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A heartfelt welcome to visitors wishing to follow my Little Guy Teardrop Trailer Travels. For your convenience, you can follow my trips chronologically by clicking The Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. ~~ More trailer info. ~~ The overall contents of this blog are a mix of health & nutrition, and comments about my activities. Enjoy!!
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(NaturalNews) It's emblazoned across the front page of USA Today, just underneath a subhead declaring Michael Jackson was, indeed, killed by a drug overdose: "Flu could infect half of USA." The article goes on to describe the predicted number of deaths expected in the U.S. (30,000 - 90,000 Americans) as well as the actions being taken by the government to protect Americans from the coming swine flu pandemic.
That advice reads sort of like a comic book of health care advice for kindergarteners: Wash your hands, cover your mouth if you cough and let "the grownups" take care of the rest by injecting you with a vaccine. Curiously absent from all the health advice being handed out on the swine flu by the White House, the CDC, the WHO and even the FDA is any mention of Vitamin D or other natural remedies that offer enormous protections from influenza infections.
The absence of this information from virtually all the advice being handed out to the American public is increasingly suspicious. If a pandemic flu is, indeed, threatening to infect half the U.S. population, and if most of the population is deficient in a nutrient known to strongly prevent influenza infections, wouldn't it make good sense to make a few announcements encouraging Americans to raise their vitamin D levels throughout the coming winter?
It is a well-known medical fact, of course, that influenza always gets worse during the winter months North of the equator and the summer months South of the equator (which are really called their "winter" months). This is because as sunlight hours lessen during the winter, the people living there become vitamin D deficient and are susceptible to influenza infections of all kinds.
The information resources backing this are easy to find. Even our own NaturalPedia.com website reveals a large amount of information on natural defenses against influenza (http://www.naturalpedia.com/influen...). NaturalNews.com, of course, offers a wealth of articles on Vitamin D (http://www.naturalnews.com/vitamin_...).
In the realm of peer-reviewed medical literature, searching Google Scholar for "influenza" and "vitamin D" returns tens of thousands of results (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q...). In particular, one study appearing in these search results is entitled Epidemic influenza and vitamin D. It was published in 2006 in the journal Epidemiology and Infection (2006, 134:6:1129-1140 Cambridge University Press) and its abstract reads as follows:
In 1981, R. Edgar Hope-Simpson proposed that a 'seasonal stimulus' intimately associated with solar radiation explained the remarkable seasonality of epidemic influenza. Solar radiation triggers robust seasonal vitamin D production in the skin; vitamin D deficiency is common in the winter, and activated vitamin D, 1,25(OH)2D, a steroid hormone, has profound effects on human immunity. 1,25(OH)2D acts as an immune system modulator, preventing excessive expression of inflammatory cytokines and increasing the 'oxidative burst' potential of macrophages. Perhaps most importantly, it dramatically stimulates the expression of potent anti-microbial peptides, which exist in neutrophils, monocytes, natural killer cells, and in epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract where they play a major role in protecting the lung from infection. Volunteers inoculated with live attenuated influenza virus are more likely to develop fever and serological evidence of an immune response in the winter. Vitamin D deficiency predisposes children to respiratory infections. Ultraviolet radiation (either from artificial sources or from sunlight) reduces the incidence of viral respiratory infections, as does cod liver oil (which contains vitamin D). An interventional study showed that vitamin D reduces the incidence of respiratory infections in children. We conclude that vitamin D, or lack of it, may be Hope-Simpson's 'seasonal stimulus'.
To read the rest of this article, click here.
About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a maker of energy efficient LED lights that greatly reduce CO2 emissions. He also launched an online retailer of environmentally-friendly products (BetterLifeGoods.com) and uses a portion of its profits to help fund non-profit endeavors. He's also the founder and CEO of a well known email mail merge software developer whose software, 'Email Marketing Director,' currently runs the NaturalNews email subscriptions. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and adult gymnastics.
(Natural News) Exciting new research conducted at the Creighton University School of Medicine in Nebraska has revealed that supplementing with vitamin D and calcium can reduce your risk of cancer by an astonishing 77 percent. This includes breast cancer, colon cancer, skin cancer and other forms of cancer. This research provides strong new evidence that vitamin D is the single most effective medicine against cancer, far outpacing the benefits of any cancer drug known to modern science.
The study involved 1,179 healthy women from rural Nebraska. One group of women was given calcium (around 1500 mg daily) and vitamin D (1100 IU daily) while another group was given placebo. Over four year, the group receiving the calcium and vitamin D supplements showed a 60 percent decrease in cancers. Considering just the last three years of the study reveals an impressive 77 percent reduction in cancer due to supplementation. (The full press release of this study is included below. It provides more details about the findings.)
Note that these astonishing effects were achieved on what many nutritionists consider to be a low dose of vitamin D. Exposure to sunlight, which creates even more vitamin D in the body, was not tested or considered, and the quality of the calcium supplements was likely not as high as it could have been (it was probably calcium carbonate and not high-grade calcium malate, aspartate or similar forms). What does all this mean? It means that if you take high-quality calcium supplements and get lots of natural sunlight exposure or take premium vitamin D supplements (such as those made from fish oil), you could easily have a greater reduction than the 77 percent reduction recorded in this study.
American Cancer Society opposes vitamin D
This research on vitamin D is such good news that the American Cancer Society, of course, had to say something against it. An ACS spokesperson, Marji McCullough, strategic director of nutritional epidemiology for the American Cancer Society, flatly stated that nobody should take supplements to prevent cancer.
If it seems surprising to you that the American Cancer Society -- which claims to be against cancer -- would dissuade people from taking supplements that slash their cancer risk by 77 percent, then you don't know much about the ACS. In my opinion, the ACS is an organization that actually prevents prevention and openly supports the continuation of cancer as a way to boost its power and profits. The ACS is the wealthiest non-profit in America and has very close ties to pharmaceutical companies, mammography equipment companies and other corporations that profit from cancer. Notice the name, too: It isn't the American Anti-Cancer Society, it's the American Cancer Society! What they really stand for is right in the name!
Click here to read more about the ACS and its financial ties to chemical companies, pharmaceutical companies and radiology equipment manufacturers.
The cancer industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, and I've written extensively about the criminal organizations that protect and promote the industry. Just about everything the public is told about cancer by these cancer institutions is a lie. Those "race for the cure" cancer walks are a complete scam (they really aren't searching for any way to prevent cancer or cure cancer, they're only searching for new patented drugs to profit from cancer).
This research on vitamin D is a huge threat to the cancer industry profit mongers because it reveals a way to prevent cancer for free -- by seeking natural sunlight exposure and letting your skin manufacture your own powerful anti-cancer medicine (vitamin D). The idea that the cancer industry could lose 80% of its patients due to widespread education about vitamin D and sunlight scares the living daylights out of the cancer industry. Billions of dollars in cancer profits are at stake here, so the pro-cancer groups have to do everything they can to discredit vitamin D by creating doubt and confusion. The degree of dishonesty at work here is almost unbelievable to those who don't really know what's happening in the cancer industry.
Click here to read the remainder of the article: Ten questions to ask yourself about the cancer industry.
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and technology pioneer with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health. He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company.
(NaturalNews) For the past 18 months, I've been working on building a new research library consisting of over 1200 books on natural health topics. Through some rather advanced technologies that took me far longer to build than I originally anticipated, I'm now able to locate and collect, within minutes, paragraphs on any combination of topics from among these 1200 books.
For example, today I wanted to research "Vitamin D" and "Breast Cancer." This produced a collection of well over 650 quotations on the subject from the various sources in my private library. A small sampling of those results are shown below.
The information you'll find in here is fascinating! You'll learn that vitamin D cream can be rubbed directly on tumors to make them vanish. You'll also learn how resveratrol can be used to amplify the results of vitamin D. There are also explanations on how vitamin D can be used to greatly reduce breast cancer cases in America, Canada, the UK and elsewhere.
I'll be using this tool in a big way here on NaturalNews from now on, bringing you research on herbs, nutrients, natural cures and many other topics. Each article here saves you the equivalent of hundreds of hours of time you might normally have to spend searching through books to find answers on the health topics that concern you.
To protect the authors and publishers of these books, we do several things: 1) All books are fully referenced and cited with the author's name. 2) Each book links to an Amazon.com link where readers can buy the book (so this citation of the book actually helps increase sales of the book, which benefits the author and publisher). 3) We LIMIT the quotes from any one book so that the amount of information cited from each book falls under Fair Use provisions. 4) We provide a second book analysis page that shows the keyword concepts used throughout the book, along with another link for purchasing the book.
In this way, we help NaturalNews readers get a hint of all the great information in these books while protecting the copyrights and promoting the interests of the authors. Please support these authors by purchasing the books mentioned below.
Here's the research we found on vitamin D and breast cancer:
The Experts Speak: Vitamin D and Breast Cancer
This activated form of vitamin D causes "cellular differentiation" — essentially the opposite of cancer. The following evidence indicates that vitamin D might have a protective role against breast cancer:
• Synthetic vitamin D-like molecules have prevented the equivalent of breast cancer in animals.
• Activated vitamin D appears to have antiestrogenic activity.
• Both sunlight and dietary exposure to vitamin D have correlated with a reduced risk of breast cancer.
- The Natural Pharmacy: Complete A-Z Reference to Natural Treatments for Common Health Conditions by Alan R. Gaby, M.D., Jonathan V. Wright, M.D., Forrest Batz, Pharm.D. Rick Chester, RPh., N.D., DipLAc. George Constantine, R.Ph., Ph.D. Linnea D. Thompson, Pharm.D., N.D.
- Available on Amazon.com
Results of one small study suggested that body stores of vitamin D may be associated with survival chances in women with advanced breast cancer. "Thirteen women with normal or high levels of active vitamin D survived the 6-month test period but, sadly, in those with low levels, 5 out of 13 died within 6 months," said Professor Barbara Mawer of the Manchester Royal Infirmary in central England.
- The Natural Pharmacist: Your Complete Guide to Reducing Cancer Risk by Richard Harkness
- Available on Amazon.com
A study comparing the health habits of 133 breast cancer patients with women who did not have the disease found that exposure to sunlight lowered the risk of breast cancer by 30 to 40% or more.
- The Natural Pharmacist: Your Complete Guide to Reducing Cancer Risk by Richard Harkness
- Available on Amazon.com
...when the same researchers looked at actual vitamin D levels, they found a 43 percent reduction in risk of breast cancer among women younger than 60 when comparing the highest levels of vitamin D (greater than 40) to lowest (less than 20). These findings are consistent with findings that cite a lower risk of breast cancer with increased ultraviolet light exposure, which means higher vitamin D levels are protective. Furthermore, researchers find higher activated vitamin D levels in women with less invasive and/or less advanced breast cancer.
- The Vitamin D Cure by James Dowd and Diane Stafford
- Available on Amazon.com
Two equally effective sources of vitamin D in humans are derived from plant ergosterol, which is converted to ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) and cholecalciferol (vitamin D3) by the action of sunlight on the skin. The body uses vitamin D3 for normal immune system function, to control cellular growth, and to absorb calcium from the digestive tract. Vitamin D3 can inhibit the growth of malignant melanoma, breast cancer, leukemia, and mammary tumors in laboratory animals. Vitamin D3 can also inhibit angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels that permit the spread of cancer cells through the body.
To read the entire article, click here.
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and technology pioneer with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health. He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company.
(NaturalNews) This is the third and final part of a three-part article series. Part one is available at http://www.naturalnews.com/026843_health_food_nutrition.html... and part two is available at http://www.naturalnews.com/026851_nutrition_health_cancer.html...

Solutions
Ultimately, what's more important than teaching people nutritional knowledge is teaching people the skills of thinking for themselves. A population of independent thinkers would naturally embrace knowledge of nutritional remedies and natural cures. They would naturally resist the FDA's pro-drug propaganda, and they would be able to more readily recognize the value of safe, effective and low-cost natural medicine.
The reason why this isn't happening right now in modern society is obvious when you realize that people are not trained to THINK, they are trained to follow orders.
This is especially true with doctors, where the art and craft of medicine has been stolen away from well-meaning physicians by state and federal bureaucrats who wish to centralize all the medical decision making. They want doctors to be robotic enforcers of a centrally-planned medical agenda, not local decision-makers operating with autonomy.
In today's health care reform debate, for example, all the big players want to dictate to doctors how they should make their decisions -- insurance companies, drug companies, state governments and the federal government. Nobody wants to empower doctors with the ability to make reasonable decisions based on human compassion and necessary medical care, because that would cost too much (and it might not involve monopoly-priced pharmaceuticals).
But it isn't only doctors who are taught to abandon independent thinking: It's all of us. Through our conformist, dictatorial public education system and incessant television programming, we are all taught to cast away independent thought and conform with the masses.
Why we are genetically programmed to follow the herd
This tendency, in fact, is genetically programmed behavior among not just humans, but many other species. It's actually a shortcut survival strategy for quick decision making. If you're standing in a forest, for example, and a stampede of 100 people run towards you, screaming in fear, you may not know what they are afraid of, but in the back of your mind, your brain concludes "Well, one hundred people can't all be wrong. I'm gonna run too!" And you turn around and run in the same direction they are running, oblivious to any reason why.
Following the masses as a decision-making shortcut pays off much of the time, but it misleads us when the masses have been misdirected. And the masses, it turns out, are incredibly easy to misdirect through propaganda, advertising and deliberate disinfo campaigns.
In fact, I would say that on all the big issues of our modern society -- health, economics, the environment, politics, etc. -- the masses have been deliberately misdirected to pursue beliefs and actions that serve only the interests of those who covet profits and power. Thus, using the convenient mental shortcut of following the masses in modern society is a sure recipe for engaging in actions that betray your own personal interests. Much of modern advertising, for example, could be accurately described as a campaign to convince individual consumers to make purchasing decisions that go against their own self interest. (This is especially true in the banking and credit card industries.)
Click here to read the entire article.
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and technology pioneer with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health. He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company.
(NaturalNews)
A heart disease patient of late
Had an IQ of 168.
His brain was immense
But it lacked common sense
And it never engaged when he ate.
- by the Health Ranger
As an observer of human behavior, one of the most fascinating things I've ever witnessed is really smart people dying of diseases that are easily preventable through basic nutrition (vitamin D, plant juices, targeted supplements, superfoods, etc.). I know doctors dying of cancer who take chemotherapy over vitamin D supplements. I know members of MENSA who are killing themselves with junk foods and diabetes. I know extremely intelligent attorneys and physicists who are among the smartest people in their respective fields; but when it comes to basic health, they're completely ignorant.
In fact, if you look around at all the "smart" people you know, you're likely to find the vast majority of them are incredibly ignorant when it comes to their own health. They know nothing about basic nutrition, the benefits of superfoods or the dangers of pharmaceuticals. They eat processed junk foods, dairy products and food products contaminated with pesticides and toxic chemicals. They may be the smartest people in the world in their labs or offices, but when it comes to their own bodies, they are among the most ignorant people on the planet.
How can this be? (Click here to read the rest of the article.)
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and technology pioneer with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health. He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company.
(NaturalNews) This is the second part of a three-part article series. To read part one (recommended), visit: http://www.naturalnews.com/026843_h...
Enforcing nutritional ignorance
Powerful corporations, of course, require the services of oppressive government to enforce nutritional ignorance across the population. In the USA, the Food and Drug Administration is the primary enforcer of nutritional ignorance.
The FDA, as most NaturalNews readers well know, makes one of its primary missions the destruction of knowledge about nutrition and natural remedies. This is accomplished by outlawing any honest speech about nutrition from supplement companies, even going as far as threatening them with arrest and criminal prosecution if they dare link to scientific studies about nutrition (http://www.naturalnews.com/019366.html).
Meanwhile, the FDA openly approves health claims on processed food products sold by powerful corporations. This is designed to convince consumers that junk foods are healthful foods, even while healthful foods can make no claims whatsoever about their health benefits.
The FTC also gets in the game with its own brand of censorship, arresting and imprisoning owners of companies that offer natural cancer treatments based on good science. That's why no real cancer cures are offered in the U.S. anymore -- all the scientists who know the subject have either been imprisoned or run out of the country.
Medical journals also play a part in the ongoing nutritional ignorance of the masses by promoting intellectually dishonest information about the supposed benefits of pharmaceuticals while attacking natural remedies and ignoring nutritional cures.
The disease non-profit groups also play a big part in the nutritional ignorance scam. Note, carefully, how the cancer non-profits dare not teach people to take vitamin D supplements? If they did, cancer would cease to be such a big problem and those non-profits would lose membership (and power). So they continue the grand charade of ignoring known cancer cures while claiming they're still "searching for a cure."
I've even seen lots of smart people jogging along in those "race for the cure" events -- which are of course just a fundraising fraud. When I've asked these people where the money goes that they're donating, they just shrug their shoulders and say, "I dunno. I guess it goes to find a cure!"
These are very smart people, mind you, who have been sucked into this sucker's fundraising trap. They have no clue where the money is going (hint: almost all of it goes to cancer "recruiting" and screening efforts to scare more women into chemotherapy) and yet they jog along with all the other sheeple, somehow believing they are doing good in the world.
In all, these institutions and power centers accomplish something quite remarkable: The complete nutritional ignorance of virtually the entire population.
And with that, they shore up their own profit centers by keeping the American people ignorant and nutritionally illiterate.
Click here to read the remainder of the article, and click here for the third message.
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and technology pioneer with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health. He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company.