Use Probiotics to Lose Weight and Treat Illness

(NaturalNews) Millions of people suffer from colds, flu and stomach upset every year. Research is showing that this could be caused by a lack of good bacteria in your stomach. Fortunately, there are supplements you can take to increase the amount of good bacteria and improve your health. It’s strange to think that you can treat and even prevent illness with bacteria, but it’s true. Your body contains trillions of bacteria – some are good and some are bad. When the number of good bacteria starts to decrease due to antibiotics or a poor diet your chances for illness are increased. Probiotic supplements have been shown to have many health benefits. Research has shown that taking probiotics can help aid digestion and keep you regular. Studies show they can also help eczema and vaginal and urinary infections, and they can help prevent or lower your chances of catching a cold or the flu. Probiotics are not “one size fits all”. There are many different strains of probiotics each having its own power. If you’re having stomach issues like an upset stomach from an illness, from antibiotics or from traveling or because you have Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), look for the probiotics that contain lactobacillus acidophilus, lactobacillus GG, and Lactobacillus coagulans. These can be found in your local health food store, drugstore and in yogurt you can purchase from your grocery store. If you suffer from eczema, studies have shown that taking a probiotic that contains lactobacillus acidophilus can help, especially in children. If you want to avoid getting colds and the flu supplement your diet with probiotic strains lactobacillus acidophilus, lactobacillus casei, or bifidobacterium lactis. Millions of women get urinary or vaginal infections each year, many due to antibiotics which can kill both the bad bacteria in your body and the good. Taking a probiotic that contains Lactobacillus coagulans, lactobacillus reuteri or lactobacillus rhamnosus can help prevent these kinds of infections and can also lessen their severity if you already have one. Beyond the above health benefits, studies are showing that probiotics can actually help you lose weight. A recent study done at Stanford University has shown that the amount of good bacteria is higher in those who maintain a healthy weight and it’s lower in those who are overweight. Researchers are suggesting that it’s possible to increase your intake of healthy bacteria (probiotics) to lower your weight. Whichever probiotic you choose look for products that say “clinically proven” on the box or label. Also pay attention to the directions. Some products need to be refrigerated. References WebMD.com – Probiotic Overview Living.Health.com – Probiotic Packed Foods and Supplements That Really Work Stanfored.edu – Probiotics May Help Adult Weight Loss, Study Finds About the author Maddie is a health and fitness enthusiast who likes to research and write about all health and green living topics. She writes about herbal remedies for Sassafras Station, a health and fitness website, and edits the blog at http://www.sassafrasstation.com/blog/ .

Wild Fish Stocks Depleted by Feeding of Farmed Fish Like Salmon

(NaturalNews) Rather than relieving pressure on wild fish stocks, the explosive growth of aquaculture has actually exacerbated this pressure, according to an international study led by Rosamond L. Naylor of Stanford University and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . The researchers surveyed trends in the farming of several different fish species, finding that by the end of 2009, half of all fish consumed in the world will have been raised on an aquaculture farm. This has led to a concurrent increase in demand for wild-caught fish meal and fish oil to feed these fish, including for vegetarian species such as tilapia and carp. “Our assumption about farmed tilapia and carp being environmentally friendly turns out to be wrong in aggregate, because the sheer volume is driving up the demand,” Naylor said. “Even the small amounts of fishmeal used to raise vegetarian fish add up to a lot on a global scale.” Fish fed on fish meal and oil grow faster and tend to have more flavor than fish fed on a natural diet, providing a profit incentive for fish farmers to buy more wild-caught fish. The researchers found that the amount of fish meal fed to vegetarian fish increased drastically in the early 1990s. Even though this trend began to reverse in 1995, carp and tilapia farms were still responsible for consuming more than 12 million metric tons of fish meal in 2007. Farmed salmon also place a huge burden on wild fish stocks, with five pounds of wild fish required to produce every pound of farmed salmon. “As long as we are a health-conscious population trying to get our most healthy oils from fish, we are going to be demanding more of aquaculture and putting a lot of pressure on marine fisheries to meet that need,” Naylor said. “Our thirst for long-chain omega-3 oils will continue to put a lot of strain on marine ecosystems,” she said. Sources for this story include: www.boston.com; www.scienceblog.com.

Heal yourself in 15 days by recognizing your innate healing power (part two)

(NaturalNews) This article continues our 15-part article series called Heal Yourself in 15 Days . In part one, we looked at why the real secret to rapid healing is to remove the barriers to healing (http://www.naturalnews.com/028053_self_healing_quality_of_life.html). In part two, we look at why your healing potential is so powerful that you can’t even turn it off! When you scrape your elbow, a bit of blood oozes out to clean the wound and wash away bacteria. It then forms a protective scab that keeps out invading microorganisms while your skin has a chance to heal underneath. There, some real magic takes place: Your skin cells innately recognize the need to divide and grow to fill the wound. A cancer-like process is unleashed at the cellular level, activating nearby cells to divide and grow. Your DNA is replicated in the nucleus of each cell with the help of some of the most astounding nanotechnology every witnessed in human civilization. (The best scientists in the world can’t even come close to recreating it.) As your cells multiply, nutrients and building blocks are carried to them through a blood supply that adapts to the particular size and shape of the wound. If a blood vessel was destroyed in your accident, the growth of new blood vessels is spontaneously initiated to take their place, and they grow into the tissues within mere hours. As your skin cells fill in the previous wound, the replication effort is delicately turned off, one by one, so that replicating skin cells don’t keep replicating beyond what they need to — a process that would cause the creation of a skin tumor. Your body’s cells know exactly when to grow and exactly when to turn off, and when it’s all said and done, you’re left with a perfect replacement for the skin you previously lost. Completely automatic healing The truly amazing part of all this is not the cancer-like processes that are delicately controlled by your body wisdom; it’s not even the fact that your body has the ability to re-grow lost cells — it’s the fact that all this takes place without any conscious involvement on your part . Healing yourself is automatic , in other words. You don’t have to direct blood to the wound, direct the cells to start replicating, direct the molecular waste products to be carried away and decide when cell replication should be stopped. All this happens without your involvement — even without your awareness! Much of it happens while you sleep, in fact. While your conscious mind is dreaming, your innate body wisdom is working the biochemistry and energetic transformations necessary to repair your tissues. You can’t stop this process even if you wanted to . You could try to focus all your mental power on your skin not healing, and yet your skin would heal itself anyway. That’s because your body is a powerful self-healing organism . It heals itself automatically, innately, without your conscious awareness or involvement. Your ability to heal yourself is so powerful that you can’t stop yourself from healing! Why we don’t always heal If this is true, then why aren’t you healing everything else? Why aren’t you always in perfect health? The answer, as you’ve seen throughout this article series, is because we tend to erect barriers to our own healing. And we often misread the symptoms of sickness that are asking for help, “treating” them in a way that makes the situation worse. Fact: Many “symptoms of disease” are actually the result of your body’s attempt to heal itself. For example, most people are chronically dehydrated . They don’t consume enough high-quality water. Because water is so vital for proper blood composition, when your body lacks sufficient quantities of water intake, it begins to take action to reduce water loss . A significant portion of the water loss experienced by the body each day is lost through respiration — a bit of water vapor is exhaled with each breath. So to conserve water, your body attempts to reduce water loss during respiration by constricting your bronchial tubes through the creation of histamines . These histamines constrict breathing, making it more physically difficult. Modern (western) medicine misdiagnoses this as a disease called “asthma” rather than the true underlying cause which is often simply dehydration . So instead of prescribing water, which would solve the underlying water shortage and end the body’s creation of histamines, western doctors prescribe anti-histamine drugs that force the bronchial tubes to relax and ease air flow. This, of course, promotes further dehydration, leaving the patient in a more severe state of water loss. So you see, the body is attempting to heal itself, and the symptom of histamine production is a mechanism by which the body is attempting to heal, but it is misinterpreted by western medicine and then made worse by misguided interventions. Blood pressure Another good example of this is high blood pressure . High blood pressure is often caused by something I refer to as “sludge blood” — blood that’s too thick and viscous to flow freely through the body’s small capillaries. So in order to make sure good circulation is taking place, the heart has to pump harder, thereby raising blood pressure. This is the body’s way of making sure this thick blood reaches all the cells throughout the body (cells that don’t receive blood will die, and that’s bad). But healthy blood shouldn’t be so viscous. It should flow more freely, with less friction. When blood is properly hydrated and nourished with the right fatty acids (more omega-3s in particular), the heart does not need to work as hard to pump it throughout the body, so blood pressure automatically drops. (It’s like the difference between sucking water through a straw versus sucking honey through a straw… the more sticky and thick the honey, the more pressure it takes to move it.) Western medicine completely misdiagnoses this situation and says that “high blood pressure” is itself a disease. And this high blood pressure is attacked with drugs that artificially lower blood pressure by forcing artery walls to relax. As you might have guessed, this then immediately causes circulation problems because the thick sludge blood is no longer reaching all the cells it needs to reach. That’s why people who take high blood pressure medications very often end up with circulation problems . Their underlying problem of “sludge blood” remains unresolved. Symptoms such as high blood pressure as your body’s way of communicating with you to address the underlying causes. In the majority of cases, patients with high blood pressure simply need more water, more living nutrients (such as raw living plant juices), more omega-3 fatty acids and a sharp reduction in the consumption of animal products. Within as little as five days after embracing such changes, blood pressure normalizes as the blood itself becomes more hydrated and free to flow throughout the circulatory system. Your body knows all this. Western doctors know none of it. High Blood Pressure is treated as a disease unto itself with virtually no thought given to what underlying causes might be creating this measurable symptom. Your body is trying to heal itself all the time Both “asthma” and “high blood pressure” are fictional diseases. In other words, they don’t really exist as self-contained, standalone diseases. They are merely symptoms of something else that your body is attempting to balance. In order to activate your body’s innate healing potential, you must learn to listen to what your body is really asking for and give it those things instead of intervening with chemical medications, surgeries and toxic therapies like chemotherapy. Western medicine misinterprets virtually all expressions of physiology. If you wish to be healthy, you must learn to reinterpret your body’s messages in alignment with the true principles of health. Difficulty in breathing, for example, may simply be a sign of dehydration. High blood pressure may be a sign of dehydration or poor diet. Cancer is a sign of cellular miscommunication. A tumor is a sign that cells in your body aren’t getting the right message of when to stop dividing. (A tumor is merely a wayward cell that keeps dividing.) Cellular communication can be reestablished through changes in diet, environment, mental state and proper exposure to sunlight (among other things). So keep in mind that your body is always trying to heal itself. “Symptoms” of disease are often just cries for help from your own biology. The wise patient listens to those cries for help, attempts to understand what they mean, and addresses them through self-care. The unwise patient attempts to silence symptoms through chemical intervention: Pain killers, chemical pharmaceuticals, surgery and other interventions. Western doctors are not trained in proper symptom interpretation and rebalancing. They are only trained in symptom “management” which means reducing symptoms through artificial intervention. Why you are such a self-healing miracle Your body is one of Mother Nature’s most miraculous accomplishments. You possess unbelievably complex nanotechnology in your immune system. Your neurology exceeds the capabilities of the most advanced supercomputers in the world. Your sensory systems contain technology so advanced that even the most well-funded laboratories in the world don’t have machines that can match what you have right in your nose. Your reproductive system is a miracle of life; your bones are astounding structural engineering feats (or feets!); and your internal organs such as your heart and liver actually store their own memories and emotions. We know this because organ donor recipients often take on the memories and experiences of those from which the organs were originally harvested. In other words, you are a miracle of nature , and your body has such powerful healing potential available to itself right now that the only way you can even stop the healing is to interfere with it (with pharmaceuticals, for example). And yet, sadly, that’s what most people do: They numb their bodies with painkiller medications. They shut down their immune systems with chemotherapy. They shock their neurology with vaccines containing inflammatory chemicals. They interfere, override and interject all sorts of artificial chemicals, procedures and unnatural therapies. This is what shuts off healing . This is what leaves patients unable to heal in the way they are capable of healing — automatically, unconsciously and with zero effort. So if you really want to heal yourself, first recognize that you are a miraculous self-healing organism . And secondly, recognize that if healing is not happening, it may very well be because you have inadvertently interfered with the healing process by introducing artificial chemicals or other elements that hold your healing potential prisoner. Attaining health requires allowing healing to take place Healthy people aren’t healthy just because they eat superfoods and drink living juices all day long. They are healthy because they avoid poisoning their bodies with pharmaceuticals, artificial sweeteners, MSG and other processed food ingredients. They avoid the chemicals in cosmetics, personal care products, household cleaning products and lawn care products. They avoid consuming meat from animals who have been pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. They keep their bodies as free from pollution as possible, and as a result, their innate healing powers are always working for them! You have exactly the same healing potential as I do. Your body can heal itself from cancer, from diabetes, from heart disease and from other “made-up” disease names like asthma and high blood pressure. All that’s really required is for you to embrace the healing potential you already possess, and then avoid all those things that interfere with it. If you believe in God and Creation, then take comfort in the idea that your body is created in God’s image, meaning that you are a perfect healing being as is He. If you believe in evolution and Darwinism, then take comfort in the idea that your body is the result of millions of years of evolution that have given you a successful, proven DNA blueprint for preventing sickness and disease — long before vaccines and western medicine ever came along. No matter what your philosophical approach, either way you still believe that your body is an amazing self-healing organism. And that’s good news because it means you already have the blueprint for powerful healing. Now simply activate it! This article series “Heal yourself in 15 days” continues in part three, right here on NaturalNews. In case you missed it, here’s part one: http://www.naturalnews.com/028053_self_healing_quality_of_life.html

Vitamin D Promotes Weight Loss

(NaturalNews) A recent study conducted by researchers from the University of Minnesota found that overweight people have better success in losing weight when their vitamin D levels are increased. Dr. Shalamar Sibley, the researcher who headed the study, placed 38 obese men and women on a diet program and discovered that those whose vitamin D levels were increased lost up to a half pound more than those who followed the diet plan only. When combined with a reduced-calorie diet, it appears that supplementation with vitamin D helps to promote increased weight loss among those whose levels are low to begin with. For each nanogram per milliliter increase in vitamin D precursor in the blood, it was observed that an extra half pound loss in weight was able to be achieved while the diet plan. A study published earlier this year in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that 75 percent or more of American teens and adults are deficient in vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency is linked to all sorts of serious illnesses including cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Researchers in the weight loss study are unsure whether vitamin D deficiency causes obesity or if obesity causes vitamin D deficiency. Nevertheless, there is a clear connection between the two. Vitamin D, in conjunction with calcium and sunlight, helps to properly assimilate food and regulate normal blood sugar levels. When there is a lack of calcium, oftentimes due to a vitamin D deficiency, the body increases production of synthase, a fatty acid enzyme that coverts calories into fat. Calcium deficiency can cause synthase production to increase by up to 500 percent, explaining the correlation between low levels of vitamin D and obesity. Mainstream research has only begun to scratch the surface about the importance of vitamin D in general health maintenance. A clinical study conducted in April of 2000 revealed that patients who were bound to wheelchairs because of chronic fatigue and body weakness became mobile after just six weeks of supplementation with 50,000 IU of vitamin D per week. Other studies are showing remarkable healing from all kinds of diseases when vitamin D is brought up to proper levels. Although current guidelines suggest daily intake somewhere between 400 and 600 IU, recent research is suggesting that this may be too low. Getting between 4,000 and 10,000 IU a day will have a much more therapeutic effect, boosting health and fending off disease. When natural sunlight is not an option, supplementation with vitamin D3 is the next best option. Sources for this story include: http://wcco.com/health/vitamin.d.weight.2.1383803.html, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamin-d-deficiency-united-states, http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/153669.php

Israeli Scientists Show DNA Evidence Can be Fabricated

(NaturalNews) Scientists from the Tel Aviv, Israel-based company Nucleix have demonstrated that it is possible to create fake DNA samples and plant them as evidence at a crime scene, in a paper published in the journal Forensic Science: International Genetics . “You can just engineer a crime scene,” said lead researcher and Nucleix co-founder Dan Frumkin. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.” In addition to having developed a method of fabricating DNA evidence, Nucleix has also developed a method of detecting faked DNA that it plans to sell to forensics labs. The scientists have developed two different ways to manufacture DNA samples in order to fool law enforcement. The first involves using DNA profiles from law enforcement databases, which record the code at 13 different spots on a person’s genome. Using a pooled library of DNA samples from a number of different people, the geneticists were able to physically construct DNA that was identical to a suspect’s DNA at those 13 points. It would take only 425 different DNA snippets to be able to construct every possible permutation, the researchers said. The second method involved collecting actual DNA from the person whose genetic material was to be faked, such as by collecting a strand of their hair or saliva from a cup they had used. In both cases, the DNA was then reproduced in large quantities using a technique called whole genome amplification. This DNA was inserted into red blood cells, which were then passed off as a real DNA sample. A normal blood sample would contain both red and white blood cells, and the red blood cells would contain no DNA. In addition to this difference from a normal sample, amplified DNA lacks certain molecules contained by normal DNA. Forensics labs are unlikely to test for either of these anomalies without cause, however. “DNA is a lot easier to plant at a crime scene than fingerprints,” said Tania Simoncelli of the American Civil Liberties Union, in response to the study. “We’re creating a criminal justice system that is increasingly relying on this technology.” The researchers warned that their techniques could also be used to replicate enough of a person’s DNA to carry out genetic testing on them without their consent, thus violating their right to genetic privacy. Sources for this story include: www.nytimes.com.

How to Heal Yourself in 15 Days

(NaturalNews) Can you really heal yourself in 15 days? Without using prescription drugs, vaccines, chemotherapy or surgery? Absolutely! Your body strives to heal itself automatically, every single day. The only thing that really needs to happen for your body to begin healing itself is for you to remove the barriers to healing — the barriers that are holding you back right now. That’s why you’ll greatly enjoy this 15-part article series by the Health Ranger, published here on NaturalNews over the next three weeks or so. This isn’t a rehash of the health tips you already know — eat right, exercise more, hydrate yourself, and so on — it’s a completely new way to look at how to unleash the healing potential you already possess . This information was originally planned for a book to be published by a major publishing house. But the time requirements for mainstream publishing meant that this information wouldn’t appear on bookshelves for roughly one year, during which time many people would have missed out on the phenomenal benefits of this program. So I’ve passed on the conventional publishing route and decided to bring this program directly to you right here on NaturalNews. So let’s get right to it! Day 1 – Rethink “health” For many people, the first barrier to healing is found in their mental definition of “health.” A lot of people believe that health is defined by having blood certain tests return results within a specific range: Your LDL cholesterol needs to be between X and Y, for example, and your blood pressure needs to be lower than Z. Conventional doctors tend to define health in this way, too, only spreading this misconception even further. Health isn’t defined by a range of numbers. It doesn’t mean merely shrinking the physical size of a tumor while the patient continues to waste away. Health isn’t measured solely by the number of days someone is kept alive on life support equipment… Health means exactly what you intuitively thought it meant before you were subjected to so much influence and misinformation by drug company advertisements, conventional doctors and friends or family members — health means quality of life . And what is quality of life? Being able to sleep at night, walk without pain, eat and enjoy food, have a working memory, and achieve things in your life that mean something to you. Health means time with family, a walk in the woods, a positive mental outlook and an ability to handle stress without flipping out. Health means treating your body with respect and experiencing the joy of feeling it work well in return. Health means vibrant energy, daily optimism and even good sexual energy, too (and much more). These are important elements of health and yet none of them are really answered by western medicine . Most of them aren’t even considered in the medical textbooks. Modern medicine does not believe it really has any concern about the quality of your life. If you have a problem sleeping, the conventional medical approach is to simply overload your brain with pharmaceutical chemicals that force you to lose consciousness — and then they call it “sleep.” But it isn’t really sleep. It’s not quality sleep, and it doesn’t create quality living. And that’s why if you wish to achieve real quality of life , you must broaden your horizons beyond the limiting laboratory numbers of conventional medicine and explore what “health” really means to you. This doesn’t mean laboratory tests can’t be useful diagnostic tools; it just means to be cautious of letting the chemical measurement approach to health be your one source of answers for attempting to achieve health and happiness in your life. So today, I’d like you to think about this for yourself: How do YOU define health? What would you like to do in your day, or FEEL in your day, or experience day to day that would equate to the concept of “health” in your own mind? Once you have a clear picture of that element, you’ll quickly come to realized that pharmaceuticals will never provide that for you. The real answers to health must come from somewhere else… somewhere that’s more aligned with the real definition of health that you intuitively know to be more meaningful. In part two of this article series, we’ll explore how to unleash your innate healing potential by altering your frame of mind about how healing really works. Check back here on NaturalNews.com to read that in a day or two.

Budgets Squeezed, Some Families Bypass Organics

The organic industry is starting to show signs that a decade-long sales boom may be coming to an end.

Eating Food That’s Better for You, Organic or Not

The American diet needs an overhaul. But “organic” food offers no guarantee of eating well, healthfully, sanely, even ethically.

Organic Dairies Watch the Good Times Turn Bad

As the trend toward organic food consumption slows after years of explosive growth, no sector is in direr shape than the $1.3 billion organic milk industry.

Acupuncture improves sex drive and decreases hot flashes

(NaturalNews) A recent study conducted by Henry Ford Hospital in Michigan revealed that acupuncture has even more benefits than previously thought for patients with breast cancer. In addition to reducing hot flashes better than drug therapy, acupuncture is effective at boosting the sex drive and overall sense of well-being in women undergoing intensive breast cancer treatment. Published in the Journal of Oncology, the study highlights the superiority of acupuncture in improving the quality of life for breast cancer patients without imposing negative side effects like drugs do. Dr. Eleanor Walker, lead author of the study and division director of breast services in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Henry Ford, confirmed this to be true when explaining the details of the study. Two groups, one receiving acupuncture for their symptoms and the other receiving Venlafaxine drug therapy, were observed over a 12 week period. Initially, all the women experienced a 50 percent reduction in hot flash and night sweat symptoms. At the end of the treatment period, however, the group that received Venlafaxine experienced an immediate increase in symptoms while the acupuncture group did not. The purpose of the study was to focus on alternative treatments to Venlafaxine that would better alleviate the negative side effects of breast cancer treatment and ultimately encourage women to continue participating in it. According to the National Cancer Institute, 13 percent of women will develop breast cancer during their lifetime. Since conventional treatment is long and difficult, researchers hope to alleviate some of the associated misery with methods other than drug therapies that only make the situation more difficult. Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Once again, another clinical study scientifically demonstrates the power of acupuncture to make real, measurable improvements in the health and lives of patients. It’s no surprise, of course: Acupuncture has been used safely and effectively for over five thousand years in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and literally hundreds of clinical trials conducted over the last twenty years have shown it to be remarkably safe and effective in treating a variety of health complaints from back pain to infertility. Acupuncture works because the body reacts to stimulation with a healing response (well, that’s only part of the reason acupuncture works, actually). A skilled acupuncture practitioner can initiate a healing response in the patient that no drug, no surgery and no medical intervention could ever accomplish. That’s what’s really interesting about acupuncture: It doesn’t do any healing. Rather, acupuncture stimulates the body to heal itself . This idea fails to be recognized at all in conventional medicine, which continues to follow the long-outmoded belief that the doctor heals the patient and that, astonishingly, the patient has no role in his or her own healing. Practitioners of acupuncture knew thousands of years ago what many western doctors still haven’t figure out today: The patient is the healer . The doctor is merely an initiator of the patient’s own self-healing ability. Sources for this story include: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-12/hfhs-arh122909.php

Next Page »