sexta-feira, 30 de novembro de 2012

The major symptoms of dehydration are thirst, dry skin, dark colored urine and fatigue

If You're Tired, You are Probably Lacking This

February 21, 2011 |231,051views| + Add to Favorites

By Dr. Mercola

With all the different types of water out there and all the hype that goes with each, it can be very easy to get confused about which types of water are really best for your health. And, if you find yourself struggling with the environmental concerns of bottled water versus the dangerous chemicals in tap water, I understand.
That's why I created this page to help clear up some confusion and help you take control of your health.

Symptoms of Dehydration

Since most of you are no longer tuned in to your bodies the way your ancestors were hundreds of years ago, you may be overlooking your body's many cries for water.
There is a silent and growing epidemic of chronic dehydration. So many suffer from it yet are simply unaware of the symptoms.
Are you one of them? The major symptoms of dehydration are thirst, dry skin, dark colored urine and fatigue but take a look at some commonly overlooked symptoms of chronic dehydration.They are:

Digestive disturbances such as heartburn and constipation

Urinary tract infections

Autoimmune disease such as chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple sclerosis

Premature aging

High cholesterol

Weight gain

Types of Water – How Your Choice Makes the Difference

When it comes to water, there's more to choose from than simply tap versus bottled. Let's closely examine each so you can make informed decisions about your water and your health.

Tap Water – Danger in Every Glass

Plain old tap water: It's easy. It's convenient and it comes right out of your kitchen faucet. However, as I'm sure you've heard, most tap water is contaminated with a host of pollutants that increase your risk of serious health problems. Let's take a look at some of these contaminants and how they can adversely affect your health and that of your family.
Arsenic
As I've been stating in my articles about water since 2001, the level of arsenic in US tap water is incredibly high. This poisonous element is a powerful carcinogenic, which has been linked to an increased risk of the development of several types of cancer. In 2001 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lowered the maximum level of arsenic permitted in drinking water from 50 ug/L to 10 ug/L due to the established cancer risk.
The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates as many as 56 million Americans living in 25 states drink water with arsenic at unsafe levels. For more information, see the USGS website, which offers maps showing where and to what extent arsenic occurs in ground water across the United States.
Aluminum
You may have heard how aluminum increases your risk for Alzheimer's disease, but did you also know that the aluminum found in your municipal water supply can cause a wide variety of other health problems?
Aluminum has been linked to:

Hyperactvity

Learning disabilities in children

Gastrointestinal disease

Skin problems

Parkinson's disease

Liver disease

Fluoride
If you still believe fluoride in your drinking water prevents cavities and helps build strong teeth, you've fallen for a cleverly devised mass-deception.. As this recent study done on children in India shows, fluoride is anything but a cavity fighter. fluoride is a well-known toxin that actually leads to an increased risk of cavities and can cause a wide range of health problems, including weakening your immune system and accelerating aging due to cellular damage.
Prescription and OTC Drugs
You may have been told that if you dispose of your unwanted or expired prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) drugs in the trash instead of the toilet that you do not run any risk of it ending up in the water supply. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
As I mentioned in this previous article, water that drains through landfills, known as leach rate, eventually ends up in rivers. Although not all states source drinking water from rivers, many do.
According to studies, human cells do not grow normally when exposed to even minute amounts of prescription or over-the-counter drugs. Some drugs that were never meant to be combined are mixed together in the drinking water you consume every day. Millions of people have drug allergies. Are you among them? If so, how do you know the strange symptoms you've been experiencing are not due to ingesting small doses of the drugs you're allergic to from your water?
Pregnant women should be especially wary. The toxic substances you take into your body from tap water will have a negative effect on the development of your unborn child.
Disinfection Byproducts (DBPs)
Most tap community water supplies are treated with chlorine and although it may not be the healthiest element you can consume, it is far better for you than what is left behind. In my video, "Tap Water Toxins – is Your Water Trying to Kill You?", I interview water filtration pioneer Robert Slovak about the dangers of disinfection byproducts.
Disinfection byproducts are the result of disinfecting water with chlorine. It is important to note that while consuming chlorine is certainly not healthy, DBPs are TEN THOUSAND TIMES more dangerous!
In addition to being a powerful carcinogenic, DPBs have also been linked to liver, kidney and nervous system problems.

So, Bottled Water is the Way to Go, Right?

If you're thinking you're safe from all of the harmful contaminants I listed above because you drink bottled water instead of tap water, I'm afraid I must be the bearer of some bad news:
40 percent of bottled water is bottled TAP WATER!
Yes, you read correctly. As I stated in my article about the deceptions of bottled water, 40 percent of bottled water is just bottled tap water, which may or may not have received additional filtration. Remember the arsenic and DPBs you were trying to avoid from tap water? Well, an independent test done by the Environmental Working Group found these and 36 other harmful pollutants hidden in bottled water.
Also, drinking from plastic bottles is not a good idea. Plastic bottles contain a chemical called bisphenol A or BPA, which is a synthetic hormone disruptor that has been linked to serious health problems such as:

Learning and behavioral problems

Altered immune system function

Prostate and breast cancer

Risk of obesity

Early puberty in both genders

Aside from the health risks, the devastating impact bottled water has had on our ecosystem is staggering!

Distilled Water – Use with Caution

Some health conscious people have been misled into believing that distilled water is healthy for them. As I've stated before, this is simply not true.
The problem with distilled water is that it is boiled and evaporated away from its dissolved minerals. The water then becomes acidic and seeks to balance itself by drawing minerals right out of your body. It will also draw out contaminants from the container it's stored in for this same reason.
What's worse, any contaminant in the water that vaporizes at a lower temperature than the water, such as volatile organic compounds, like disinfection byproducts that are thousands of times as toxic as chlorine, will be condensed and actually concentrated in the finished distilled water. So what you end up with is water that contains even more dangerous contaminants than what you started with!
I only recommend using distilled water for a short period of time and only for the purpose of detoxification, as this water can help pull toxins from your body. Drinking it long-term, however, will most likely invite health problems.

Alkaline Water

In my interview with water filtration expert, Houston Tomasz, I asked for his thoughts on the growing use of alkaline water. There are several potential problems with alkaline water.
First of all, most water ionizers and alkalizers are marketed by multi-level marketing (MLM) companies with questionable ethics
Some people experience an initial "high" when they start drinking alkaline water. This can easily be attributed to detoxification, and the fact that they are likely just becoming better hydrated.
Detoxification is about the only benefit of alkaline water, and this benefit is limited to very SHORT TERM USE (no more than a week or two). An additional concern is that many individuals have stomach dysfunctions like GERD or ulcers that are largely related to having too little stomach acid. Long-term use of alkaline or ionized water can interfere with your body's natural digestive process by reducing the acid needed to properly break down and absorb food. This could then lead to an upset of your body's good bacteria, which can then open the door to parasitic infection, ulcers and malabsorption.
For more information, please review my special report on this topic.

"Vitamin" Waters – Do NOT Be Fooled!

If you've recently switched from soda to vitamin water because you believed it to be a healthier choice, you may be disappointed by what I have to say about them: Vitamin waters are nothing more than a clever marketing scheme designed to promote a product that is just as unhealthy as soda!
Vitamin waters often contain dangerous high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), artificial colors, additives, preservatives and caffeine. What's even worse is these manufacturers use distilled water to make their products, which, as you've read above, is one of the worst types of water you can put into your body!
Now that you know which types of water to avoid, let's take a look at the water you should be drinking for optimal health!

Filtered Tap Water – Getting to the Gold

The most economical and environmentally sound choice you and your family can make is to purchase and install a water filter for your home. I recommend three different types of water filters and weigh the pros and cons of each. Let's take a brief look below.

Reverse Osmosis Filter
In addition to removing chlorine, inorganic, and organic contaminants in your water, an RO filter will also remove about 80 percent of the fluoride and most DPBs. The major drawback is the expense of installing an RO filter as most need a plumber to get up and running.
Ion Exchange Filter
Ion exchange is designed to remove dissolved salts in the water, such as calcium. This system actually softens the water or exchanges natural-forming mineral ions in the water with its own ions, thereby neutralizing their harmful effect of creating scale build-up.
The ion exchange system was originally used in boilers and other industrial situations before becoming popular in home purifying units, which usually combine the system with carbon for greater effectiveness.
Granular Carbon and Carbon Block Filters

These are the most common types of counter top and under counter water filters.

Granular carbon filters and carbon block systems perform the same process of contaminant removal, adsorption, which is the chemical or physical bond of a contaminant to the surface of the filter media.

Granular activated carbon is recognized by the EPA as the best available technology for the removal of organic chemicals like herbicides, pesticides and industrial chemicals. However, one of the downfalls of granular carbon filters is that the loose material inside can channel--the water creates pathways through the carbon material, escaping filtering.

Carbon block filters offer the same superior filtering ability but are compressed with the carbon medium in a solid form. This eliminates channeling and gives the ability to precisely combine multiple media in a sub-micron filter cartridge. By combining different media, the ability to selectively remove a wide range of contaminants can be achieved.

Ideally, you want a filtration system that offers a variety of methods to remove different contaminants. Most systems do not address a combination of organic, inorganic, cyst, sediment and metals.
I'm pleased to announce that I have located a family of filters that I believe are the best filters on the market in terms of effectiveness, value, and ease of use. They are all manufactured in the U.S. under exclusive contract with a company specializing in advanced water treatment products, and will include both countertop and under-counter filters.

Living Water – Keeping the Balance

In choosing the right type of water for you and your family, you want to aim for pH balance. Distilled water is too acidic and alkaline water is too alkaline. The ideal pH of your water should be between 6.5 to 7.5, which is neutral.
Mountain spring water is in this ideal range. It is some of the healthiest water on the planet because it is "living water". Living water, like "living food is in its raw, natural state the way nature intended.
One of the main reasons I am such an advocate for eating raw, organic vegetables is because these "living foods" contain biophotons, small units of light stored by all organic organisms, including you.
Gravity-fed spring water is alive in much the same way. When you take this vital energy into your body, you are re-charging it with health and encouraging it to return to a whole and balanced state.
Now, when I mention mountain spring water, I don't mean the two-gallon jugs you see sitting on your grocery store shelf. I'm talking about water you bottle yourself from a gravity-fed spring. There's a great website called FindaSpring.com where you can find a natural spring in your area. This is a great way to get back to nature and teach your children about health and the sources of clean water.
The best part is that most of these spring water sources are free!
It is important to bring either clear polyethylene or glass containers on your trip to collect the water so no unsafe chemicals can contaminate your pure drinking water on the way home. If you choose to use glass bottles, be sure to wrap them in towels to keep them from breaking in the car.

How Much Water Should You Drink?

So, how much pure filtered or spring water should you drink per day? Six glasses? Eight?
Well, here's a good rule of thumb:
You should be drinking enough water to turn your urine a light-colored yellow.
If you are outside on a hot day or engaging in strenuous activity, it is advisable to increase your water intake as needed. It is also important to note that as you age, your thirst mechanism works less efficiently. Older adults need to pay more attention to the color of their urine to see if their water intake is adequate.

Coconut Water and Vegetable Juicing – Adding a Little Variety

As I mentioned in a previous article, coconuts are an excellent source of fresh, pure water and electrolytes. Coconuts are also rich in lauric acid, which is known for its immune-boosting as well as its antiviral, antibacterial and antifungal properties so it's an ideal choice when you're sick.
An even better pure healthy water is vegetable juicing. I recommend buying pesticide-free, organic vegetables for optimal nutritional benefit.

Health Benefits of Drinking Pure Water

I can't say enough about the health benefits of drinking pure water. Here are only a few of the many health benefits you and your family will enjoy once you make the switch to pure water, it will help you:

Maintain a healthy body weight

Properly digest food and absorb nutrients from food

Have healthy, glowing skin

Decrease muscle and joint inflammation

Have better circulation

Detoxify your body naturally

Finally, the extensively researched and fascinating book, Your Body's Many Cries for Water, should be required reading by all, and definitely belongs on every health care practitioner's bookshelf.

General

Bottled Water

Tap Water

Distilled Water

Alkaline Water

If You Fall for This "Water Fad" - You Could Do Some Major Damage

Water Filters

Vitamin Water

Coconut Water

Vegetable Juicing

Juicing Benefits: Your Key to Radiant Health

Water Bottles

Nalgene Water Bottles Appear to be Unsafe

Water Videos

The importance of your good flora

Why this Single Organ Powerfully Dictates Whether You're Healthy or Sick

March 18, 2012 |569,731views| + Add to Favorites

Download Interview Transcript

Visit the Mercola Video Library

By Dr. Mercola

The interview above features Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, a Russian-trained neurologist with a full-time medical practice in the UK.
She treats children and adults with autism, learning disabilities, neurological disorders, psychiatric disorders, immune disorders, and digestive problems, using her Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) Nutritional Program.
Below, I also interview Caroline Barringer, a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP), who is an expert in the preparation of the foods prescribed in Dr. McBride's GAPS program.
We first met at the November 2011 Weston Price Wise Traditions event, where we had the opportunity to enjoy some amazing fermented vegetables that her company prepared for our dinner.
I started incorporating them into my own diet and after a little over a month of daily use, was surprised to find that this minor change has dramatically decreased plaque formation on my teeth, which has been a chronic problem for me.
Caroline has been involved with nutrition for about 20 years, and is now one of Dr. McBride's chief training partners, helping people understand the food preparation process.
The importance of your gut flora, and its influence on your health cannot be overstated. It's truly profound.
Your gut literally serves as your second brain, and even produces more of the neurotransmitter serotonin—known to have a beneficial influence on your mood—than your brain does.
Your gut is also home to countless bacteria, both good and bad. These bacteria outnumber the cells in your body by at least 10 to one, and maintaining the ideal balance of good and bad bacteria forms the foundation for good health—physical, mental and emotional.
The challenge is to identify strategies to optimize that bacterial population, so that you can live in a beneficial, symbiotic relationship where they nourish you, help you fight disease, and optimize your health. This is where the GAPS Nutritional Program comes in.

"Heal and Seal" Your Gut to Reverse Disease

I have been a strong advocate of nutritional therapies for many decades. That certainly gets you to a level of health, but the introduction of fermented foods, and the "heal and seal" process that Dr. McBride has developed can help take your health to the next level. So I'm thrilled to announce that we'll be conducting a series of interviews and videos expounding on these principles.
I'm firmly convinced that if we can share this information with enough people and reeducate them about some of the most important basic processes that have been abandoned over the years, large amounts of people will start to recapture their health!
Here, we begin by discussing the basic principles for how to implement the GAPS program. GAPS stands for Gut and Psychology Syndrome. It also stands for Gut and Physiology Syndrome.

"In terms of Gut and Psychology Syndrome, we are talking about the functioning of the brain of the person," Dr. McBride explains. "Any dysfunction of the brain is usually connected to what's going on in the digestive system. In Gut and Physiology Syndrome, we're talking about the functioning of the rest of the body. Hippocrates… made a statement that all diseases begin in the gut. The more we learn now with all our modern scientific tools, the more we realize just how correct he was."
In terms of Gut and Physiology Syndrome, we're talking about all forms of autoimmunity and inflammatory diseases and conditions, such as:

Multiple sclerosis	Type 1 diabetes	Rheumatoid arthritis	Osteoarthritis
Lupus	Crohn's disease	Ulcerative colitis	Chronic skin conditions
Kidney problems	Urinary conditions	Allergic and atopic conditions	Degenerative conditions
Chronic fatigue syndrome	Fibromyalgia	Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)	Inflammatory bowel diseases

If you're suffering from any of these conditions, or virtually any other health challenge, you'd be wise to implement the GAPS program. While Dr. McBride's book is called Gut and Psychology Syndrome, the nutritional protocol for addressing physiological and psychological conditions is identical. She is working on a second book, which will be called Gut and Physiology Syndrome, but in the meantime; please refer to her original book, as the practical dietary information will be the same.

"Once you heal and seal your gut lining, and once you make your digestive system healthy and working properly again, you'll be surprised how many various symptoms in your body originated from your digestive system. Most [symptoms] start disappearing, because the health and the disease are usually born inside your digestive system. That's where they originate from," she explains.

What is the GAPS Nutritional Protocol?

The GAPS protocol is designed to restore the integrity of your gut lining.

"Our digestive system is lined by very specialized cells, which are called enterocytes. These little cells only live for a few days," Dr. McBride explains. "They live for two or three days. Then… they die, get shed off, and get replaced by new, healthy enterocytes. The cell regeneration process in your gut lining is a very active process.
… We have a real chance to heal and seal our damaged gut lining thanks to this wonderful process of cell regeneration. But here's the catch: in order for your body to give birth to healthy functioning baby enterocytes, it needs two factors. It needs building blocks for them, because they're made out of certain nutrients (proteins, certain fats, vitamins, enzymes, and other active molecules)… Second, it needs the whole process to be orchestrated by the beneficial microbes in your digestive system; by the beneficial healthy gut flora."
People with GAPS have neither of those factors. They run out of building blocks due to improper nutrition, which prevents the proliferation of new, healthy enterocytes, and their gut lining is overpopulated with pathogenic bacteria, virus, fungi, worms, protozoa, and other pathogenic microbes. As a result, the beneficial microbes are virtually nonexistent, and the balance of good and bad bacteria is dramatically skewed.

"In animal experiments… when they sterilized the digestive tract of the animals, they found that the whole cell regeneration process in the gut lining goes completely wrong," she says. "The travel time of the baby enterocytes doubles… Enterocytes are born already mutated, and some of them turn cancerous. They are unable to fulfill their functions: breaking down the food and absorbing the food appropriately.
We have to provide those two factors for the gut lining to heal and seal. We need to drive out pathogens and replace them with beneficial flora. And we need to provide all the building blocks for the gut lining to give birth to baby enterocytes. That's what GAPS Nutritional Protocol does."

The Two GAPS Diets

The GAPS Nutritional Protocol contains three factors:

Dietary intervention, designed to feed the cell regeneration process and allow your gut to rebuild healthy enterocytes

Probiotic supplements, to reseed your gut with healthy bacteria

Detoxification

Here, we will focus on the dietary portion. The GAPS Diet is structured into three stages:

GAPS Introduction Diet

GAPS Full Diet

Weaning off the GAPS Diet

However, you don't have to follow that order. The GAPS Introduction Diet is structured in six stages, where foods are introduced gradually. It requires a lot of time, patience and perseverance. The Full GAPS Diet provides a much wider range of foods for you to choose from, and is therefore an easier place to start for many.

"That's the diet that you reach and stay in for about a year, or sometimes longer, until all your digestive problems have gone and all the other problems in your body and brain have gone. When you have achieved full health, then you can move into the third stage of coming off the GAPS Diet, where you can gradually start introducing foods that are not allowed within the GAPS Nutritional Protocol.
Some people start from the GAPS Introduction Diet and follow through the stages, while others start from the GAPS Full Diet. Then they try the GAPS Introduction diet later, if they feel that there's more healing to achieve in their body and they're now organized to do that… So, it is up to you which diet you want to choose."

Which GAPS Diet is Right for You?

Here are some brief guidelines that might help you choose. The GAPS Introduction Diet is best if you are prone to:

Chronic diarrhea	Leaky gut syndrome	Depression	Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Chronic digestive symptoms such as flatulence, pain, aching stomach, mixed stools, burping or reflux	Severe food allergies and food intolerances	Attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder	Multiple sclerosis

The introduction diet can help clear those symptoms rather quickly. However, this diet is far more restrictive, and can be more difficult to follow than the Full GAPS Diet. You may do better with the Full GAPS Diet if you:

Are very busy and cannot put aside enough time for cooking and organizing your meals

Travel frequently

It's important to realize that even if you do not experience any specific digestive problems, you may still have abnormal gut flora. It is extremely common these days, unless you have a pristine diet, have not used antibiotics, and aren't taking birth control pills or other medications.

"It's just that their digestive system is compensating for it [the abnormal gut flora]," Dr. McBride explains. "The human body has an amazing ability to compensate for the problems. The body can work around the problem for a very long time before it starts giving you signals that something's wrong, and that's the problem. The signals are the symptoms! For example, you can have cancer in your body for 20 years and there are no symptoms. Until the first symptom appears, the body compensates. It works around it."

Basic Principles of the Introduction Diet

The Introduction Diet is divided into six stages. Below are the first three. According to Dr. McBride:

"These three factors ensure that the gut heals much quicker… That is why people who follow [the Introduction Diet] find that their food allergies disappear much quicker. We have many people who have healed themselves and have removed their food allergies and intolerances completely. Now they can eat foods which they could not even touch before. The same happens to people with inflammatory bowel conditions and other severe digestive disorders, and to any person who got serious digestive symptoms."

First, fiber is removed from the diet, because it feeds microbes. The human digestive system is not designed to break down fiber. Instead, it ends up undigested in your bowel, where the majority of your gut flora resides. If your gut flora is healthy, ie dominated by beneficial, probiotic species, then these microbes will feed on the fiber and proliferate.

This is slightly counterintuitive as people and health care professionals consider fiber universally beneficial. I was one of them and in medical school in the 70s was known as Dr. Fiber for my widespread promotion of fiber. However if your gut is filled with pathogenic bacteria and/or yeast and fungi, fiber will actually make your symptoms worse as it is a non-specific growth factor for intestinal bacteria, and does not discriminate between pathogenic and beneficial bacteria.

So, if your bowel is predominantly dominated by pathogenic microbes, pathogenic microbes will feed on fiber and proliferate, making whatever health problems you have worse. The digestive system of those with GAPS is predominantly populated by pathogens, which is why fiber must be carefully eliminated from the diet, for a period of time, to help starve out the pathogens.

Second, probiotics are incrementally added in, because without their presence, no healing can ever occur in your digestive tract. This is done in two ways: through probiotic and fermented foods, and therapeutic-strength probiotic supplements

The third factor: introducing the building blocks for your gut lining, which promotes healthy enterocyte reproduction to rebuild the integrity of your gut lining.

"You will find that in children with learning disabilities, in the first and second stage, the bedwetting usually stops; the eye contact starts coming back; the hyperactive behavior reduces automatically; the child becomes more "with" you; he becomes more alert," Dr. McBride says.
When you move on to the third or fourth stage (which includes more solid foods), some of the original symptoms may recur. If that happens, it means you (or your child) is not ready to move to the next stage yet. Just back-track to the previous stage, and stay there for another couple of weeks, until the symptoms recede. Then try moving into the next stage again. Remember, this is a natural healing process, which can take time.

"Adults usually take longer to heal than children. In children it can happen quite quickly, but it depends on the toxic load and various other factors.
Many people have to do this dance of step forward, step back, step forward, and step back for several months," Dr. McBride says. "Some people have to follow the introduction diet for up to 18 months… before moving into the Full GAPS Diet. This is usually the group of the most severe people such as those with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, ME, multiple sclerosis, and people with more severe degenerative conditions. In the majority of people, particularly the children, the introduction diet takes a couple of months maximum."

Is a No-Plant Diet Safe Long-Term?

As you can see, the Introduction Diet is devoid of most plant foods, unless well cooked and low in fiber. This may seem like a harmful way of eating, considering how vegetables are touted as the most important part of a healthy diet. But according to Dr. McBride, there's no cause for alarm.

"I have patients who have done best on a completely no-plant diet," she says. "I have people who have been on a no-plants diet at all; purely animal foods. They eat meat, fish, eggs, and yogurt. That's all. They don't eat anything else. They have no vegetables, fruits, grains, and nothing of plant origin at all for 18 months, two years, and two and a half years, and they do beautifully.
These are usually people with obsessive-compulsive disorders, bipolar disorders, schizophrenics, or people with other conditions.
Whenever they try a little bit of a vegetable, a little bit of plant matter, they get their manic symptoms back. They get their other psychiatric problems back… These people learn quite quickly. They listen to their body, and quite quickly they know what works for them or what doesn't. Everybody's different. It depends not only on your constitutional genetics, but it also depends on what kind of toxins you have stored in your body, where they're stored, and what methods your body is using to clear them out, and various other variables."

Primary Foods of the GAPS Introduction Diet

The following foods are the staples of the GAPS Introduction Diet:

Homemade meat stock

Homemade bone broth

Soups with well-cooked, deseeded and peeled vegetables, such as zucchinis and squash. If you're cooking broccoli or cauliflower, remove all the stalks and fibrous bits. Avoid using fibrous vegetables such as celery and those from the cabbage family

Homemade fermented yoghurt (using either raw, grass-fed milk, or store-bought organic, full fat milk if you cannot find raw milk) and whey

Fermented vegetables (in cases of severe digestive disorders, Dr. McBride recommends starting on the juice only, as the fiber of the vegetables may be too much to handle for a compromised digestive system. From there, slowly work your way up to consuming small amounts of vegetable, such as sauerkraut or cabbage)

Raw egg yolk from organically-raised, pastured hens

Dr. McBride discusses many more details of the GAPS diet in her interview, so for more in-depth information and instructions on how to prepare many of these foods at home, please listen to the interview or read through the transcript.

Rethinking the Raw Food / Vegan Diet Trend…

Dr. McBride introduces a concept that is contrary to what most health-minded people have learned, including myself. I've been a staunch advocate of consuming all foods in their raw state, or as near raw as possible, as much as possible. My general recommendation has been to consume about 80 percent of your food raw. Dr. McBride disagrees, explaining that all-raw is not necessarily ideal.

"Mother Nature provided us with two groups of natural foods. Obviously, we're not talking about processed foods here. Processed foods… do not serve the human body. These foods do not feed us. They do not cleanse us… They just pollute us, because they have been processed to increase their shelf life… Let's remove those foods out of the equation altogether. We're talking about natural foods… in the form that Mother Nature created them."
These two food groups are:

Plants (fruits, veggies, grains, beans, nuts and seeds)

Animal products (meat, fish, dairy products, eggs)

According to Dr. McBride, the plant foods are primarily cleansing foods that aid in elimination and detoxification, while the animal products are nourishing foods that feed your body and provide the building blocks for your bones, muscles, brain, immune system and other organs.

"When you cook vegetables, their cellular structure gets broken down, and they are much easier to digest," Dr. McBride explains. "They become more of a feeding and nourishing food rather than a cleansing food. Raw fruits and vegetables are indigestible for the human digestive system. They don't feed us; they cleanse us… But as we cook the vegetables, and as we ferment the vegetables, we break down their cellulose structure. They become less of a cleansing detoxifying food and more of a feeding and nourishing food."
"The natural cultures all over the world through the millennia have understood this," she says. "That is why they developed methods to make plant foods more of a "feeding/nourishing" food, and digestible for the human digestive system. The methods that they have developed to make plants more digestible are cooking and fermentation. That is why grains were always fermented or cooked. Fruits and vegetables were fermented and cooked.
When we ferment and cook plant foods, we break down their structure. They become less of a detoxifier… [and] move into the group of feeding/nourishing foods."

The Happy Marriage between Raw and Cooked or Fermented Foods

She goes on to discuss how herbivorous animals are designed to consume the energy of the sun in the form of plants. But in order for most herbivores, like cows, to digest plant foods, they're equipped with multiple stomachs, called rumen, which are filled with microbes. It's these microbes that digest the plant foods, transforming the carbohydrates in the plant matter into short-chain fatty acids.
Humans, however, do not have a rumen.
We only have one small stomach, and, if you're healthy, your stomach contains very minute amounts of bacteria. In fact, a healthy stomach is the least populated area of your digestive system. Instead of microbes, the human stomach produces acid and pepsin, which can effectively break down one group of foods, and that is animal-based foods.

"They're not fit to break down plants at all," Dr. McBride says. "Most plant foods, when we consume them in a raw state in particular, they go all through our digestive system, and they finish up practically undigested in the bowel where the bacteria – that's our equivalent of the rumen – partially break them down and convert them into short-chain fatty acids… and that's the boost to our human metabolism.
But if you try to live entirely on these plant foods, you will run into trouble, as vegans do… In order to feed yourself, you have to consume animal products… meat… animal fat… fish… eggs… good-quality dairy products…
Indeed, in order for us to produce sex hormones, we need cholesterol, because they're made from cholesterol. We require vitamin A and vitamin D. We require a lot of protein. In order to produce sex hormones, they have to eat meat, eggs, and animal fat. If you don't want to produce sex hormones; if you want to be infertile, and if you don't want to have any sexual desire, then the vegan diet is the right diet that you should follow."
This does not negate the need for raw food. We all need cleansing and detoxification. And if your toxic load is high, or if you're overweight, then a period of cleansing, using lots of raw vegan-type foods can be very beneficial.

"But then when the body finishes with that cleansing, it needs to be fed. Following a vegan diet or a vegetarian diet like that for a long period of time is unsustainable and should not be contemplated," Dr. McBride warns.
"It is very important for people to listen to their bodies and to talk to their bodies and figure out, "What do I need right now?" Do I need to cleanse right now, or do I need to feed myself right now? What state is my body in? Maybe I need a mixture, some sort of middle ground between the two, depending on what's happening in my body. "

The Phenomenal Health Benefits of Fermented Vegetables

As mentioned earlier, fermented vegetables are a mainstay of the GAPS diets. In the following video, Caroline Barringer discusses the process of fermenting your own vegetables in some detail, so for more information, please listen to that interview, or read through the transcript. You'll also find more resources at the end of this article.

Download Interview Transcript One thing that many do not realize is that fermented foods are some of the best chelators available. The beneficial bacteria in these foods are very potent detoxifiers, capable of drawing out a wide range of toxins and heavy metals. According to Dr. McBride, the GAPS Nutritional Protocol restores your own detoxification system in about 90 percent of people, and the fermented/cultured foods are instrumental in this self-healing process.

"The cell wall [of the bacteria] have chelators; molecules that grab hold of mercury, lead, aluminum, arsenate, and anything else toxic," Dr. McBride explains. "They hold them until they're removed through stool."
And you don't need to consume huge amounts either. Caroline recommends eating about a quarter to a half a cup of fermented vegetables, or cultured food such as raw yoghurt, per day. Kombucha, a fermented drink, is another great addition to your diet. The key is variety. The greater the variety of fermented and cultured foods you include in your diet, the better, as each food will inoculate your gut with a variety of different microorganisms.

Almost Everyone has Damaged Gut Flora these Days!

"The trouble is that in our modern society, we live in a world where a growing proportion of the population damaged gut flora, because they have been exposed to repeated courses of antibiotics; women are taking contraceptive pills, which damage the gut flora quite profoundly, or any other prescriptive long-term medication. People are taking in toxic substances through their food and drink, and other… environmental influences damage the composition of their gut flora.
As a result, when they are exposed to mercury, lead, other toxic metals, or other toxic substances in the environment, their gut flora is unable to chelate it, and cannot remove it.
It floods into their bloodstream, and settles in the body. Unfortunately, toxic metals have a particular affinity for fatty tissues in the body, so they get stored in the brain, spine, and in the rest of the nervous system. They also target your bone marrow and the rest of the high fat organs in the body… Of course, when they're stored in there, they would cause leukemia, lymphoma, other immune abnormalities, and other problems... "
Dr. McBride has made the important connection between damaged gut flora in women, and developmental problems in their children, especially autism. These GAPS children, who are born with damaged gut flora, are also far more prone to vaccine damage. I believe this may be a major driving force behind our skyrocketing autism rates.
Fortunately, there's a solution.
Restoring proper gut function to pregnant mothers and their babies is really one of the most profound interventions one could have for having a non-brain-damaged child.

"Mothers of my generation who have daughters who are growing up now—now is the time to assess your daughter," Dr. McBride says. "See what her gut flora is like. How is she doing before she's ready to conceive or have children? Prepare them for it to avoid the huge amount of grief in the family of having a grandchild with autism, hyperactivity, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or some other disorder. This is because the proportion of girls with damaged gut flora is growing in our modern world, and they are heading to having unhealthy children."

Additional Resources

In addition to the wealth of information shared in the two interviews above, there are also a number of other resources you can delve into. Dr. McBride's blog contains articles and videos relating to a wide variety of health problems that can be helped with the GAPS diet. I highly recommend getting her book Gut and Psychology Syndrome, which provides all the necessary details for her protocol. We were finally able to convince her to print it in the U.S., so I now offer it for sale in my store. It saves you a few dollars, compared to ordering it from the U.K..

Dr. McBride is also training GAPS practitioners, with sessions coming up in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. In the US, there are currently 160 certified GAPS practitioners who are well-qualified to help you to go through the GAPS Nutritional Protocol.
You can find certified GAPS practitioners on www.GAPS.me, listed by country and state.
www.Immunitrition.com is another helpful resource where you can learn more about cultured and fermented foods. If you're so inclined, you can also find information about how to become a Certified Healing Foods Specialist here.

Experience with Vitamin C for Cancer and Infectious Diseases

Download Interview Transcript

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Dr. Ronald Hunninghake is an internationally recognized expert on vitamin C who has personally supervised more than 60,000 intravenous (IV) vitamin C administrations.
In this interview, Dr. Hunninghake shares his experience with this important modality.

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Vitamin C has taken a backseat in recent years with the advent of many newer antioxidants, but that doesn't make it any less important. Vitamin C is clearly the 'grandfather' of the traditional antioxidants we know of, and its potent health benefits have been clearly established.
Dr. Ronald Hunninghake is an internationally recognized expert on this vitamin. He got his start in this field about 22 years ago when he joined Dr. Hugh Riordan, who conducted research on intravenous (I.V.) vitamin C for cancer patients. His clinic is the successor to Linus Pauling and his work on vitamin C, and there is likely no clinic in the world with as much experience as his.

Dr. Hunninghake's Experience with Vitamin C for Cancer and Infectious Diseases

Dr. Riordan carried on a 15-year long research project called RECNAC (cancer spelled backwards). His groundbreaking research in cell cultures showed that vitamin C was selectively cytotoxic against cancer cells.
Together, Hunninghake and Riordan conducted studies with a series of patients who had either stage 3 and stage 4 cancer.

"I.V. vitamin C was found to be very beneficial," Hunninghake says. "It's not considered a stand-alone therapy for cancer, but it's a perfect adjunct to any kind of therapy that the cancer patient is receiving at this time.
It will reduce side effects and improve quality of life. There have actually been two major studies now showing how it improves quality of life."
Cancer is clearly a life threatening disease, and most cancer patients also experience depression, pain, and tremendous fatigue – all of which can make treatment all the more difficult.
These are all signs of scurvy, which is the result of vitamin C deficiency… And if you actually measure vitamin C levels in cancer patients, especially advanced cancer patients, most, if not all, are vitamin C deficient, Hunninghake claims.

"One of the things that I.V. vitamin C does is it immediately relieves their scurvy symptoms," Hunninghake says. "So they start having a greater sense of well being. They don't need as much pain medicine. Their appetite improves. Their mood improves. They have a better quality of life."
Vitamin C may be better known, however, for its benefits for infectious diseases.
Dr. Hunninghake remarked:

"Certainly, anyone that's got a cold or a flu, or chronic fatigue, or any chronic viral infection, we do use [vitamin C].
… Dr. Levy wrote "Curing the Incurable," which is a fantastic book about vitamin C for infectious disease and toxin control. So certainly, I.V. vitamin C works very well for infectious diseases, as well as cancer."
A perfect example of the healing power of this antioxidant vitamin is the dramatic case of Allan Smith, who contracted a serious case of swine flu, and was brought back from the brink of death using a combination of IV and oral vitamin C. (Interestingly, Smith is now also free of the cancer he was diagnosed with while undergoing treatment for swine flu…)

"It's definitely a very underutilized modality in infectious disease," Hunninghake says.
"It's really a premiere treatment for any chronic infection. Again, it's not typically recognized by conventional medicine."

Why is Vitamin C Not a Widely Adopted Treatment Strategy?

If vitamin C is so effective, why hasn't conventional medicine caught on?
Dr. Hunninghake tries to explain:

"I'm sure there are several factors here. Number one, most people think of vitamin C as a vitamin. You define vitamin as a trace amount of a substance that you need to prevent [ailments like] scurvy, in the case of vitamin C. But what we're talking about here is something in a pharmacological range.
The way to really understand vitamin C is to go back to the writings of Irwin Stone who wrote The Healing Factor, which was a fantastic book written in the 70s about vitamin C.
He points out that every creature, when they are sick, greatly increase their liver's or their kidney's production of vitamin C. But humans, primates, and guinea pigs have lost that ability.
We still have the gene that makes the L-gulonolactone oxidase enzyme that converts glucose to vitamin C but it's non-functional. We have to get our vitamin C from the outside; from food.
When we give vitamin C intravenously, what we're doing is recreating your liver's ability to synthesize tremendous amounts of vitamin C.
… So I always look upon high dose vitamin C as nature's way of dealing with crisis in terms of your health. This notion however does not exist in the conventional thinking in the medical mind."
There are also financial factors. The standard oncology treatments are extremely expensive while I.V. vitamin C is relatively inexpensive. And conventional medicine, as a general rule, is notoriously uninterested in solutions that can't produce profits.

Administration Methods and Dosage Recommendations

There are two primary ways you can administer vitamin C; orally and intravenously.

"For the average patient, I… encourage them to take at least the Linus Pauling dose, which is 1 gram, twice a day, of vitamin C," Hunninghake says.
"Certainly you can do more than that. If you're suffering from chronic infections or chronic fatigue you can go ahead and gradually increase your dose up to what's called the bowel tolerance dose.
It's very safe. The idea that vitamin C causes kidney stones has been completely disproven... There have been several studies by urologists that have shown that is not an issue with high-dose vitamin C.
For the typical patient oral [supplementation] is fine, but if you have a serious illness, you should think in terms of doing intravenous vitamin C from a practitioner because it can greatly amplify and change the benefits of I.V. vitamin C."
As for the typical dosage for intravenous vitamin C, the Riordan IVC protocol calls for a starting dose around 15 grams.
However, it's important to first get your G6PD (Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase) level checked.

Check for G6PD Deficiency Before Starting I.V. Vitamin C

G6PD is an enzyme that your red blood cells need to maintain membrane integrity.
What many people don't understand is that high dose intravenous vitamin C is a strong pro-oxidant. And giving a pro-oxidant to a G6PD-deficient patient can cause hemolysis of their red blood cells.
So administering intravenous vitamin C is not for the novice.
I strongly recommend getting it done by an experienced practitioner who uses the Riordan protocol or some other protocol that ensures the vitamin C is administered in a safe manner.
Fortunately, G6PC deficiency is relatively uncommon. People of Mediterranean- and African decent are at greater risk, but it's rare even in those groups. In one series of over 800 G6PD tests, Hunninghake only found four people with a deficiency.
So it's not a great concern, but should you happen to be that rare person with a deficiency, the ramifications of barreling ahead with high dose I.V. vitamin C could be disastrous.
Dr. Riordan's original research suggested that you need to achieve a vitamin C blood level of around 300-350 mg/dl in order to achieve selective cytotoxicity. However, Hunninghake claims blood levels around 250 mg/dl may be sufficient to have an anti-cancer effect.
Dr. Hunninghake expounds on this issue:

"Now, just to put that into perspective for the average person, if we were to measure someone off the street, their blood level would be about 1 mg/dl if they're eating a fairly decent diet. If they're less than 0.6 mg per dl, they're into a scurvy type range of vitamin C.
But what we're talking about for a post-IVC saturation level, giving, let's say 25 to 50 grams of vitamin C intravenously over about a 90-minute period, is in the 200 to 300 mg/dl range.
So we're talking about 200 to 300 times the normal amount of vitamin C that your blood normally experiences just eating a balanced diet."
It's important to understand that these extremely high levels are really only indicated for the treatment cancers and infectious diseases, not for every-day, general health. This is because vitamin C, which will always be an antioxidant, nevertheless starts to have a pro-oxidant effect at these extreme levels.
Interestingly, this pro-oxidant effect may actually be responsible for vitamin C's anti-cancerous properties…
Hunninghake explains:

"… At our second annual Riordan IVC and Cancer Conference held a few weeks ago in Japan, we had Dr. H. Chen, who was the author, along with Mark Levine, on high dose vitamin C as a source for creating hydrogen peroxide in the extracellular space surrounding tumor cells.
It's thought that it is this hydrogen peroxide, or pro-oxidant effect, of vitamin C that's causing the anti-tumor property. It's also that same pro-oxidant effect that, in fact, helps your body get rid of infectious disease."
To hear Dr. Hunninghake share some of the remarkable recoveries from difficult to treat cancers and other diseases, please listen to the interview in its entirety, or read through the transcript.

What You Need to Know About Oral Vitamin C

The latest version of oral vitamin C supplementation is liposomal vitamin C, which I was introduced to by Dr. Thomas Levy, who is clearly one of the leaders in this area.
Liposomal vitamin C bypasses many of the complications of traditional vitamin C or ascorbic acid, and, according to Dr. Levy, you can achieve far higher intracellular concentrations this way.

"I'm all in favor of people trying this," Hunninghake says. "I think it can be used as an adjunct to I.V. vitamin C. Most people are only going to do I.V. vitamin C once or twice a week. So by doing the liposomal vitamin C, they can easily do 6 grams of liposomal vitamin C orally without a bit of gastrointestinal distress."
From Hunninghake's perspective, liposomal vitamin C may still be somewhat unproven, but is nonetheless quite safe.
There are also other forms of vitamin C on the market, such as buffered forms of sodium ascorbate. One example would be Ester-C. These buffered forms are also effective and do not cause the gastrointestinal distress associated with conventional ascorbic acid.
So far, I have recommended avoiding Ester-C, as I believe it's an oxidized form of vitamin C, which could do more harm than good. Dr. Hunninghake disagrees with my assessment, stating he's never seen any evidence indicating that Ester-C might be an oxidized form of vitamin C.
Based on Dr. Hunninghake's expertise in this area, I may reconsider my stance on Ester-C, although I still believe liposomal vitamin C has benefits that cannot be matched by buffered forms of vitamin C.

Dosing Frequency Can Also Make a Difference

Another factor to keep in mind when taking oral vitamin C is dosing frequency.
Dr. Steve Hickey, who wrote the book Ascorbate, has shown that if you take vitamin C frequently throughout the day, you can achieve much higher plasma levels. So even though your kidneys will tend to rapidly excrete the vitamin C, by taking it every hour or two, you can maintain a much higher plasma level than if you just dose it once a day (unless you're taking an extended release form of vitamin C).
There are also a number of people, primarily with the naturopathic perspective, who believe that in order to be truly effective, ascorbic acid alone is not enough -- you need the combination of the ascorbic acid with its associated micronutrients, such as bioflavonoids and other components.
Hunninghake agrees.

"There is no question that would be a better way to go. Any time you can [get it from] food, you're going to be better off… [F]ood is still the essential thing your body needs in order to get optimal cellular functioning.
But when you're sick, you can use trace nutrients in orthomolecular doses to achieve effects that you can't get from just food alone.
But in general, for people who are healthy and want to stay healthy, I would recommend using vitamin C that has bioflavonoids and other co-factors associated with it."
As far as getting your vitamin C from food, remember that the more colorful your diet, the higher it will be in bioflavanoids and cartenoids. Eating a colorful diet (i.e. plenty of vegetables) helps ensure you're naturally getting that phytonutrient synergism needed for maintaining health.
One of the easiest ways to ensure you're getting enough vegetables in your diet is by juicing them. For more information, please see my juicing page.
You can also squeeze some fresh lemon or lime juice into some water for a vitamin C rich beverage.

For More Information about Intravenous Vitamin C

If you, or someone you know, want more information about using vitamin C as an adjunct to your cancer protocol, please visit www.RiordanClinic.org, where you can find the Riordan IVC Protocol discussed above. That site also contains a number of research articles so that you can review the evidence for yourself.
Dr. Hunninghake has also created a video on how vitamin C fights cancer, available at www.HealthHunterOnline.org.
This site also contains an informative lecture by Dr. Glen Hyland called IVC, Chemotherapy and Radiation - Are They Compatible? Hyland offers compelling evidence showing that not only are they compatible but they are synergistic.
Last but not least, for more details about vitamin C, its many health benefits, and the synergistic effects achieved when combined with other nutrients such as vitamin D, please listen to the entire interview as it contains much more than what I've summarized here.

Final Thoughts

In closing, Dr. Hunninghake says:

"If you're going to treat cancer, you can't rely upon one modality. Even though we do kind of focus on I.V. vitamin C at our clinic, we measure nutrient levels.
We have people reexamine their diet. We encourage detoxification strategies, regular exercise, adequate sleep, improving interpersonal relationships… All of these can have a bearing on your outcome in cancer."
In my opinion, a cancer treatment plan that does not include testing and optimizing your vitamin D levels is nothing short of criminal negligence. Optimizing your vitamin D levels is just that important, especially if you have a disease like cancer.
In fact some experts believe that vitamin D is the "new" vitamin C. Of course they are not mutually exclusive and can be taken together, but I am still more of a fan of vitamin D as it really is a hormone and influences up to10 percent of your genes, which has very profound consequences if you are deficient.
However vitamin C also has great potential here, and there is overwhelming evidence showing that using I.V. vitamin C as an adjunct to conventional treatment methods can be extremely beneficial, with virtually no risk.

sexta-feira, 30 de novembro de 2012

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Visit the Mercola Video Library

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