GaiaHealth's blog

How to Get Vitamin D Without the Sun

Certainly, it's best to get your Vitamin D from the sun. It's the most natural approach. However, there are other ways if needed. Here's a guide to those sources, and how to convert IUs to milligrams

While it's best to obtain your Vitamin D3 by sun exposure, nowadays it simply isn't practical for most of us to spend that much time outside. There's no need to worry, though. Two good options for getting the D3 you need are readily available. One is through suntanning booths and beds, and the other is via supplements.

Statins Provide No Benefit: Study of 4 Million People

Aside from demonstrating that statins provide no benefit to most people, this study also demonstrates that the so-called gold standard, randomized double blinded placebo controlled, study is a farce. Add to that, though, the fact that statins have severe and deadly adverse effects, it's apparent that these drugs are doing great harm while providing no benefit.

Woman with concerned look holding pills

by Heidi Stevenson

A population-based study in Sweden shows that the massive deployment of statins has provided no benefit. Three times as many statins were being taken by Swedish people in the year 2000 than in 1998. Yet, the numbers of people suffering or dying from heart attacks were unchanged by the increase!

Not only does this demonstrate that the massive push to press people into taking statins has been based on flawed science, it also turns the claim that randomized double blinded placebo controlled (RDBPC) drug trials are the gold standard upside down.

The study with the unwieldy name, "No connection between the level of exposition to statins in the population and the incidence/mortality of acute myocardial infarction: An ecological study based on Sweden's municipalities", was published today in Biomed Central's Journal of Negative Results in Medicine.[1] We can count our blessings for this journal that produces reports of studies that did not get the expected results. The shame is that such results are not generally valued as highly as those that were expected. They are, after all, every bit as significant and important. The only usual problem with them is that they don't support the results that Big Pharma wants to promulgate.

Why the NIH Uses Bogus Study to Malign Ginkgo Biloba

A new NIH study proclaiming that Ginkgo biloba causes cancer is so absurd you must wonder if they produced it with a straight face. More important, though, is why—and the reason is truly frightening. It's part of a system determined to steal all natural health methods and hand them to Big Pharma & Big Medicine for profits.

 Why the NIH Uses Bogus Study to Malign Ginkgo Biloba

by Heidi Stevenson

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has recently funded and published a study that purports to demonstrate severe risk from the ancient and commonly-used herb, Ginkgo biloba.[1] They claim that Ginkgo extract causes thyroid cancer in male and female rats and male mice, and liver cancer in both male and female mice. While that sounds scary, the reality is that the study's parameters were such that it's difficult to take it seriously.

Ultimately, we're left to wonder why the NIH is pouring public money into studying a well-known and long-used natural herb on which many people depend for their health.

Here are details of the study. You can skip them by clicking here.

Gut Biota Never Recover from Antibiotics: Damages Future Generations

The misuse of antibiotics is not only causing new, never-before known diseases like E. coli and MRSA, the flesh-eating bacteria, it's also destroying the gut biome with devastating effects on our ability to deal with infections and destroying our ability to absorb nutrients from food.

Gut Biota Never Recover from Antibiotics: Damages Future Generations

by Heidi Stevenson, originally published on Gaia Health.

Emerging research shows that the harmful effects of antibiotics go much further than the development of drug resistant diseases. The beneficial bacteria lost to antibiotics, along with disease-inducing bacteria, do not fully recover. Worse, flora lost by a mother is also lost to her babies. The missing beneficial gut bacteria are likely a major factor behind much of the chronic disease experienced today. The continuous use of antibiotics is resulting in each generation experiencing worse health than their parents.

Martin Blaser, the author of a report in the prestigious journal Nature writes:

Antibiotics kill the bacteria we do want, as well as those we don't. These long-term changes to the beneficial bacteria within people's bodies may even increase our susceptibility to infections and disease.Overuse of antibiotics could be fuelling the dramatic increase in conditions such as obesity, type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, allergies and asthma, which have more than doubled in many populations.

Without even considering the development of superbugs, we're now seeing clear documentation that the overall long term effects of antibiotics are devastatingly harmful to our health. Speaking to ABC News, Blaser said:

Antibiotics are miraculous. They've changed health and medicine over the last 70 years. But when doctors prescribe antibiotics, it is based on the belief that there are no long-term effects. We've seen evidence that suggests antibiotics may permanently change the beneficial bacteria that we're carrying. [Emphasis my own.]

Notice that term, permanent. Without factoring in the potential risks in the casual use of antibiotics, it now looks like conventional medicine is creating several pandemics of some of the worst chronic diseases known.

Agribusiness Destroys Soil, So Mines for Food

Since good soil takes effort and money to maintain, Agribusiness hasn't bothered. As a result, basics required for all life, including phosphorus, are now supplied by mining instead of soil. It's resulted in inferior food, but the situation is even worse. Phosphorus reserves are running low, leaving us to face starvation.

Phosphorus Mine, by Susan Drackett

Source of Agribusiness Food: Phosphorus Mine, by Susan Drackett

by Heidi Stevenson, founder of Gaia Health

Until the advent of Agribusiness, the single most important factor in farming was soil quality. To that end, any farmer worth his keep made improving the soil one of the priority tasks. Crops were rotated. Soil was amended with compost made from organic wastes, like dead plants, urine and feces from all possible sources. Soil was protected from blowing away. It was treated like the precious resource that it is.

Now, though, Agribusiness treats soil as if it's nothing more than an anchor for plant roots, almost like a nuisance. Poisoning it with their chemicals is of no concern. Leaching it of nutrients without replacement is not their problem. After all, they can get everything they need from mining operations. The requirements of plants are reduced—in the profits-oriented Agribiz mindset—to a few basic needs, which are usually defined as nitrogen – N on the periodic table, potassium – K on the periodic table, and phosphorus – P on the periodic table. Look at nearly any fertilizer label and that's what you'll see: the relative amounts of N, K, and P.

This approach can only come to a bad end—an end that's now staring the industry in the face as its sources of phosphorus, once freely available from well-cared-for soil, now comes from mining operations. That's right. Two of the primary constituents of all life on earth, phosphorus and potassium, are now brought to us through raping the earth. The problem is that reserves are playing out.

Pfizer-Funded Study Falsely Claims Fish Oil Useless

A study claiming that fish oil provides no benefit in heart disease is being hyped as the final word on the issue. But is it? No, it is not. In fact, the study is absurdly blatant pseudo science, with two errors so glaring it's hard to believe they were made. Why do the researchers do it? Why do they care so little about the truth and your health?

Pfizer Logo Over Man Having Heart Attack

by Heidi Stevenson, originally published on Gaia Health.

A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine purports to show that fish oil provides no benefit whatsoever in prevention of heart disease.[1] At first glance, it would appear to be true. The study is, after all, double blind and placebo controlled, not to mention having a significant number of participants. But is it for real, or is there some sleight of hand at work?

There's one initial clue that should give pause. The study's endpoints had to be changed. That's always a bad sign. In fact, it breaks the rules of good research. But, they had to do it because they found that their study participants weren't dying as fast as they'd anticipated.

Now, if they'd been interested in the truth, they'd have tried to figure out what was wrong. After all, the odds of dying when people have signs of heart disease are pretty well understood. Otherwise, how could they possibly have anticipated the rate at which deaths would occur?

Of course, they didn't sit back and wonder what they might be doing wrong. Instead, they just added new end points to their study.

No Historical Benefit in Vaccines: Polish Study

No Historical Benefit in Vaccines: Polish Study
Sad Little Girl, by Espen Faugstad (negative and grayscale)

Colony Collapse Disorder Is a Fraud: Pesticides Cause Bee Die-Offs

Years ago, Gaia Health informed that bee dieoffs are a direct result of pesticide nerve agents called neonicotinoids. The term, Colony Collapse Disorder, is fraudulent, designed to direct attention from the known cause. Agribusiness, the poison manufacturers making death-producing pesticides, is the other face of Big Pharma.

Colony Collapse Disorder Is a Fraud: Pesticides Cause Bee Die-Offs

Bee covered with pollen on flower, by Andreas

by Heidi Stevenson

The massive bee die-off is not a great mystery. Colony Collapse Disorder is poisoning with a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. Clothianidin, a neonicotinoid pesticide manufactured by Bayer, has been clearly linked to die offs in Germany and France.

Although the bee die-offs that have occurred recently are more severe, there have been many in the past from the same and similar products. In North Dakota, a lawsuit was filed against Bayer for the loss of their bees in 1995, the result of spraying rapeseed with imidacloprid. In 1999, the same product was banned in France for use as a seed dressing for sunflowers when they lost one-third of their hives after widespread spraying. In 2004, it was banned for use on corn. Recently, France refused to approve Bayer's request to sell clothianidin.

EU Taking Control of Seeds for Agribusiness Benefit

When food and gardening are treated as if they're nothing more than commodities, especially when control is placed in the hands of those whose sole interest is profits, then the people under such rule are living in total tyranny. That's exactly what the EU is in the process of doing: handing the most basic of food rights, access to seeds, over to Agribusiness.

EU Taking Control of Seeds for Agribusiness Benefit

EU Flag of the Future (Photo by J. Neuberger with EU flag stars as barbs of barbed wire superimposed.)

There can be no greater tyranny than control of our food, and seeds are the basis of food. In a major move toward a totalitarian state, the European Union's unelected Commission is taking over control of all seeds. This is, of course, being done in typically Orwellian manner. The document laying out their plans starts with the statement:

Seed and propagating material (S&PM) is a cornerstone input for agricultural production.
Therefore, ensuring the availability of seed and propagating material of sufficient quality is
crucial for the production of food and feed.[1]

They are insisting on the authority to register all seeds in the EU and to inspect and certify them. To this end, they have written 21 Directives on how they're to be controlled. It's fairly obvious to anyone who has followed modern legislation that the longer it is, the more obscure it is. The initial document quoted above takes 35 pages to summarize their intent.

Glyphosate: A Trajectory of Human Misery

Glyphosate has likely caused more damage to human health than any other chemical ever produced. Indeed, it is probably a cause of the explosion in chronic diseases. Surely civilization cannot be maintained when the average person is irrevocably ill. This trajectory of human misery must come to an end.

Glyphosate, 'Monsanto' Logo, Cracked Earth

by Heidi Stevenson

This is Part 3 of a three-part series:

Part 1, Glyphosate: Chronic Disease Degeneration
Part 2, Glyphosate: Disease Creator
Part 3, Glyphosate: A Trajectory of Human Misery

Ubiquity of Glyphosate

Glyphosate was first introduced in 1974 and has become the world's most dominant herbicide. It's now generic, so there are many brands and formulations. As a result, it's virtually ubiquitous, found nearly everywhere on earth. Further driving its use are genetically modified (GM) crops, which were first developed for the purpose of creating glyphosate-tolerant plants, usually known as Roundup Ready. These have resulted in ever-more blatant and free use, especially in the wake of glyphosate-resistant superweeds. Estimates put glyphosate-tolerant GM crops at 90% of all transgene crops.

In the United States alone, the amount and increase in glyphosate's use is stunning. The following table gives estimated figures in millions of pounds of glyphosate for one year:

Year

2001

2003

2005

2007

Range

85-90

128-133

155-160

180-185

Notice that the amount of use has doubled in just six years.

Exposure to Glyphosate

Samsel & Seneff state:

The Western diet is a delivery system for toxic chemicals used in industrial agriculture. It consists primarily of processed foods based on corn, wheat, soy and sugar, and they're consumed in high quantities. Chemical residues of insecticides, fungicides and herbicides like glyphosate contaminate the entire diet.

Roundup Ready GM crops have become the mainstay of Agribusiness. These include soy, beet sugar, and corn—which supply the bulk of the processed food industry. High fructose corn syrup, implicated in the diabetes epidemic, is produced mostly with GM corn. Cotton is genetically engineered and its oil has entered the food supply.

This website is for information purposes only. By providing the information contained herein we are not diagnosing, treating, curing, mitigating, or preventing any type of disease or medical condition. Before beginning any type of natural, integrative or conventional treatment regimen, it is advisable to seek the advice of a licensed healthcare professional.

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