and chances are it is genetically modified, as most of the conventional sugar made nowadays comes from sugar beets, a crop that is generally GMO. The easiest way to deal with all of the issues of what not to eat is to eat real food, whole food, and avoid processed packaged foods.
By eating a truly healthy diet, you will be well on your way toward healing your gut. If you have an overgrowth of Candida you will benefit from supplementation and some additional dietary additions and restrictions until you have that overgrowth in check.
Gut health is vital in alleviating depression because the beneficial bacteria in the gut manufacture 80% of our serotonin. When the gut is out of balance due to Candida, parasites, and bad bacteria, serotonin levels suffer, as does the body’s entire hormonal system.
Exercise is essential for several reasons. First, exercise produces endorphins that elevate your mood. Studies comparing exercise to pharmaceuticals have proven that exercise is more beneficial than drugs.
Exercise improves overall health by moving blood and lymph throughout the tissues. This process helps bring nutrients into individual cells while removing waste from the body. The immune system is strengthened and the body and its organs, including the brain, receive the cleansing and the nourishment needed to attain peak performance.
The link between vitamin D deficiency and depression is well documented and even carries its own diagnosis- Seasonal Affective Disorder. Unless you live in the lower portion of the U.S. (draw a line from Los Angeles, CA to Atlanta, GA to mark the line), chances are you do not get enough sun to make adequate amounts of vitamin D. Vitamin D supplementation should always be considered as a first line of defense when symptoms of depression are present. To learn more about Vitamin D, read Sunlight and Vitamin D.
B vitamins are best taken together in the form of B complex vitamins. Never take just one B vitamin alone for any length of time.
B vitamins are essential for many functions in the body. Deficiencies in B5, B6, B7, or B12 cause depression. Daily supplementation will elevate mood, decrease irritability, and improve sleep. To learn more about B vitamins read Mental Health, Physical Health & B Vitamins – Nature’s Valium.
Conclusion
With the right diet, exercise, detoxification, and supplementation, the body is given the resources to heal itself. If loss, abuse, or other life events are contributing to sadness, low self-esteem, or other symptoms, therapy can be an invaluable aid in healing.
The gluten free household faces unique challenges. Even though gluten-free products have become more mainstream, they still cost between 2 to 10 times more than conventional alternatives. And even at those hefty prices, gluten free products like pancake mixes are rarely organic.
Until recently, cooking was all but a lost art. For those who wish to take back our health and save money on eating out, cooking from scratch is becoming more popular than ever.
A truly healthy diet consists of 80% or more fresh, raw, organic produce – more vegetables than fruits. (Check out the 80% Raw Food Diet for more information.) But for those of us who are foodies, this still leaves a little wiggle room for variety. Although anything made with sugar should not be a staple in our diet, no one should be forced to live life without pancakes. Even if gluten doesn’t bother you, this recipe should prove far superior to any other pancake recipe, and it even forms a complete protein!
Whenever possible, buy organic. In the case of cornstarch, always buy organic to avoid GMO corn products.
You Will Need
Organic Rice Flour (brown or white)
Organic Corn Starch
Tapioca Flour
Garbanzo Bean Flour (aka Chickpea Flour)
Aluminum Free Baking Soda
Aluminum Free Baking Powder
Gelatin or Organic Xanthan Gum
Sea Salt
Organic Maple Sugar
Fruit (optional)
Eggs or Egg Replacer
Butter or Spread (Cow, Goat, or Earth Balance)
Buttermilk, Kefir or Yogurt (Cow, Goat, or Coconut)
Honey or Maple Syrup
Organic Vanilla Extract
Optional toppings include up to 2 Cups Fresh Fruit (Blueberries, Strawberries, Bananas and Cherries are all popular choices, but any fruit you like will do) and Whipped Cream.
Dry Pancake Mix (Makes 3 Batches)
First mix up a batch of dry pancake mix. Feel free to double or triple this recipe. Keep what is left over in a closed jar in your pantry for later use. The mix tastes best when used within 3-6 months.
3 ½ Cups of Rice Flour
½ Cup of Corn Starch
1 Cup Garbanzo Bean Flour
1 Cup Tapioca Flour
1 ½ Teaspoons Baking Soda
3 Teaspoons Baking Powder
1 Tablespoon Salt
1 Teaspoon Xanthun Gum or Gelatin
3 Tablespoons Maple Sugar
Pancakes (Yields about 12 pancakes)
2 Cups of Dry Pancake Mix (see above)
2 Eggs or Egg Replacer
2 Cups Milk
4 Tablespoons Melted Butter (or Spread)
1Tablespoon Vanilla Extract
Combine all of the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and stir with a whisk, or you can put the dry ingredients in a closed container and shake a few times.
Preheat your pan or griddle (we prefer cast-iron, and we advise against Teflon).
Whisk the eggs, milk, melted butter, and vanilla extract. Add dry ingredients and mix until well combined. (It can still have some lumps).
Add a small amount of butter, or cooking oil to the pan. If it sizzles, it’s ready. We like avocado oil, rice bran oil, peanut oil, or coconut oil. (For this purpose olive oil is a poor choice due to its low smoke point; it burns too easily)
Using a ladle, pour the pancake batter onto the griddle or large pan. Within 2-3 minutes, bubbles will form around the edges of the pancake. Gently slide a spatula beneath the pancake and carefully flip. (The cooked side should be golden brown.) After another minute or two your pancakes will be ready. If not served immediately, pancakes can be kept warm for up to 30 minutes when covered and held in a 200-degree, preheated oven.
There was a time when coffee, tea, soda, juice, sugary lemonade, and milk seemed to be the only beverages anyone drank if they weren’t drinking beer, wine, or some other kind of alcohol. No one drank water. Not if they could help it, anyway.
Then bottled water came on the scene and water became more popular. Of course, food companies wanted to cash in so they made flavored bottled water and vitamin water. If you think they couldn’t mess up water, think again. If you need proof, read the labels.
Lately, infused water is all the craze. If you’ve never heard of it, infused water is simply water that contains fruit, vegetables, herbs, or spices. Whatever you put in it will infuse the water with its flavor.
The most interesting aspect to water infusions, is the many choices and combinations to be made. You can use anything from sweet fruits to hot peppers.
There are three ways to make water infusions:
Simply add ingredients to a pitcher of clean, pure, water (preferably filtered) with ice. Slice fruits and veggies so they are very thin to increase surface area and increase flavor. When using herbs, squeeze or crush them to release the oils (and flavor).
You can make an infusion in a jar and refrigerate it for use days later.
Make ice cubes out of the ingredients you want to add to the water. Use the ice with water.
Here are some popular combinations. (Note: Basil is often used and it tastes great!)
Cucumber
With basil
With kiwi
With citrus fruits and mint
Honeydew melon
With basil! Seriously!
Watermelon
With berries
With mint or rosemary
Pineapple
With strawberries
With mango
With mint
Berries
With any other fruit
With mint
Citrus – oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit, tangerines, etc.
Combine or use alone with mint
With melon
Note: You might want to peel citrus fruits to avoid their bitter flavor.
Jalapeño
With cucumbers and mint
With strawberries
Tomato
With celery and bell pepper
Try new and outlandish combinations. You never know what amazing flavors you will create! The best thing about homemade infusions is that you know what is in them. Why not drink flavored water full of nutrients and antioxidants? They are an excellent addition to a healthy diet. To learn more about a truly healthy diet check out the 80% Raw Diet. And if you’ve never tried cranberry lemonade, check out The One Gallon Challenge.
Eat More Fiber, Drink More Water For Naturally Glowing Skin – Here’s Why
Fiber is such an important nutrient for your body in so many ways, but did you know that it is also crucial for beautiful, healthy skin?
A diet rich in high-fiber foods such as vegetables, fruits, and whole grains can have many benefits to your body. It can give you more energy, improve brain health, and reduce the risk of a whole range of diseases including heart disease and diabetes. But did you know that fiber is also really crucial for super healthy skin and hair?
So how exactly does the fiber from your diet improve the health of your skin?
Consuming foods high in fiber along with drinking an adequate amount of clean, pure water helps your body flush out toxins. Without fiber, these toxins can lead to clogged pores, acne, and dry listless looking skin.
Fiber generally comes from plant-based foods. It is a part of the plant that your body can’t digest. Therefore, as it passes through the intestinal tract, it acts like a broom, sweeping out toxins, excess fats, and waste. Fiber is also great for improving your circulation, which is vital for making sure your skin cells get enough oxygen and nutrients. This means softer, more youthful looking skin.
If you eat processed foods, such as white bread, pizza, and other junk food, you are eating food that has been stripped of its fiber. These foods can actually have the opposite effect on your skin; they can cause acne breakouts and other skin problems.
Make sure you are eating organic foods whenever possible and try adding some of these to your diet to bump up your intake of fiber and help your skin to be healthy and look amazing.
Whole grains such as barley, millet, brown rice, buckwheat, and steel cut oats
Lentils, chickpeas, and beans
Brussel sprouts, broccoli, and leafy greens
Chia seeds and almonds
Berries such as raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries
Along with having enough fiber in your diet, it is really important to be drinking enough water to keep your skin healthy. The benefits of drinking enough water are often underrated; however, it is very important for your body and your skin! Water helps your body regulate its metabolism, aids in your body’s digestion, and provides the skin with buoyancy and elasticity, which helps to keep you looking great.
Skin cells are predominantly made up of water and as a result, when your skin isn’t hydrated, your skin will appear dry, tight, flaky, and more prone to wrinkling. Drinking water is also a great detoxing agent, which removes toxins out of your body and will have a dramatic effect on the appearance of your skin.
So exactly how much water should you be drinking each day?
Well, it depends on a number of factors such as your body weight, where you are located (hot/cold, dry/humid climate) and your activity level. Generally, you want to drink around half your body weight in ounces of water. For example, if you weigh 160 pounds, then you want to be drinking 80 ounces of water per day. Try and spread out drinking the water throughout the day as the body can only absorb so much water at a time.
Have you noticed the effect of fiber in combination with water on your skin? Let us know how you will incorporate more fiber into your diet. Information is nothing without action, so try adding just one high fiber food into your diet today and build from there to transform your skin!
Besieged by Guilt: Ex-Pharmaceutical Employees Speak Out Against the Industry
It turns out, that old adage is true – money does not buy everything. For some, money does not buy a clear conscience. Despite earning high incomes, these former pharmaceutical employees left their jobs and are now sharing the truth of what goes on behind the curtain. Many of them have written books, participated in documentaries, and shared their stories through online videos. Here are a few.
Dr. Peter Rost, Former Vice President of Pfizer
Dr. Rost, a former anesthesiologist and pharmaceutical VP, is the author of The Whistleblower, Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman. Dr. Rost is an expert witness on Big Pharma in the areas of patent infringement, pharmaceutical marketing, drug product liability, drug marketing and promotion, and drug sales.
Universities, health organizations, everybody that I’ve encountered in my former career as a pharmaceutical executive, are out there with their hands out. You know everybody’s begging for money, nobody has any money. The government doesn’t have any money. The universities don’t have money. Nobody has money. The only ones that have money are these big multinational corporations, and they have lots of money. And they use that money to basically buy influence. And the way it’s done is – number one, you give these organizations and institutions grants, grants for various kinds of research. You develop research together with them. You establish friends. You make sure that they become beholden to you. And you also pay individual professors and doctors – researchers – directly. You may pay them as speakers to travel around the country, a thousand, two thousand dollars per day, sometimes more.
You give them money for programs, the educational programs, where they can make a profit and then they put on these programs, as they’re supposed to be third-party independent from the company. Which is all fine, but as you and I can both imagine, if you have a promotional budget, at a corporation you’re probably going to give that money to the universities that do the programs that most support your drug, and the ones that don’t, or are critical in any shape, way, or form, they are not going to get anything. And everybody obviously knows that this is how things work.
And that means even if you can officially claim “… this is arms-length we didn’t have anything to do with it. We just gave them a grant. They can do whatever they want with it.” Reality is they’re not going to continue to get money unless they’re saying what you want them to say. They know it. You know it. It’s only maybe the public that doesn’t know it. And that’s how you influence the medical establishment – simply with money.
Dr. John Rengen Virapen
(The following has been edited for clarity)
Dr. John Virapen is plagued by a guilty conscience. After completing his medical training, Dr. Virapen started in the pharmaceutical industry as a salesman. Eventually, he rose to the top ranks and became the general manager of Eli Lilly and Company in Sweden. He admits he participated in bribery, giving false information and deception to launch and market several popular drugs. After becoming a father at age 62, he grew a conscience. He has vowed to dedicate his remaining years to speaking out against the very industry that made him a wealthy man. Here are some quotes from his videos.
I have spent 35 years of my life working in an industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and they do nothing but annihilate the population of this world. Why do they do that? Because they want to make money, money, money, money, money…They don’t care about your lives. They only care about their wallets.
Now, whatever I tell you here today, is not something that I dreamed about, or observed somewhere. It’s something that I have done myself. I have been just as criminal as they are. My hands are just as dirty as these people.
Now all of you sitting here, answer me a question. When you go to the doctor, he looks at you, stethoscope, laboratory tests, machine tests. Those tests by the way, are to make money. Then he tells you you’re sick here is a prescription. “Go to the pharmacy and take this medicine, one tablet three times a day.” What do you do?…You go to the pharmacy and you get your medicine, and you take it like a good citizen.
But when you go to the car company to buy a car, you ask the salesman questions. If you don’t get what you want, you don’t buy the car. So tell me, why don’t you ask that doctor? What is it that he is giving you? The reason I’m telling you this is because only all of you have the power to stop these criminals with what they’re doing in the pharma industry. Because you are not sick people. You are consumers. You are consumers and the pharma industry makes money because they tell everybody that you are sick.
…The almighty power blessed me and my wife with a child. I was 62 years old. This child is now 4 ½. When this child was born he went to the pediatrician after six months for a checkup. That doctor checked the boy and said, yeah he’s healthy, he’s fine. Now we need to give him his mandatory vaccine cocktail. Now, I have told my wife, nobody, not a doctor, not a professor, nobody gives my child any kind of medication unless they discuss it with me and I approve it. Now this this doctor well apart from being lucky that I wasn’t there, she threw my wife and child out at the clinic and said, “We only treat vaccinated children.”
…How dare she refuse, to have my child come to this clinic, and she’s practicing as a doctor. What happened to Hippocrates, the oath of Hippocrates when you become a doctor you swear the oath! “Primum Non Nocere”-Above All Do no Harm. The patient comes first.
…So I researched this lady and I found that she was sitting in a committee, or on a committee with a politician and members of the pharmaceutical company that made the IMP, the vaccine. And they’re advocating to the government in Germany to introduce mandatory vaccination. So I started to do some research on what’s going on in Germany.
…I found out also that general practitioners, just like this woman and other doctors, were prescribing psychotropic drugs to children. Shortly after that, I read in an article that was posted from the European Medical Association that they were going to approve the drug Prozac to give to children.
Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau, Pharmaceutical Sales Rep for 10 Years
Kathleen is the writer and director of the film Side Effects starring Katherine Heigl. She helps to explain the difference between cutting edge marketing, and scientific progress.
(The following has been edited for clarity)
The psychiatric market is huge and every company out there wants a little piece of that pie because it is so lucrative. We did a lot of lunches and dinners and we brought in speakers and those speakers were obviously paid by us and we would we wave, you know, renowned studies at them from renowned journals but of course we would never say that these studies were paid for by our company and that it was written by a ghost writer who is paid by our company or that our company tends to do a ton of advertising within that particular medical journal.
We would never say that it’s the psychiatric meds that are so easy to expand into all of the problems of our life. So right now we see the industry… over the past several years we’ve seen the industry medicalizing, you know, so many different things throughout our life. If you’re shy, here, take a pill. If you’re a little anxious, you know, take a pill. If you have road rage, we’ve got a pill for that, too!
… through direct to consumer advertising and the beautiful drug ads that are on television they have been able to play off of our deepest insecurities as human beings, and it’s so effective. It’s marketing. This is marketing. This is not science. This is incredibly effective marketing. It has nothing to do with science.
We’re being bombarded left and right with these beautiful ads on the screen, painting this lovely Norman Rockwell life on the screen of beautiful, smiling, happy, sexy people and we all want a little piece of that.
…to produce the ad would be somewhere probably in the million dollar range. And then to air these ads, to buy the air time slots, again depending on what time of day they’re airing or what type of show their airing on, can cost anywhere from tens of thousands per 30-second ad up to close to a million dollars. In the most recent campaigns, over last year or so, you’re hearing so much “Ask your doctor, or talk to your doctor about…” and when you hear that on the screen it sounds so nice.
It sounds like they really care and want you to discuss this with your doctor. But what the studies have shown is that if you actually bring up a brand-name drug with your doctor by name, you’re significantly more likely to walk out the door with that drug. So they do that for a reason. The industry is responsible to Wall Street, and Wall Street first. They have to please Wall Street because they are private industry. And so when you have that scenario, you have to make profits your number one goal.
We have billions of dollars being spent right now in terms of marketing, in terms of PR.
Gwen Olson, a 15-Year Sales Rep Who Worked For Johnson & Johnson, Syntex Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Abbott Laboratories and Forest Laboratories
Over time, Gwen had what she describes as a spiritual awakening as she observed the harm that pharmaceuticals caused people. This led her to come forward and to speak out against the pharmaceutical companies. She explains what their priorities really are.
What the pharmaceutical industry is in the business of doing is disease maintenance and symptoms management. They are not in the business to cure cancer, to cure Alzheimer’s, to cure heart disease, because if they were, they would be in the business of putting themselves out of business. And that in fact doesn’t make sense.
…It’s really important to understand the motivation behind all the current maintenance drugs that are on the market. Even, for example, drugs such as cholesterol-lowering drugs. And what we are in fact finding now is that cholesterol drugs are lowering cholesterol excessively and causing other disease states as a consequence.
…what was found was the information that activists and other researchers have known for decades was that antidepressants are no more effective than a placebo. No more effective than sugar pills but yet, they’re over 44 million people that have been taking these anti-depressants.
…Another recent study that was released showed that exercise was in fact more effective than either placebo or the anti-depressant drug.
…The clinical data has been contrived or that their patient populations have been cherry-picked or that the side effects have been minimized and reported in such a manner that it doesn’t present the information correctly.
…I’m here to tell you that the industry has run amok. That we are at a severe crossroads in this nation and that we have got to take our power back and we have got to start making the pharmaceutical industry accountable for their actions and for the defective products that they’re putting on the market. It won’t be long before every American is affected by this disaster.
…You need to get yourself educated and understand that there are options, and those options are much more effective than drugs. You need to look into the nutritional aspects of your diet and your lifestyle.
Scott Cooper, Award Winning Salesman For Merck
Like so many other well-informed parents, Scott didn’t struggle with whether or not to vaccinate his child. His experience in the pharmaceutical industry convinced him not to vaccinate. His challenge was convincing his wife and doctor that vaccines are not safe or effective.
My child was born in ’91. He’s now going to be 24 this year. He was never vaccinated. He grew up very, very healthy. Rarely if ever sick and always much healthier than his peers. When they were all running around all the kids had runny noses, drank a lot of milk, were all vaccinated. My child was always healthy, runny nose free, always very, very healthy and smart.
If I can digress a little bit this was 1990 so the Internet wasn’t really available. I had read numerous books on vaccines, and like most people I grew up believing in vaccines from what I was told in school. And it became a real shock to me when I started reading and learning that vaccines were not only ineffective, but also there are major risks involved with vaccination.
When I found out my wife was pregnant, I had a discussion with her about not vaccinating and, of course, she was pro-vaccine, and so I made her a deal. At the time, I worked for a very large pharmaceutical company as a sales rep, and so I made her a promise. I said I’ll go to the library I’ll bring home everything I can find pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine. You can read for yourself, and then you can make a decision. That’s what I did. I went and scoured the periodicals in the libraries.
…I just gave them to her and let her make up her own mind. I would come home from work and she would be reading the stuff and crying from what she was reading. By the time our child was born we were both on the same page about vaccination.
And it was interesting because I had my OBGYN or my wife’s OBGYN sit me down in his office and say, “Look, you work for a large pharmaceutical company, what do you mean you’re not vaccinating?”
My company actually made a lot of the vaccines and we had a vaccine division and everything else, and I told them, I told them flat out, why we went, had a huge discussion about it. He didn’t agree. We still went to the course that I wanted.
… do your own research, all right? If you’re on the fence about vaccines or wondering at all, whether to vaccinate your child. Please, please do your own research. There are a ton of resources available out there. Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, she has a site that is full of resources.
Thousands of pages are published, medical studies showing the inherent risks that are involved with vaccines. There are a ton of books out there showing this over and over again – the vaccine damage that has been done by these vaccinations. If you believe what you’re told by the AMA and the CDC and your doctor, you’re not doing enough research.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YVPkCQxqz4
Brandy Vaughan, Former Sales Rep for Merck & Co.
Now a mother, Brandy refuses to vaccinate her own child. She explains how the pharmaceutical companies prioritize profit over public health, in a big way.
My first involvement with the pharmaceutical industry was as a pharmaceutical sales rep for Merck back when Vioxx was on the market. I used to rep Vioxx for Merck. When it came out that Merck had falsified safety data and Vioxx actually had twice the increase in heart attacks and strokes… it really made me realize that that there was a lot of corruption behind the scenes and that just because something is on the market, a drug is on the market, doesn’t mean it’s safe.
After working for Merck, I was pretty disillusioned over the whole scandal. I lived in Europe for 8 years and I had my son over there. I brought him back vaccine-free at 6 months to San Francisco. When I went to a well visit, they pushed for vaccines. At that point I hadn’t done a lot of research in it, but I knew enough not to trust pharmaceutical drugs.
I asked to see a vaccine insert and the doctor got very upset at me and claimed I didn’t trust him. He stormed out of the room and the nurse let me know that I wasn’t really welcome back in that clinic anymore. That was a huge red flag for me, knowing what I knew from being a pharmaceutical sales rep before. I started to do my research into vaccines and the ingredients, and the flawed safety data.
What came to light was many things, but one of them was that aluminum is the main adjuvant in vaccines, in childhood vaccines. I had experience with that, with researching that, and the toxicity of aluminum, because my grandmother had breast cancer.
The doctor biopsied her tissues and there were high levels of aluminum. He told us that she needed to get off traditional deodorant and that the aluminum in there was linked to breast cancer. It was carcinogenic. That was a big red flag for me when I realized those were in childhood vaccines. I couldn’t believe it, actually. Then I started to do more and more research and I realized that the U.S. gives twice as many vaccines on the childhood schedule than most developed countries, and the real health crisis is the fact that our kids are sicker than any other country in the developed world. This is despite spending more per capita on healthcare. We have highest rates of SIDS, asthma, food allergies, ADHD, childhood leukemia, diabetes type one. This to me was the true health crisis.
The more I dug into this, what I realized was vaccines are not for public health. It’s really about profit, pharmaceutical company profit.
The thing about vaccines is that you don’t have to do the same rigorous safety studies as you do for other pharmaceutical drugs because they’re classified as a public health measure vs. a pharma drug. For vaccines, they have a totally different type of safety study. It’s very short in duration. It’s not double-blind placebo-based, which is the gold standard for pharmaceutical drugs, and vaccines aren’t held to the same rigorous safety studies.
If you look into them, it’s very easy to manipulate the data and present that as something that’s safe. If you really look into the studies and look into the toxicity of the adjuvants and the additives, you realize that the safety studies are not proving safety at all. In fact, there are a lot of studies on the other side showing that a lot of the additives in vaccines are very toxic, especially to children who have very immature immune systems.
As I dug more into the safety studies and saw how flawed they were, it really raised a red flag for me. My son is now four and a half and he’s vaccine-free. I really got motivated to get more into this fight when I realized the mandatory vaccination bills that were sweeping the country, over 100 in 38 states.
…pharmaceutical companies don’t have any liability for vaccines, in fact [one of] the only products in the U.S. that has no liability so you cannot sue them if there’s injury or death. So you put those two things together and what you have is vaccines as a pharmaceutical drug with the highest profit margin available. If you make those mandatory and you keep increasing the schedule, it’s basically using our children to profit off of.
The pharmaceutical company is using vaccines as a new driver for profit. This is really what’s behind the mandatory vaccination bills. One of the things that I’m often asked is why do we not hear about this if this is true? One of the things that I’ve found out in my research is that the U.S. is one of only two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers.
I’m sure we’ve all seen the media and advertisements for the pharmaceutical drugs. That happens there is that it allows pharmaceutical companies to basically dictate what is shown to the media. Because when you give the media 30 to 40% [Author’s note: presently the number is closer to 70%] of their advertising dollars, you basically control what they say.
There have been a lot of journalists and stories that have been censored, including the CDC whistleblower that came out in the end of 2014 basically saying that the CDC has covered up data showing that the MMR vaccine does in fact cause neurological damage, AKA autism.
Recently there have been a lot of stories of different countries suing vaccine makers for injury and death, and even pulling vaccines off of the schedule like Gardasil in Japan and Prevnar in China, rotovirus vaccine in France, and Spain has a lawsuit against Merck for Gardasil as well.
…We have a very broken system. Our vaccine system in the U.S. is broken. We cannot mandate something when there are so many unanswered questions and so many things that are going on behind the scenes that people aren’t aware of, including vaccines ingredients, like when the pediatrician didn’t want to show me the vaccine insert. There’s good reason for that.
There’s aluminum, formaldehyde, fetal cells, animal cells. There are a lot of things in there that other countries A, ban from being ingested and therefore have vaccines that don’t include these ingredients, and B, have unknown consequences that we have no data on right now. It’s basically playing Russian roulette with our children.
Pharma is saying it’s all about public help and public safety, and I’m saying why don’t we have more data on what this really will do, long-term studies on what this is doing inside of our bodies and to our children. Because right now we have the sickest children in the developed world. Something is going on here.
It’s probably not just vaccines. It’s a chemical cocktail of pesticides and pollutants in our water and air, but vaccines are often a trigger because genetically we need a trigger to express these kind of diseases and issues that we have. Vaccines are often what does that because the chemicals are injected into our bloodstream, so they don’t go through a lot of the bodies natural detox process. They go straight to the brain past the blood-brain barrier.
We need to ask these difficult questions. Until that, until we have more information, we absolutely cannot mandate vaccines. There has to be a choice. If there’s a risk, there has to be a choice.
How to Roast Butternut Squash – Seven Step Simple Recipe
Squash is pretty much synonymous with fall in my house. Typically, during September we are up to our eyeballs in a bounty of harvest from our garden. Every countertop is stacked with squash, onions, potatoes, carrots, and beets. It’s a wonderful and busy time of year. To save time, I stick to simple but tasty recipes. Image courtesy of Mean Miss Mustard
One of my favorite squashes is the butternut. Butternut squash is a yellow-orange fleshed fruit that has a slightly sweet, nutty flavor. This beautiful fall/winter squash offers a nutrient punch that is just what we need at the season’s change. Butternut squash is a great source of vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, iron, magnesium, and B-6.
One of the easiest ways to prepare this winter squash is to roast it and here I bring you my super simplified recipe. Winter squashes of all sorts will burst with flavor when roasted and all follow a similar preparation.
For this recipe you will need:
1 butternut squash
approx. 1 teaspoon olive oil
salt and pepper
optional: grass-fed butter
Simply:
Preheat oven to 400°F.
Cut off stem side, just about an inch or two into the top side of squash. Discard this piece.
Next, cut the squash in half, lengthwise.
Scrape out the seeds and set aside.
Lightly brush the cut flesh with extra virgin olive oil.
Place cut side down on a foil or parchment-lined baking sheet.
Bake for 35 minutes or until squash is tender.
Spoon out onto individual plates, season with salt and pepper and add a bit of grass-fed butter if you wish.
A large squash will serve 4 as a side dish.
Other winter squash you might try preparing this way are pumpkin, acorn, and delicata.
Eat Vegetables First
I always think of Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham when I am sharing the benefits of vegetables with clients and friends. There is often so much resistance. Can’t you just see it? “Could you, would you?” and the famous reply…“But I do not like them, …”
On my personal journey, the most difficult emotional shift I needed to make around food was to move meat from the center of my plate and replace it with amazing, nutrient dense vegetables. It was difficult only because of the mindset I’d had my entire life. When it came to considering what to make for dinner, I always started with the meat. My thoughts went something like, “What am I going to make for dinner? Well, chicken and potatoes and green beans.” I needed to shift this habit to be, “What am I going to make for dinner? Roots and shoots with a side of quinoa topped with a small slice of chicken breast.” You see, the meat became the optional side. It felt difficult only because of the thought pattern. Once I made the shift in my mind, the rest was easy.
We are just beginning to understand the role vegetables can play in our well-being. Nutrition is a young, complex, and ever evolving science. What we do know is that plant foods offer a diverse and deep well of nutrition that supports our body in creating energy, fighting off cancer, preventing early aging, and aiding our digestive tract. Vegetables also help us to have clear skin and sleep better, and they seem to prevent a myriad of diseases. Every vegetable offers something slightly different, but the nutrients in each plant work together synergistically in a way we cannot yet recreate in a lab. What does this mean? There is really no substitute for the real thing.
As an example, a single cup of spinach holds 888.5 mcg (micrograms) of vitamin K, 14742.0 IU of vitamin A, 1.7 mg of manganese, and 262.4 mcg of folate. It also contains amazing amounts of magnesium, iron, vitamin C, riboflavin, calcium, (where do you think elephants get their calcium from anyway?), potassium, B6, tryptophan, fiber, copper, B1, protein, phosphorus, zinc, vitamin E, omega 3 fatty acids, niacin, selenium, beta-carotene, lutein, and zeaxanthin. (Mateljan, 2007)
Adding vegetables to your diet can make a huge impact on how you feel and on your ability to reach your health and wellness goals. If you would like to focus on nutrient density, the ANDI food scoring guide will help you to choose foods with an amazing nutrient power pack. The trick here is diversity. Try mixing up your vegetables and changing up how you prepare them. In the beginning, you might feel resistant, the flavors and textures might be different than what you are used to, but by sticking with it, you and your taste buds will adapt. Whole, natural, foods have flavors that vary as widely as their colors – sometimes it’s in the preparation and sometimes it’s in the season and growing location.
Try this exercise:
Adding vegetables to your plate at every meal can be incredibly impactful. This will be a trial to identify what it feels like to have them more often and in greater amounts. As you work through the vegetables, if after a few tries you absolutely do not like a certain one, don’t force yourself to eat it. We don’t have to like all foods and by pushing ourselves to eat foods we dislike, we are trying to create an unsustainable habit. (I know I can’t stick with eating things I don’t like for very long so it’s okay if you can’t either.)
Begin by visiting the ANDI food scoring guide and choose a vegetable or two that you’d like to add to your plate over the next two weeks.
Take Action & Schedule It!
What food(s) did you choose?
Where will you get it?
When will you get it?
How will you prepare it?
How many times will you have it?
Write your plans for your meals and track your food in a personal journal.
At the end of 14 days, come back and answer these questions:
What did you try?
How did you prepare it?
What was your favorite way of having it?
How often did you eat it?
How do you feel?
Bringing awareness to your experience allows you to practice listening to your body and what’s working and what’s not. Watch for subtle shifts, greater energy, reduction of mind fog, and less bloating.
This article is an excerpt from Lessons for MomPositive Living, Attainable Wellness for Modern Moms written by Tammi Hoerner, INHC. This book is available for purchase here.
