Donkey Milk  – The beginning of the end

Biological Value

Types of whey protein

GMO Products

Water Systems

Government subsidized farming

Vitamins and their absorption

Which foods have what

What sugars do and how unhealthy they are

Different colored products

How fad diets work

White Bread Facts

Nutrition Labels

Heat Applied to Food

Workout Videos hiring models

I received a gun for Christmas when I was eight, and was taken out quail hunting. I helped train bird dogs, played sports, like baseball and soccer, helped with landscaping, and helped with the garden.  We were part of a community of eight houses inhabited primarily by our own family. We were 10 miles from the nearest grocery store or gas station in what the other community members refer to as “Hackneyville.”  Our grandparents and great grandparents lived within walking distance, and were always delighted to have us over for home-cooked meals of biscuits and gravy, beef stroganoff, or chili, to name just a few.

What really made these meals unique was the gravy that came from the squirrels the family killed. Or maybe the neighbors would go fishing in the pond up the holler and bring over some catfish to surprise us for dinner.

I remember wanting to go outside and play while at my great grandmother’s house during a hot summer’s day, but I had to stay in the sweltering kitchen to help string the beans.  We had piles of beans as tall as I could stand, so it took all day and ruined any chance of riding my bike or playing in the woods.  The women would later get mason jars and spend an entire day canning the beans and prepping them for storage.  It was an enormous amount of work, but it was well worth it to taste my great grandmother’s vegetable soup each winter. She’d pull out all her cans she had been working on during summer to make the stew.

I didn’t care for it much, but each fall my sister would get excited to pick a pumpkin out of our garden and bake the seeds.

Our house overlooked the river and  even though the river came up and swept away our garden each year, new soil would be deposited and we’d start fresh year after year.

It was always exciting for the family when a bald eagle flew overhead.  We never knew exactly where the nest was, but for the majority of my childhood they soared across the sky by our home while we went waterskiing or barbecued in our backyard.

Each winter, quail season allowed us to feast on the few ounces of meat from the birds and enjoy a dinner, complete with potatoes from the garden and biscuits from scratch, with the family h.

For school, our bus traveled through all the rural back roads and picked up 30 kids, finally getting to Ravenswood, just 10 miles away, an hour later.  The school had kids coming to it from over fifteen miles in all directions and each class totaled about 100 students.

The school gave all the students two weeks off every Thanksgiving so we could go out for deer season and enjoy time with our families.  It was customary to hunt deer, make deer jerky and smoke the venison each fall.  I remember Jared McGoskey would bring the best deer jerky ever to school each year and share it with the rest of us.  His father owned a convenience store and they had real homemade jerky to sell on the shelves.  I would spend my Thanksgivings with the family, and go horseback riding or watch the family dance with each other – most of them are cloggers.

I knew little of what was going on in the rest of the world.  We were considered kids from the country and “city kids” to us were those who lived in Ravenswood – population 2,000 with its one stop light and one pizza parlor.  The big cities were a good 50 miles away and had a theatre, a mall, and a few shopping centers.

Looking back on everything, I feel blessed to have had my childhood.  My mother only used breast milk when we were infants, fed us fresh fruits and homemade meals as toddlers, and even fought the school when she was told we needed vaccinations.  To me, this was a normal childhood and the way of life.  Now, after traveling the world and thoroughly studying nutrition and health habits of different cultures, I can see that Hackneyville has a story to tell.

This is that story and it brings light to ideas and thoughts on a side of health and fitness that the masses don’t see.  The media has convinced our country and world for generations that baby formula is healthy, your child must be vaccinated, taking pills from doctors is the answer to migraines, and so much more.

Hackneyville never seemed to get that message.  Maybe it was because we only had three TV Channels that never got reception. Maybe it has something to do with my mother’s desire to be the best for her children.  Whatever the reason, I see how others treat their health, and I see their idea of proper care and I can’t help but think it’s Donkey Business.

How much attention do you pay to nutrition labels? Do you count calories? Do you try to buy foods that are iron or calcium enriched? The nutrition label on most foods can be an important source of information for many people about what they’re eating.

But as it turns out, nutrition labels are not as trustworthy as they seem. Not only are they often misleading, but they can be downright incorrect. And much of this stems from what the original purpose of nutrition labels was.

During World War II, the American government was faced with a dilemma: during a time of shortage and rationing, how were they going to keep their soldiers healthy on the war front? They needed to develop a way to make sure every soldier was getting the nutrition he needed—in other words, enough of the right kinds of food. So in 1941 the National Academy of Sciences developed the Recommended Daily Allowances (RDAs).

 You’ve seen these RDAs before. On a nutrition label, they take the form of percentages—in other words, what percent of the RDA of that particular nutrient is contained in one serving of that food. These nutrients include vitamins and minerals such as Vitamin A, Vitamin C, and iron. People who are trying to eat nutritious diets often turn to the nutritional facts label on their food for information on what they’re eating.

For example, by drinking one serving of milk (i.e., one eight ounce glass), Joe is getting 30% of his daily calcium. But think about this for a second. Where is this “30%” coming from? Say Joe is a 6’5” football player. When Rosa, who is 5’5” and half his weight, drinks that same glass of milk… is she also getting 30% of her daily calcium needs? Then there are other things to consider, such as age and activity level. Basically, the RDA is based off the “average” person—and very few people exactly fit that mold.

And that’s not all. Because the RDAs were originally designed to supply the minimum amount of nutrients necessary—a basic rule of thumb the RDAs still follow—the RDAs only supply enough nutrients to keep you from getting nasty diseases like scurvy (caused by severe vitamin C deficiency).  The RDAs were about survival, not long-term health. Even today the numbers used in the RDAs are about supporting basic health from day to day and preventing malnutrition. Think of the RDAs as a crutch to keep you propped up—wouldn’t it be much better to be able to stand on your own feet? The RDAs do not protect against the slow onset of degenerative diseases such as cancer or arthritis, serious concerns in modern times, the way an optimal nutrition program can.

Because of this, many people think that they are getting a large amount of vitamin C from their 10% orange juice, when they are really getting only a very small amount that probably isn’t enough to keep them healthy.

So not only are you getting less nutrition than the “average person” needs to stay healthy, you’re probably getting nowhere near the amount of nutrients your individual body needs. For example pregnant women require 400 micrograms of folic acid to prevent certain birth defects, but the RDA remains stuck at just 180 micrograms. The RDA also does not account for people with chronic diseases or disorders, who often need additional supplements. Some nutrients do not have an RDA at all, simply because not enough is known about what harm a deficiency in that nutrient could cause.

The RDA has been updated periodically, but the basic idea behind it has stayed the same. And it hasn’t been updated since 1989 at all. The 1989 levels were actually lowered in many cases from what they had been in 1980. For example, the 1989 RDA for folic acid was reduced from 400 to 200 mcg. Why? Because the average American was consuming less than the recommended amounts, and they wanted the RDAs to reflect what people actually consumed—after all, since the American people were still functioning and healthy, the amounts they were eating must be all

that was necessary. Yes, that was the logic.

RDAs aren’t the only misinformation nutrition facts labels contain. You may have heard about how trans fats are now a required item on the label. But what you probably don’t know is that if there is less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving, the food companies can list that as 0 grams, and are free to label and advertise their foods as “trans fat free.” And don’t forget those magic words, “per serving.” That means that all the manufacturer has to do is reduce the serving size to a point where the amount of trans fat is 0.5 grams or less, and voila, trans fat free food.

Many foods that seem to be trans fat free, then, are actually not. Many packaged baked goods and fried foods contain trans fat. And trans fat is in no way, shape or form good for you. It clogs arteries, causes diseases, and spurs aging. Additionally, most Americans consume more than one serving of a food in a sitting. Even if you think you’re eating a food that’s low in whatever it’s advertising, you have to remember to multiply that by how many servings you’re consuming. You could be eating a “trans fat free food,” and really be loading up on trans fats.

What you need to do is look at the ingredients. Anytime you see the words “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated,” it means that food contains trans fat. So don’t let the label fool you. Stay smart about what you’re eating.

The bottom line is, you can’t rely on food labels to address your personal nutrient needs. Instead of using the percentages given, it would be more informative to calculate the actual amounts of vitamins and minerals you are getting and apply them toward your overall needs. A multivitamin is a good way to supplement that, since it can be very difficult to meet all your nutritional needs through meals in today’s fast-paced world.

So changes need to be made to the RDAs, to bring them up from the bare minimum to the optimal levels—that much is clear. But what are those levels? There is an ongoing debate on what to change the RDAs to. Some questions under consideration include: What are the RDAs meant to do? What happens when there isn’t enough research to know what the right amount is? What about groups that aren’t included in trials, like children and the elderly? In many cases, there isn’t enough scientific knowledge about what levels of nutrients are most optimal. Should there also be a maximum value as well? Several values, like the U.K. system?

The bottom line is that, at least right now, nutrition facts label cannot be relied on for complete nutritional help. You have to take control of your own health. 

Milk—it does the body good.

Human beings used to kill animals primarily for meat and hides; however, that changed with the advent of animal domestication around 8000 BC.  At that time, goats and sheep were domesticated in the Middle East and lived on a diet of grass. Farmers realized that animals could sustain themselves on an easily obtainable stock of food which was otherwise useless to humans, so they started experimenting with other uses for animal byproducts; hence human consumption of animal milk. Now, instead of simply hunting animals and getting one share of meat and skin, they capitalized on milk production and used the same animals for years.

There is evidence of humans drinking milk from many mammals, including goats, sheep, camels, donkeys, even water buffalo, but cow’s milk is by far the biggest industry for animal milk. Why? Because cows can produce nearly 40 liters of milk in one milking. In this world of quantity over quality, cow’s milk made the most sense.

But could it do better?

Milk produced by different animals has different compositions of protein, fat, and essential nutrients. Many studies have been conducted to test the breakdown of lipids and vitamin content in milk from different animals, and they found that donkey lactate is actually healthier than that of a cow and most closely resembles human milk. According to a study published in Fundamentals of Dairy Chemistry (B. Webb, A. Johnson, J. Alford, AVI Publishing, 1974), cow milk contains 3.7 grams of fat per 100 grams while donkey milk only contains 1.72 grams. As America faces an increasingly concerning obesity epidemic, one has to wonder why nutritionists have not revisited something as easy as milk. The answer is simple: people are disturbed by the idea of drinking donkey milk.

Donkey milk surpasses a cow’s on many levels: less fat content, a much higher percentage of protein, and a higher concentrate of the essential vitamins found in milk. For example, donkey milk contains 60 times the amount of vitamin C found in cow milk. Perhaps the most important difference is the fact that donkey milk requires no pasteurization. Pasteurization is the process by which bacteria, protozoa, molds, and yeasts are destroyed by heating a liquid. Every ounce of milk produced on cow dairy farms must go through this process or risk being harmful to human beings. Needless to say, this is an expensive process. Donkey milk does not contain any natural bacteria, so it is absolutely safe to drink straight from the jenny! In fact, some studies have even shown that donkey milk contains immunoglobins which boost the immune system. Not enough research has been done on this topic to make solid statements, but donkey milk is potentially helpful for people with reduced immune system function, like cancer patients.

The oldest woman in the world died at 116 years of age and made a buzz in the media when her family attributed her long life span to consumption of donkey milk throughout her life. The Ecuadorian woman lived a healthy lifestyle otherwise, but it really makes you think! There are also legends that Cleopatra bathed in donkey milk to keep her skin youthful and beautiful; maybe she was on to something.

Where can I get it?

Donkey milk’s popularity is quickly growing in Belgium and France. Belgium’s Asinerie du Pays des Collines at the Chateau des Mottes, owned by Olivier Denys is not only the single existing donkey dairy farm in Belgium, but is also one of very few existing in the world. Denys knows that donkey milk is a “nutritional goldmine,” but he also realizes the limitations in mass production. Jennies, female donkeys, can only produce around two liters of milk per day over a span of three milkings, which does not really contend with the 40 liters churned out by cows in only one. Also, of his 84 donkeys, only 15 are ever producing at one time. Despite the hindrances in manufacturing, Denys says that production is increasing every year as popularity and support grows. Another plus that may start to change investor’s minds is that donkey milk completely cuts out the cost of pasteurization, which leaves more money for more donkeys.

Access to donkey milk in the United States is extremely limited. Donkey milk supplements are about as close as you can get without actually going out and milking a donkey yourself. The cosmetic industry is cashing in on the Cleopatra myth by selling soaps and lotions containing fractions of donkey milk, but the real nutritional benefits come from the actual consumption of fresh milk.

America is stuck in a nutritional rut, and the idea of drinking milk straight from a donkey’s teat is, let’s face it, disgusting for most people. But why is it any different than drinking milk from a cow? Because time and time again, society has drawn the lines and nobody has dared to break them.

The nutritional benefits of drinking donkey milk are clear; the only thing lacking is publicity and social acceptance. 

Add info saying that this is the problem with many of our foods today.  Social acceptance and improper media exposure has caused our society to get confused as to what is healthy and how to best take care of ourselves.  We consider this Donkey Business.  In this book, you’ll learn the truth and unravel the mystery behind some of the most appalling recommendations in health today.

What are Super foods?

- Definition/ tell reader of what super foods are

-          Super food: food that for how many calories it has the value of nutrients is higher then calorie count   

-          List superfoods (almonds, broccoli, goji berry mango steen, acai, GAC)

-          Whats good/not good for your body

Reasoning to their obscurity:

-          Rare locations (Brazil, ect)

-          How its processed may be not the best way to use fruit}

-          Make the reader more educated about the basics between different superfoods and the other nutrients they offer to help keep yourself healthy

Different Companies imputs:

-          Tell what they are, list a few, political side about companies – advantages, whos backing/funding the product.

-          Tell about a few of the mainstream companies involved

ORAC reports:

-                ORAC reports (aren’t accurate due to lack of research taken into account)

-          Investors of product control ORAC reports = not correct to  the public, false advertisement. “propaganda” of the market

-          Include articles from www.pubmed.com

-          Quote from doctor that wrote an article related to superfoods to support reasoning to article VRS ORAC reports.

Conclusion:

-          Cant compare different super foods side by side,. Well rounded, and try all products – try all three..ect.

-          Without further research, the determination of whether which food (ex: broccoli VRS. Goji berry) is the best superfood/ best nutrients to offer.

-          Super foods are still the healthiest to eat for your body, but which ones offer the most {ORAC reports) still remains undetermined. 

At this very moment, knowing what you know, do you think you would vaccinate your child? And if you don’t have a kid, then pretend you do. Now, keeping your answer in mind, do you know the possible risks that go along with your decision? If you do, great; if not, then I hope you do when the time comes because child vaccination is a parent’s choice, not a doctor’s, so you ought to know what it really means to have your child vaccinated. Recently, child vaccination has been an issue of debate due to possible links to autism, concerns over vaccine efficacy and safety, and even more perturbing, financial ties between huge pharmaceutical companies (“Big Pharma”) and the medical community.

Not So Cruel Intentions

So why did doctors and scientists encourage parents to vaccinate their kids in the first place? Decades ago, childhood illnesses such as measles, mumps, and polio were common and often fatal. So, the original idea behind vaccines was to “build immunity” to certain bacterial and viral culprits responsible for our temporary downfalls in wellness. Sounds like a humanitarian idea so far.

The Fashion Police

 The idea behind building immunity is this: we have an immune system in our body that consists of two sets of “soldiers.” One set, which is called the humoral immune system, is responsible for identifying and recognizing foreign agents that have invaded our bodies. Mother Nature made sure that each foreign agent had some sort of protein “uniform,” or coat, that made it identifiable to our savvy soldiers. For example, the first time that you catch the chicken pox virus, you run a fever and break out in a horribly itchy rash all over your body. You feel these symptoms because your second set of soldiers, called the cellular immune system, are destroying the foreign agents for not following the dress code that is strictly enforced in your body. So, the humoral set of soldiers identifies and recognizes foreign agents while the cellular set destroys them.

Back to those horrible symptoms, these are due to the “acute inflammatory response” (try saying that 10 times in a row!) that occurs when your cellular immune system is at work. Meanwhile, your humoral soldiers are memorizing that hideous protein uniform the foreign agent is wearing. The next time you happen to catch the chicken pox virus in that same unstylish uniform, your cellular soldiers will pulverize them so quick that you won’t even feel the symptoms that occurred the first time you caught the pox! That’s right- you are spared the fever, the unsightly rashes, and excruciating itchiness because you’ve got your personal fashion police making sure you don’t house these fashion victims more than once.

So that was Mother Nature’s way; western medicine’s style stems from this same idea.

But in lieu of catching the full-blown virus from your little brother or your best friend, a  physician injects a “dead” version of the sucker into you. This injection is called a vaccine. The injection is supposed to get your humoral immune system all revved up, and your humoral soldiers go through the process of identifying foreign agents by looking for anyone whose protein coat is an eye-sore. Once the lifeless invaders have been identified, your body is prepared to quickly and efficiently recognize them, sans the symptoms, if you actually catch the virus from someone. The perks of receiving a vaccine rather than catching it from someone is that you are not supposed to actually become ill from the shot. The purpose of the vaccine is to avoid the entire awful ordeal of staying in bed for a week. Notice how with vaccines there isn’t much of a response, if any, from the cellular immune system since they are not going to waste their time and energy killing something that is already dead. If the cellular immune system doesn’t take action, then the acute inflammatory response does not occur. If the acute inflammatory response does not occur, we do not feel sick. Sounds good, right? Well, we’ll see how this is too good to  be true later.

Moreover, the typical childhood vaccines don’t only include chicken pox, but polio, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis, just to name a few. That’s a whole lot of cocktail for a small person! So is it necessary?

The necessity of vaccines for infants and toddlers has been called into question by parents claiming possible links to autism, as well as the possibility that the risks may outweigh the benefits. And what’s even more alarming are the links between Big Pharma and those who are supposed to be reliable sources of information for the public. I shall go over the rationale behind these concerns.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

What stimulated the fears of a possible autism-stimulating vaccine is a chemical called

thimerosal. Thimerosal is a preservative in vaccines that prevents viral and bacterial growth. The deal with thimerosal is that it is a type of mercury—gasp! But it is not the same kind of mercury that everybody is always associating with fish or pregnant women. Thimerosal contains ethyl mercury, which is different than methyl mercury found in fish. But let’s not kid ourselves, mercury is mercury, and all mercury causes tissue damage. One notable difference between these two types of mercury is their blood half-life. What is blood half-life? It is the amount of time it takes to get rid of half the amount of something you started with. For example, if I happen to have 1 cup of chocolate milk in my blood, and it takes 2 days for me to get rid of a 1/2 cup of the chocolate milk, which is half the amount I started with, then the blood half-life of chocolate milk is 2 days. The blood half-life of ethyl mercury (thimerosal) is 3.7 days, which is much shorter than methyl mercury’s (“fish” mercury) 44 days. Because of the large disparity in blood half-lives, some doctors claim that ethyl mercury’s short half-life makes it impossible for toxin build-up. But what those doctors fail to mention is that just because the ethyl mercury is out of your blood, it does not mean it is not in your brain, fat, or other tissues. And to top it off, ethyl mercury has an easier time than methyl mercury reaching your noggin, and once there, wreaking havoc; hence the concern that vaccines (or more directly, thimerosal), may cause autism.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that a vaccine does not simply contain a piece of inactive virus or bacteria. As I just mentioned, it contains a preservative (thimerosal), and in addition to that, something called an adjuvant. This guy perks up your humoral

immune system, which causes some inflammation in your body. The adjuvant is needed because the dead virus alone isn’t going to perk up your immune system. While autism still remains a mystery to the medical community, it is known that those with autism have an extremely inflamed brain. Because both autism and the adjuvant are linked to inflammation, it is believed that the adjuvant may cause more susceptible individuals to develop full-blown autism.

All this talk of mercury, adjuvants, and inflammation (oh my!) is a bit of a hair-raiser, but one of the things that America seems to do best is panic and worry. So are we over-reacting? Is it possible that everything just happens to be a coincidence? Some parents believe that the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine is associated with autism. That shot is typically given to children 12-15 months of age, and most cases of autism are identified around that same time. It isn’t until the child is about 12 months or older that autistic symptoms, such as difficulty speaking and communicating, can be observed. Although it has been noted that there is a direct correlation between the increasing number of children getting vaccinated and the increasing number of autistic cases being reported, that does not necessarily mean we have a greater incidence of autism. It has been said that the number of cases being reported is just that—the number of cases being reported. Perhaps we’ve always had around 1 out of every 150 children being autistic, and it was just never reported until now.

But let’s be real: 1 out of 150 children being autistic for the past, say 100 years, sounds a bit far-fetched. I have enough experience working with autistic children, even those who are only “slightly” autistic, to feel that it is a difficult a disorder to miss. If there were really 1 out of 150 autistic children in the United States for so many years, then why did it take us so long to notice?

The Sky is Falling!

Perhaps America’s fears have simply shifted from polio to autism. As you probably know, we’ve always got to worry about something, and the new concern is autism. See, years ago people focused their concerns on polio and small pox because they were prevalent in America. It was the thing to worry about, and rightly so because so many children had battled with these illnesses; everyone knew someone who was affected by it. But we haven’t seen any cases of polio or small pox in decades! So it’s no longer sensible to be worrying about polio or small pox now because autism is now the new growing concern for the parents,.

We live in a celebrity-obsessed society, and the mainstream media is doing a great job fuelling the autism concern. We’ve got celebrities like Jenny McCarthy going on CNN, nay-saying vaccines while Amanda Peet is doing commercials urging parents to “do your

research” and “vaccinate your child.” Hey- at least we’ve got cheerleaders on both sides to make the media seem unbiased…

According to the mainstream media, particularly medical journals, some studies were done that “proved” mercury and autism had no connection. And then if you flip to the next page, you are likely to find an ad for Merck’s HPV vaccine, or Pfizer’s Celebrex. So what?

Old McDonald had a Pharm

What’s up is Merck and Pfizer are among the top Big Pharma companies. And as the title, “Big Pharma” implies, they are big pharmaceutical companies, though “Big” would be an understatement. “Big” may be the name, but humongous is the reality of these companies. A Big Pharma company is one whose revenue exceeds $3 billion and/or has a research and development allowance in excess of $500 million. There are thousands of pharmaceutical companies around the world, yet the top 20 companies contain 60% of total pharmaceutical sales! Twenty companies out of thousands is like a single grain of salt out of an entire salt shaker on your corn-on-the-cob, just one really powerful grain. Yet, given time, that single grain is powerful enough to dehydrate most of the kernels on your corn stalk; it leaches each kernel of its sweet juices and causes them to wrinkle and be devoid of any satiable value. Big Pharma is that single grain of salt while each kernel represents a once relatively healthy person whose wallet and well-being gets depleted. Who knew that one powerful grain out of the thousands in that saltshaker could cause so much saltiness? For Big Pharma, the money rolls in by making America sicker, not healthier.

“Show me the Money!”

Making money is the motivation for many people in just about every aspect in life, and sadly, most of the health care field is not any different. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is supposed to be a reliable source of information and advice for all pediatricians, including those who are not looking to profit from drug companies. And you would think so because the AAP is considered a non-profit organization, but what’s crazy is there is no law requiring this organization to provide details of their money-dealings to anyone, not even to the IRS. There are clandestine monetary operations going on between Big Pharma and institutions in which we would intuitively put our trust in. These institutes I speak of include the aforementioned AAP, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Center for Disease Control (CDC), and the National

Institutes of Health (NIH). I say we would trust them intuitively because the FDA, CDC, and NIH are government affiliates, and the role of the government is to serve the people in which they govern. These groups were formed on the basis of consumer protection in the food and/or drug industry. But there seems to be a conflict of interest.

Let’s visit Exhibit A: the AAP. One outstanding case of their suspicious financial ties is the year they endorsed Merck’s HPV vaccine. That same year that they endorsed this highly debatable vaccine, they received over $400,000 from them. This the American Academy of Pediatrics! Their main concern is supposed to be of the welfare of our children, yet they are confidently supporting this controversial drug that is being pushed onto 9-year-old girls. And they call themselves a non-profit…

Conflict of interest is the theme that seems to be omnipresent in these financial exchanges, and something we need to look out for the next time we flip through a magazine or surf the web. Be aware of who is monetarily linked to your source. Do they carry stocks or speaking fees with a Big Pharma? Be aware of the Pharm your source’s irrigation system is flowing from.

Pump Your Brakes!

If vaccines may be linked to autism, and they are most definitely linked to money-nabbing organizations and doctors, can these vaccines at least fulfill their role as immune-system boosters? Do the benefits outweigh the risk?

America is always on the run and looking for a quick solution. Can’t afford that flat

screen LCD television set? Charge it on the credit card! Need to skim off 30 pounds from your frame? Liposuction! Whatever happened to good old diet and exercise? Diet and exercise is the solution that takes some time and discipline, but it is guaranteed to work. It is the solution that doesn’t involve going under the knife or injecting toxic chemicals and other foreign substances into our bodies. Quick-fixes to our problems are constantly being promoted and we are increasingly relying on drugs and chemicals to quickly deal with all our health maladies. Does a crash diet work in the long run? No! You end up gaining all the weight back, plus some, or you develop an eating disorder. They call it a “crash” for a reason.

A Balancing Act

Remember our friends, the humoral and cellular immune system? When we catch a cold or the chicken pox (the natural way of building immunity), we make both components of our immune system stronger. This is good because we want to keep them balanced, just like all other aspects of life. But with vaccines, we only stimulate the humoral soldiers (the fashion police). This situation forces our entire immune system to undergo a balancing act.

Try balancing on a huge rubber ball, say 6 feet in diameter. If you can use both feet, you still have to work at it, but it is definitely possible to do. And in the process, you have to use every muscle in your body and intense concentration to accomplish this balancing task, but it will make you stronger. Now try balancing on one foot. You end up doing more damage because you’ll probably twist your ankle in the process, and then your head will break your inevitable fall, and instead of a good workout, you end up hurting yourself.

So having too much of the humoral response from vaccines causes your body to compensate for this by lowering the cellular response. And like I said before, if you don’t have the cellular response, then you won’t get the acute inflammatory response. And now I will address why this is bad: because now it’s a balancing act between the acute inflammatory response and an autoimmune disorder! A stronger acute inflammatory response indicates a smaller likelihood of developing an autoimmune disorder such as diabetes or arthritis. But a weaker acute inflammatory response corresponds to a greater likelihood for these self-destructive diseases.

Now you can see why the effectiveness of vaccines have been called into question. There is a discrepancy as to what exactly caused the decrease in the number of cases of these childhood illnesses. It has been said that, it is improved sanitization, health care, and nutrition that have truly decreased the cases of measles and polio. Vaccines appear to suppress, not boost, one’s overall immune system. So no, it does not look like vaccines fulfill their role as immune-system boosters.

Do Your Homework!

But the choice to vaccinate your child is not just black and white- there are gray areas here. Should you choose to vaccinate your child, you have the option to follow a modified vaccine schedule for your child, which allows your child to still receive the recommended vaccines, but you can start when he/she is a little older and spread out the injections over a greater period of time. This may decrease the likelihood of vaccine injuries. Or you can pick and choose what vaccines you purchase for your child.

The point is we have brains and access to the facts. So I urge you, if and when the time comes for you need to make the decision for your child, do your research and get informed. Don’t just let your child’s doctor tell you to getting vaccinated. If you decide to take a shot at it, then be sure to have your child evaluated to see if he is at risk for vaccine injury. If you decide to vaccinate or opt out, then that is your call, but make it your choice not your blind obligation. Be skeptical of what you read until you know about any financial negotiations. Go online, ask numerous doctors, and educate yourself on vaccines so that you, not Big Pharma, can decide what would be best for your child’s health.

By Dr. Mitch Siegal, D.C.

“Just a spoon-full of sugar helps the medicine go down,” says Mary Poppins to an unsuspecting pair of potentially over-weight childhood actors. Who knew fiction could, once again, become reality.

The truth of the matter is that unprocessed chocolate or cacao can be incredibly beneficial to people’s health, but the dutching process essentially negates the positive effects. Addressing all of the potential benefits of dark chocolate would take a book in itself, so I’ll narrow the spectrum down to one particular area of growing interest: weight loss and dark chocolate.

But first, a brief history:

Centuries before Haagen Das and Hershey’s, the South American cacao seed was discovered and developed by the Olmec Indians around 1500 BC. The cacao seed is a vegetable that grows on trees and is edible when crushed into a powder. It has been used for healing purposes and, even at times, currency. Aztecs and Mayans used cacao in a chocolate drink form and not much changed for 3,500 years until the early 19^th century when Dutchman Coenraad Johaness van Houten discovered that the bitter taste could be neutralized just by adding alkali-potash to the cacao nibs before roasting them. This alkalization, or Dutching process, is still used today to change the flavor as well as the color of the chocolate. So now we have the Dutching process combined with adding fats, dairy, sugar, waxes and preservatives; all the good things in life that keep us fat and happy—but mostly just fat. On top of all that, we had to go and heat it to death as well. Yes, you guessed it: chocolate is also heated to high temperatures rendering it mostly useless as the nutritional super-food that it once was. There you have it, we finally killed it. The entire process turned a powerful vegetable into a piece of candied milk chocolate. All this was done just to remove a little bitter taste and, of course, make millions. It’s a bittersweet story, no pun intended, but it has a happy ending, so stick with me.

Chocolate in its pure form—unprocessed—has the capacity to decrease your appetite, increase energy and decrease inflammation. Cacao seeds also contain flavonoids (antioxidants) that, when digested, protect our cells from the damaging effects of oxidation (the loss of electrons). Confused? Just leave a banana on the counter for a month—or even better, spend a summer in Tucson, Arizona and watch your skin start to wrinkle. That’s oxidation.

Here is a little science to back the aforementioned miracles of this wonder veggie. Cocoa contains a compound called anandamide. This little guy tricks the brain into thinking it has consumed something sweet, blocking the brain’s appetite control center. This is fantastic news for your waistline and not so good for fast food chains; sort of nature’s hammer to hunger.

Cocoa also stimulates dopamine and norepinephrine, a catecholamine that’s primary function includes stimulating the cardiovascular system and metabolism. So not only does dark chocolate help you resist the late night Wendy’s craving, but it also helps reduce the oxidation of the vessels of your heart that contribute to heart disease and stroke.

Next sweet tidbit up for grabs, alkaloids and tryptophan (an essential amino acid) found in cocoa help raise serotonin level. What’s seratonin? It is a neurotransmitter found in the central nervous system that modulates anger, aggression, body temperature, and yes, appetite. Starting to feel like this is the moment they told us about in high school where one day science would save our lives? Well it is, and there is even more: there is fiber in chocolate—a large dose of it. Fiber helps to block the absorption of fat, giving us the feeling of fullness, and hopefully we get the hint to put down the fork!

Cacao also triggers the release of endorphins—the body’s natural opiate pharmacy. The primary endocrine function of is that of an analgesic which reduces sensitivity to pain, which is yet another bonus of eating dark chocolate. But I’m sure you’re wondering how endorphins actually reduce your appetite. Endorphins reduce the desire to eat high-fat, high-sugar foods, and the stimulus we get from eating dark chocolate helps us shift from eating just to eat to making wiser dietary decisions. That’s what this all really boils down to: using chocolate as a tool or a mechanism to attain optimum health or at least the beginning stages of it.

Cocoa and dark chocolate can help in stabilizing blood sugar levels as well, reducing hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) and binge eating. Dark chocolate also increases healthy insulin sensitivity and normalizes the breakdown of glucose, meaning that it reduces the conversion of glucose into fats. You see, pretty much everything you eat converts into sugar (fuel for the body), but when blood sugar ratios are out of sync, which means the cell is having trouble allowing the sugars consumed to penetrate the outer membrane due to insulin deficiency, the sugar finds another home in your body. It has got to go somewhere, so the body stores the rejected sugars as fat. Lucky us. Couldn’t it be stored as cash or something?

Let’s take a break for a moment. This is starting to feel like school all over again which is a little depressing. Oh wait, cocoa and dark chocolate deliver something for that too (which hormonal women have known for years); it’s called (PEA) phenylethylamine. PEA can produce effects similar to amphetamines, which make us feel euphoric, happy, and excited. Researchers believe that PEA stimulates the production of dopamine which in turn can counter the depression associated with dieting. The vicious cycle of eating due to depression and depression due to being grossly overweight stops here…with dark chocolate!

Furthermore, chocolate can boost your energy. Ever have a cup of coffee and wonder why you’re not that hungry afterwards? The reduced appetite is mostly due to caffeine or stimulants, and although cocoa has no caffeine, there is a similar alkaloid called theobromine found in chocolate, which has similar effects. So once again, chocolate turns out to be a much healthier choice than the hyper-insulin boost we get from a cup of java, which usually ends up stored as fat. I’ll eat a piece of unrefined dark chocolate any day. This stuff just keeps getting better.

Although many foods are capable of providing a boost of energy, you’d be hard-pressed to find one that delivers the combined effects of what cocoa generates, which is essential when exercising. Does anyone really want to exercise when exhausted? We tend to just plop on the couch with a bag of chips and watch the tube. Increased energy gives us that boost we need to power on and make it to the gym, ultimately burning off even more calories and inches.

To recap, we have learned that eating dark unrefined chocolate is not only one of the healthiest things you can put in your digestive tract but one of the most delicious to boot. You truly are what you eat, and I’d rather eat unrefined dark chocolate than be fat. Consume enough preservatives and you’ll win best-looking corpse award. Remember when they dug up Edgar Mevers? Google it. He looked like he was buried next to the Sweet ‘N Low factory. The days of, “If it tastes good, spit it out!” are over. Knowledge is power, so learn everything you can about what you eat because the right foods will add years to your life and life to your years.

To find out more or purchase some of this super-food, go to www.docsiegal.com