The Fluoride Myth (Part 3)

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The year before water fluoridation began in the United States, the entire dental profession recognized that fluoride was detrimental to dental health. In fact, in 1944 the Journal of the American Dental Association reported that using between 1.6 and 4 ppm (parts per million) fluoride in water would cause 50% of adults to need false teeth. On top of that, the world’s largest study looked at 400,000 students, revealing that tooth decay increased in over 25% with just 1 ppm fluoride in drinking water

Yet still, in 1945, fluoride was put into municipal water systems in Newburgh, New York, and Grand Rapids, Michigan. Over the next 50 years, more than 60 percent of the U.S. population was “fluoridated” at a minimum of 1 ppm. Currently, over 75% of the United States water supply contains this deadly toxin.

One part of the hoax, “fluoride helps with tooth formation,” was removed from the “American Fluoride Campaign” early on. Realizing this might expose the entire campaign as fraudulent, the FDA and CDC simply removed that language, but kept the masses believing that fluoride keeps dental cavities at bay.

Over 70% of America still clings to the multi-faceted myth;

Research proves that fluoride is an extremely neurotoxic chemical which interrupts basic functions of nerve cells in the brain and can lead to Alzheimer’s, atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), infertility, birth defects, diabetes, cancer and lowered IQ. The aluminum “tricks” the blood-brain barrier and allows chemical access to brain tissue.

Think fluoride is used by the rest of the world? France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Finland, India and Great Britain have all rejected its use after special commissions and health secretaries reviewed the negative evidence.

Think fluoride cleanses the water? Fluoride is one of the basic ingredients in military nerve gas. Sodium fluoride is a hazardous waste by-product from the manufacture of aluminum and fertilizer, and it is a common ingredient in roach and rat poisons.

Think fluoride fights cavities and strengthens bones? Dental fluorosis is often caused by over-exposure to fluoride when the dental enamel is mineralizing during childhood. Fluoride is unique in its ability among acids to penetrate tissue, causing soft tissue damage and bone erosion as it leaches calcium and magnesium from the body.

Think fluoride evaporates from water? Fluoride does not evaporate from water left sitting out. Also,boiling or freezing won’t help at all, and basic filters like Brita do not remove it. Reverse osmosis does remove it, and natural spring water does not contain it.

Because the ADA maintains a stranglehold on the dental profession, no dentists are ever openly critical of fluoride. The ADA can influence State Dental Boards which can take away a dentist’s license, so you won’t hear anything negative about it from your dentist. Most brands of toothpaste contain at least 1,000 ppm fluoride, so if a child were to eat an entire tube, he/she would die.

Fluoride has never received FDA approval and does not meet “requirements of safety and effectiveness.” The FDA states that fluoride is a prescription drug. Because this “drug” is put in municipal water, there is absolutely no control over individual dosage.

Be well

Dr Sundardas D. Annamalay

How Fluoride was transformed from a toxic waste to a “National Saviour” (Part 2)

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Dr. Frederick S. McKay was born in 1874 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was a 1900 graduate of the Dental School University of Pennsylvania and came to Colorado Springs in 1901. Partially because he had the inquisitiveness of a recent graduate and partially because he was not a native of Colorado Springs, Dr. McKay was intrigued by the number of patients whose teeth were stained with white or brown spots; and in severe cases, the enamel was pitted.

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Following years of observation and study, McKay determined that it was high levels of naturally occurring fluoride in the drinking water that was causing the mottled enamel. McKay’s deductions were researched by Dr. H. Trendley Dean, a dental officer of the U.S. Public Health Service.  Dean designed the first fluoride studies in the United States. These early studies were aimed at evaluating how high the fluoride levels in water could be before visible, severe dental fluorosis occurred.

Now Dean remembered McKay’s claims that fluorosis victims mottled, discolored teeth were especially resistant to decay. He came up with the notion that fluoride added to the water supply at the magic threshold dosage of 1 ppm would prevent tooth decay, while avoiding damage  to bones and teeth. He recommended further studies to determine whether his hypothesis  was  true.

Back at the Mellon Institute, ALCOA’s Pittsburgh industrial research lab, this news was galvanic. There, biochemist Gerald J. Cox immediately fluoridated some lab rats in a study and concluded that fluoride reduced cavities and that: “The case should be regarded as proved.”

In a historic moment in 1939, the first public proposal that the U.S. should fluoridate its water supplies was made not by a doctor, or dentist, but by Cox, an industry scientist working for a company threatened by fluoride damage claims and burdened by the odious expense of disposing tons of toxic industrial waste (fluoride).

Cox began touring the country, stumping for fluoridation. Dean would go on to carve out a nice career for himself as the “father” of public water fluoridation. He became the first dental scientist at the National Institute of Health, advancing to director of the dental research section in 1945.

Be well

Dr Sundardas D. Annamalay

Is your drinking water lowering your IQ and causing Alzheimer’s? (Part 1)

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Is your drinking water really safe?

Some people protested publicly and made claims that fluoride “causes Alzheimer’s” and “lowers IQ”. On one hand there are claims that these people are conspiracy theorists and are incorrect and misinformed. Is this all there is to it?

The National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences said in 2006, “Fluorides also increase the production of free radicals in the brain through several different biological pathways. These changes have a bearing on the possibility that fluorides act to increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease… Studies of populations exposed to different concentrations of fluoride should be undertaken to evaluate neurochemical changes that may be associated with dementia” and that “The possibility has been raised by the studies conducted in China that fluoride can lower intellectual abilities.”

A recent lead author of a meta-analysis, which was conducted by Harvard University maintains : “Fluoride seems to fit in with lead, mercury, and other poisons that cause chemical brain drain.”

The National Research Council has raised a ‘red flag’ in the aforementioned categories.
While the NRC report (2006) only looked at the concentration range of 2-4mg/L, which some say renders it irrelevant to artificial fluoridation. Well, firstly, this is not true, as explained by one of the expert Panelists of the report, Dr. Hardy Limeback, BSc, DDS, PhD. Secondly, this range does not account for the intertwined issues of ‘margin of safety’ and ‘dose’ (as opposed to concentration).

And thirdly, in relation to I.Q., international studies that show ‘red flags’ have not been properly replicated in fluoridating countries, so data needed to fully explore this matter is lacking. As the NRC panel pointed out, “studies of populations exposed to different concentrations of fluoride in drinking water should include measurements of reasoning ability, problem solving, IQ, and short-and long-term memory. Care should be taken to ensure that proper testing methods are used, that all sources of exposure to fluoride are assessed, and that comparison populations have similar cultures and socioeconomic status.”

Where are these studies? They have not been done, nor have the dementia studies. How many randomized controlled trials on the effects of fluoridation did the University of York find in 2000? Ans: None

Be well
Dr Sundardas D. Annamalay

Corruption in the Disease Economy 2

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Globally, the US disease economy simply cannot compete with global economies that actually produce something useful. You want proof of it? Just look at what’s happening to General Motors. General Motors is shutting down. General Motors is probably headed for bankruptcy. One of the largest corporations ever produced by the United States is about to go bankrupt. Why? The answer is that General Motors is spending more on health insurance than it is on steel. They’re operating in a disease economy, and in a disease economy, it costs way too much for workers because workers are diseased, and you have to cover the costs of treating all that disease so you can have health insurance for all those workers. The United State’s health insurance costs are the highest of any nation in the world.

Not only do they have workers who are under-educated in the United States, they are also over-diseased. They have a disease economy, so they think they are creating abundance by selling each other expensive treatments, products and services for disease. The real industries, like automobile manufacturing, are disappearing. Toyota is smart. Toyota is going to dominate the auto industry. Personally, I won’t drive anything other than the Toyota. Toyota is the best mainstream vehicle in the world. Interestingly enough, Toyota is going to be making robots soon, too. Japan does not have a disease economy. Japan has an economy with a good dose of innovation. In fact, innovation is thriving throughout Asia. They don’t have a disease economy. They have an innovation-based economy where they actually have to produce something useful to get paid.

Smart nations will invest in prevention

Now, at some point these nations, as they adopt the Western lifestyle and become richer and start to consume more beef animal products, as well as junk food, may very well become disease economies. But some of these nations will be smart about it and start investing in prevention. For example, any nation right now in this world that allows cigarettes to be sold to its population is committing a form of self-destruction. It’s like national suicide. What nation would want its citizens to smoke cigarettes so that they would halve their own lives, create huge health-care costs and at the same time reduce their long-term productivity?

The US is losing its health. They are losing their minds. They are losing their genuine economic base. They are losing their manufacturing and losing their scientific edge. They are losing their educational edge, and  losing the inherent value of their money supply as the U.S. dollar continues to slip. What do they have left? Well there’s always the Wal-mart and the Walgreens. If you can’t sleep, you can always buy sleeping pills. If you can’t wake up in the morning, you can always drink some coffee. It’s the disease economy.

The disease economy is all around you

It takes an act of great self-determination and courage to extricate oneself from the disease economy and be a productive member of society. It is a rare thing to witness. Very few people I’ve ever known, or know today, are actually productive members of society doing something useful for the benefit of other human beings.

Do you know who some of those people are? Organic farmers. These are people I greatly respect who are actually doing something useful for others. It is something difficult, something laborious, something a lot of people wouldn’t want to do. There are people in society that are productive, and if we’re going to succeed as an economy — or even as a nation — into the future, we’re going to have to expand the number of people who are making a living doing something useful, not something that is just based on disease.

You see, thinking that money spent on disease treatment is economic productivity is actually an economic fallacy. Here’s an example: If you just want to create jobs in the country, I have a brilliant plan for job creation. First, hire half the nation to be window breakers. Give them all hammers. Their job is to go around the entire country and break windows. Then you hire the other half of the nation to be window replacers. Their job is to go around and replace all the windows that were broken by the window breakers. You do that and you will have full employment! Sounds insane, doesn’t it? But that’s what’s actually happening today with health.

Then there are nations like Singapore. Singapore is doing some very intelligent things, and education is one of them. Singapore has a very smart population and a booming economy based on actual abundance and not disease. Of course, people say, “Singapore is almost like a police state. What about personal rights?” That’s a huge argument. Should people have the right to smoke themselves to death? Should they have the right to drink soft drinks until they’re so obese that they need a knee replacement and demand to be covered by Medicare? Should people be allowed to eat junk food all day, avoid exercise and then get heart disease and need a heart transplant that’s paid for by other taxpayers or other participants in their insurance company? These are questions I can’t answer in this article. All I can say is that any nation that bases its economy on “diseasification” of its citizens is ultimately doomed to economic collapse. That’s exactly where the United States economy is currently headed, to certain economic collapse. Singapore is not heading that way.

Be well

Dr Sundardas

Corruption in the Disease Economy 1

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Drug companies have experts on their payroll who are part of the FDA’s drug safety decision panels, and who don’t disclose their conflicts of interest. They are making decisions that expand the definition of disease. A classic case of this was when cholesterol numbers were lowered from 130 to 100 to instantly make 10 million more Americans diagnosable with high cholesterol so they could be treated with statin drugs.

The US has the ridiculous (and scientifically dishonest) expansion of psychiatric disorders or so-called brain chemistry diseases, which really have nothing to do with chemistry, but everything to do with expanding the marketplace of psychiatric drugs. The way you expand the marketplace is not to sit around and wait for people to become mentally disturbed. What you do is change the definition of mental disorders and make up new ones.

One of the biggest questions right now is the marketing of adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or adult ADHD. It is a made-up disease. What are the symptoms of this disease? You have too many things on your mind, you can’t keep track of everything you need to get done and you are easily distracted. What adult doesn’t meet those criteria? We all do, because modern society is a busy place. According to the drug company definition, and even the definition offered by the psychiatric community, we are all suffering from mental illness and must be treated with drugs.

This is one way to expand the disease economy. This is one way you keep those profits flowing and those shareholders happy that they’ve invested in your company. Most people e in the US invested in a disease economy, one way or another.

Enough about the problem; what about the solution? How do you solve the disease economy, challenge it and turn it around into a health economy, a healing economy or an abundant economy? To do that, you first have to figure out a way to make health profitable. How do you make healthy people profitable when there’s so much money in treating disease and chronic illness and so much money in addicting people to lifetime requirements for prescription drugs? How do you generate profits off of healthy people, as a nation?

Let’s face it: If people are healthy, especially well into their old age, they are no longer customers of those clinics being constructed all over this country. They are no longer customers of Walgreens, CVS or the Wal-Mart pharmacy. They are no longer customers of surgeons, physicians, foot specialists or Alzheimer’s doctors. This is why I believe there is absolutely no genuine investment in disease prevention in this country. There’s really no investment at all, because preventing disease is the last thing that this disease economy wants.

How do you make it worthwhile to keep people healthy? The answer to that comes down to education, and here’s why: When a person is educated, whether it be an education in the arts, the sciences or in any other realm, they live longer and healthier. They maintain their brain function, and they remain productive members of society, no matter how long they live. They can be producing something that benefits other members of society well into their 70s, 80s or even 90s. Healthy individuals can age gracefully and maintain healthy cognitive function. They can directly produce things, such as writing a book, or they can help teach others. They can even be mentors to young entrepreneurs, who can benefit from experience in learning how to manufacture, market or sell something useful.

An uneducated individual, on the other hand, tends to be more of a consumer than a producer of things of value, because they don’t have the background, education or experience to be productive members of society. If you don’t educate the population, they all become consumers and not producers. It is when people are stuck in the consumer state that they can be profitable to the disease economy. But when the public is educated, it becomes far more profitable to keep people healthy. You could add 20 or 30 years of creative productivity to an individual’s life, which means you could boost the productivity of the entire nation by perhaps 15 to 20 percent, which is a huge number. You wouldn’t have to base it on disease anymore. You could base it on health. We need a health economy that’s based on disease prevention, tied with genuine education.

Think about what is produced in the United States versus other countries. While they are toiling away in the US disease economy and inventing new super extreme nacho Doritos and coming up with new prescription drugs that alter brain chemistry in children, genius-level students in other countries are actually doing something useful. In Japan, for example, they are inventing a whole new industry, which I believe will dominate the world’s economy. It will be bigger than the computer industry and automobile industry ever was. It’s the robotics industry.

In the next 20 or 30 years, the robotics industry will be absolutely huge. Japan is at least 10 years ahead of the United States in this key industry. Why? It’s because Japanese students are well educated. They also tend to have a lot better health than students in the United States. In India, they’re inventing new computer technologies and new customer service systems that are siphoning labor away from the United States because they do it faster, cheaper and with similar quality but for less money and far lower health-care costs. What do we do to make sure we go the way of Japan and not the US?

Be well

Dr Sundardas

Economy of Disease 2

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Without question, the U.S. economy is heavily invested in disease. Retailers like Walgreens have mastered the art of selling products on both sides of the equation. At the front of the store, Walgreens sells junk food products, soft drinks, candy and a lot of food that really has no nutrition. At the back of the store, they sell prescription drugs — drugs that treat the symptoms of diseases that are ultimately caused by people’s poor dietary choices and their consumption of junk food. Walgreens has really mastered this. They will sell you the problem and the treatment, all in the same store. One reason Walgreens is so incredibly successful as a business is because it has mastered the art of selling products to consumers as part of the disease economy. It is a flagship company of the disease economy, perhaps even more so than pharmaceutical companies.

One of the funniest things about the disease economy is that the consumers who are diseased think they’re doing well because they own stocks in the companies selling the products that harm them. This fascinates me. A guy dying of cancer or suffering from heart disease, because of the products he has been consuming for years, believes he’s doing well because he owns stock in large food manufacturing companies or large pharmaceutical companies. Maybe he owns stock in a new medical technology, or maybe he’s a partner in a local medical clinic. His investments are doing great, but he’s dying, and he’s dying from preventable degenerative disease.

This is what’s happening across the country, not just to one person, but to millions of people — perhaps hundreds of millions — who think the economy is looking up and think that maybe they have a good job because they work for a pharmaceutical company. They think they have good investments now because they have stocks in the junk food manufacturers. They think they’re doing well financially, but guess what? They’re consuming the product themselves, and they are dying. They’re dying from a degenerative disease at a rate that has never before been witnessed in human history. This demonstrates my entire point: We cannot create abundance by selling each other increasingly expensive products and services that harm each other.

By the way, I don’t mean to leave out all those chemical companies manufacturing pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, toxic household cleaners and toxic personal care products. A lot of those skincare companies are really just chemical manufacturers with sexy marketing and lots of women in lab coats selling you products that actually harm your health; that literally contain ingredients that cause cancer and liver disease. People think our economy is booming, but we’re all dying of chronic disease. Why is it that 50 percent of our senior citizens in the United States have high blood pressure? Why is it that 40 percent of our senior citizens are now clinically obese? I’m willing to bet that a similar percentage may have nervous system disorders or early stages of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Most of them are probably metabolizing some form of cancer right now, even though it may not have been diagnosed yet.

The US is a nation of diseased individuals, and that disease starts very early. There are 12-year-old children who have atherosclerosis. There are teenagers with osteoporosis, and teenage children with obesity are now common. In fact, diabetes has gotten so bad in young people that they had to change the name. That used to be the name. Now they just have to call it diabesity, and that applies to children, teenagers and adults alike.

They have created so much disease in US, and based our economy on it to such a degree that, frankly, they cannot untangle this situation without causing economic distress. If there were a cure for cancer, diabetes or heart disease tomorrow, where a person could wave a magic wand and instantly eliminate those diseases, and if every person in the country did that tomorrow, the sobering truth is that the US national economy would collapse overnight. It would collapse because there’s so much money, so much real estate, so much education and so much expertise and research invested in disease that they could not financially survive in an economy based on health and abundance, at least not the way things are configured right now.

They could not economically survive in an economy based on real health. They are so invested in disease in the US that they truly have a disease economy, and in order for that economy to grow, they have to expand the number of people with disease, expand the definition of disease or expand the coverage of people who are treated with high-profit disease-masking products. All three of those things are happening right now. And guess what, the disease economy is spreading.  Look around you and ask yourself how many Asian countries are following these trends.

Be well

Dr Sundardas

Economy of Disease part 1

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This is an article about the disease economy. That’s a term I coined because I could find no economy because such a huge percentage of the economic activity and economic growth I see in the US is based on the manufacturing, marketing and selling of products and services based on disease. That is, products and services that either cause diseases or “treat” those diseases.

How do I know we’re in a disease economy today? You can see it for yourself. Just drive around any city or town in the United States and you can see what’s happening. Take a look at the new construction. What’s going to be there? If it’s an office complex, chances are it’s going to be a medical office building. If it’s on a street corner, it’s probably going to be a pharmacy — maybe a new Walgreens or CVS Pharmacy or a new drive-through Wal-Mart pharmacy. You even see pharmacies in grocery stores now, because they are so profitable. When you go into grocery stores and look at what’s being sold there, you’re getting a good look at the economic activity in this country. You mostly see products that promote disease, thanks to their disease-causing ingredients.

 

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photo courtesy of google

 

Of course, the disease economy promotes Big Pharma companies. These are the pharmaceutical manufacturers in this country, and they are huge global corporations. The selling of pharmaceuticals is a $1 trillion industry. It’s an amazing statistic. Here in the United States, some of our largest corporations are drug companies. In fact, as I’ve stated before, the top 10 pharmaceutical companies in the United States earn more money than the remaining 490 Fortune 500 companies. Just recently, I heard the Bush administration was very excited about the news that we are experiencing economic growth in this country. The economy is up, more money is changing hands, and that’s all that economists really look at when calculating gross domestic product or gross national product. They’re just looking at the total number of dollars that changed hands.

An economy based on paying for disease treatment

 

BusinessHero_1

However, if you look at the quality of the products and services that are being exchanged for these dollars, you’ll realize something is amiss here, because what we’re doing is basing our economic growth on the growth of chronic and degenerative disease. We’re basing our economy on the idea that we can treat more and more people with drugs and medical services and keep selling them soft drinks and fast food while calling it economic growth.

This leads me to the most important point of this article, which is that we cannot create abundance in the United States or in any country by selling each other increasingly expensive products and services that promote disease. In other words, we cannot create abundance by poisoning ourselves. The very idea is absurd. The whole point of economic growth is to create economic abundance, and if you look at the classic definitions of economic growth, they are about providing more goods and services to people in a more efficient manner. Those goods and services are supposed to improve the quality of life for those people.

In the old days, the arguments for the invisible hand in the economy were that if you let entrepreneurs compete in a free market, they would devise clever and efficient ways to create, produce and deliver goods and services to consumers that would ultimately enhance their quality of life. That part is absolutely true, and the United States has done that very successfully. The free market does work in accomplishing that, but what we’re seeing now is something beyond what those old-school economists could have ever conceived. We’re seeing an economy that is increasingly based on goods and services that do not add to the quality of consumers’ lives but rather take away from it. We’re seeing entrepreneurs and creative, clever people finding new ways to market products that harm people and calling that profitability or economic growth.

We see this quite blatantly in the drug industry, where creative marketers keep coming up with new, absurd ways to sell drugs to people through direct-to-consumer advertising on television. Some of these ads are absolutely idiotic in what they are promising. Yet, they are effective in creating demand. They sell products, but these products do not help consumers.

We also see a lot of products being marketed and sold to consumers that may give them very short-term benefits — such as the taste of a hamburger or the taste of french fries, which lasts about 10 seconds — but has long-term detrimental consequences, like obesity, heart disease, brain disorders, cancer and diabetes. These diseases largely come about as a result of long-term consumption of nutritionally depleted foods.

Be well

Dr Sundardas

Sugar Consumption and Junk Food

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Earlier studies by experts at St Georges University London had earlier proven a link between teenage consumption of sugary drinks and impulses towards fatty and salty foods. They found that the stomach’s gut lining absorbed these food types more quickly and activated the brains pleasure centre quickly. Their brain then also dampened its impulses towards intake of vitamins and minerals.

These cravings or impulses as driven by the brain create the addictive effect towards sugary drinks and salty or fatty foods. UK research on rats has shown that sugar is as addictive to the brain as cocaine and there is a role in sugar intake in the creation of addictive impulses in humans.

sugar

 

Adults do not suffer strong sugar addiction withdrawal symptoms but this is not true in children who have been found to react and have bodily withdrawal symptoms of a stronger intensity. Tantrums, restlessness, sweats and distracted attention are noted behaviours.  Longer term studies are underway to explore the implications of these observations and findings.

The range of fruit and sport energy drinks are not immune from this discussion as many have higher sugar levels than some fizzy drinks, and as well may also contain addictive amounts of caffeine and related substances. Studies show that both these classes of drinks are more marketing hype than offering any benefit to users in sporting or a health context. Weight gain was determined as being the only likely outcome.

The other main concern about all these categories of drinks is the corrosive impact they have on childrens’ and adults’ teeth. Studies by dentists as reported in the UK British Dental Journal as well as the USA Oral Hygiene Journal both noted findings about cols and citric acids in drinks.

They respectively noted that citric acid which is a common “tangy” ingredient in all these drinks increased the risk of tooth erosion by 252 percent and that cola drinks are 10 times as corrosive as fruit juice in their first 3 minutes of teeth contact.

Many USA based health organisations are reviewing all the research and are calling for regulation  as well as a review of the whole drinks industry guidelines. Medical groups are linking the obesity crisis the western world in part to the habit forming roles around food and diet that soft drinks play in shaping recent generations’ health outcomes. Obesity is the new smoking crisis in these circles.

The average adult woman is supposed to have a daily intake of 90grams of sugar in their diet while a man can absorb 120 grams per day. Children are supposed to have a far lower intake. Many soft and fruit drinks provide that daily intake in one can or bottle.

The images of happiness, fun and health which dominate the marketing themes of the drinks industry are not supported by the emerging research findings across numerous types of studies being conducted on human health. These billion dollar industries are not likely to change their products or admit concerns willingly.

Coca Cola paid Olympic organisers more than 100 million pounds to become the official provider of soft drinks to the Olympics. The association between health and excitemen t(Olympics) to coke cola becomes entrenched by such opportunities. The burden on regulating these drinks falls down to families and individuals.

The role of emotions and stress in creating impulses for sugary food and drink intake is also revealed by several studies. In bodymind science we note that addictions and emotional issues including depression seem to accompany sugar cravings in many people. A soft drink can be an easy crutch to obtain when the impulse strikes.

The answer lies in education and discipline of choice. The declining mental, emotional and physical health in society of a wider cross section of the population has some of its roots in our choice of foods and drinks. We should be mindful of our choices and not assume that sugary drinks offer any benefit or that they are harmless choices for ourselves and our children.

Be well

Dr Sundardas

Reach for a glass of coke and lose your life

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Most of us at some stage or another have reached for a fizzy drink whether to quench a thirst or as a mixer with alcohol. There are a number of newer types of recreational soft drinks now on the market with a few positioning themselves as sports drinks. The marketing idea is that somehow the drink contains goodness through salt replenishment, energy or nutrients.

The old traditional fizzy soft drinks such as coke also continue to be popular and are also now in a market category that is represented by a lot more brands than even 20 years ago. Some people drank them for taste, some for the energy burst or pick up, some for the claimed benefits in sports performance or the like.

The collective consumption of all these types of drinks has doubled since 1985 from 10 gallons to 25 gallons per head per year. This is substantial. There is now new medical research coming out of Britain that shows that even moderate consumption of these types of drinks poses a real health hazard.

Research by Bangor University has revealed how even a can per day, or just two a week can alter our metabolism over time such that we put on weight and create the basis for Diabetes, liver disease, hyper=tension and heart disease.

Research shows that in children these drinks can assist in the formation of addict-like cravings and orient their appetites for junk and salty food.  The Bangor University research showed how the taking of these drinks affected metabolism by having muscles alter their energy transformation function by consuming sugar as the energy source instead of burning fat.

This creates a less efficient metabolism process, and we increase our retained fat and so put on weight. There appears to be a gene adaption process change that causes muscles to target sugar for energy creation, but this also means that our metabolic process is less able to cope with rises in blood sugar levels, and facilitates the potential onset of Diabetes Type 2.

soda

An American study of 42,000 men who were tracked over 20 years showed that men who drank a standard 12 oz can of sugar sweetened drink every day had a 20 per cent higher risk of heart disease compared to men who did not drink any such beverages at all.

This study was published by the American Heart Association in their journal called Circulation. It also revealed that blood tests had shown that soft drink users had higher levels of harmful inflammation in their blood vessels, and lowered levels of “good”  HDL cholesterol.

Even more disturbing was the research findings reported in the journal “Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention”. This research linked the consumption of just two 330ml carbonated drinks every week to a double increase in the risk of Pancreatic Cancer.

Separate Israeli research on soft drinks with high levels of fruit juice  may be creating possible long term liver damage. The reason is that fructose fruit sugar in such drinks  can overwhelm the liver which responds by accumulating fat which is then the cause of “fatty liver”.

The Israeli study revealed that two cans of such fruit drinks a day were 5 times more likely to develop “fatty liver” which can lead to cirrhosis of the liver and liver cancer. There have been calls in Europe and the USA for soft drink taxes to cut consumption as these drinks have been around for over 200 years in various forms and have been traditionally viewed as innocuous.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this emerging research is the research around children. The work done by the University College London’s Health Behaviour Research Centre illustrates this concern.

Their work showed in a study of 346 children aged around 11 years found that drinking soft drinks makes them want to drink more often, even when they are not actually thirsty. They developed addictive tendencies towards sugary drinks which at a young age became a life habit.

Related research found support for this change in tastes. This Oregon USA based study found that fizzy drinks consumption became accompanied by taste preference towards high calorie, high salt food such as chips. These researchers found learned resistance towards raw vegetables and low calorie foods by children who habitually consumed fizzy drinks.

Be well

Dr Sundardas

Vaccinated baby monkeys becomes autistic

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If vaccines play absolutely no role in the development of childhood autism, a claim made by many medical authorities today, then why are some of the most popular vaccines commonly administered to children demonstrably causing autism in animal primates? This is the question many people are now asking after a recent study conducted by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh (UP) in Pennsylvania revealed that many of the infant monkeys given standard doses of childhood vaccines as part of the new research developed autism symptoms.

For their analysis, Laura Hewitson and her colleagues at UP conducted the type of proper safety research on typical childhood vaccination schedules that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should have conducted — but never has — for such regimens. And what this brave team discovered was groundbreaking, as it completely deconstructs the mainstream myth that vaccines are safe and pose no risk of autism.

Presented at the International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) in London, England, the findings revealed that young macaque monkeys given the typical CDC-recommended vaccination schedule from the 1990s, and in appropriate doses for the monkeys’ sizes and ages, tended to develop autism symptoms. Their unvaccinated counterparts, on the other hand, developed no such symptoms, which points to a strong connection between vaccines and autism spectrum disorders.

Included in the mix were several vaccines containing the toxic additive Thimerosal, a mercury-based compound that has been phased out of some vaccines, but is still present in batch-size influenza vaccines and a few others. Also administered was the controversial measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, which has been linked time and time again to causing autism and various other serious, and often irreversible, health problems in children

“This research underscores the critical need for more investigation into immunizations, mercury, and the alterations seen in autistic children,” said Lyn Redwood, director of SafeMinds, a public safety group working to expose the truth about vaccines and autism. “SafeMinds calls for large scale, unbiased studies that look at autism medical conditions and the effects of vaccines given as a regimen.”

Adding to the sentiment, Theresa Wrangham, president of SafeMinds called out the CDC for failing to require proper safety studies of its recommended vaccination schedules. Unlike all other drugs, which must at least undergo a basic round of safety testing prior to approval and recommendation, vaccinations and vaccine schedules in particular do not have to be proven safe or effective before hitting the market.

“The full implications of this primate study await publication of the research in a scientific journal,” said Wrangham. “But we can say that it demonstrates how the CDC evaded their responsibility to investigate vaccine safety questions. Vaccine safety oversight should be removed from the CDC and given to an independent agency.”

Be well

Dr Sundardas