An overview of new health products, plant technology, superfoods and natural health research breakthroughs

Sunday, May 22, 2005 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: health products, health news, Natural News

In this article, we'll take a closer look at some of the more interesting products and issues we're uncovering these days. There’s a product that I highly recommend for those that want a nutritious food bar made with real food, and not a bunch of processed or manufactured ingredients. It's called LaraBar, and if you look at the ingredients on any of the available LaraBars, you'll be quite pleased -- because there are only three or four key ingredients. These bars are real food; they're made with fruit and nuts, and are they delicious.

I've been buying and eating these in great quantities, probably going a little overboard, in fact. I recommend you take a look at these bars, because so many of the other food bars out there are really just candy bars. But not LaraBars -- these are the real deal.

I'm also excited about the Organic Food Bar, which is increasingly available everywhere. On the new company front, there's also Lydia's Organics which makes some outstanding dehydrated food bars that are simply the best I've ever found. I recently purchased around $60 worth of her food bars for some travel I had to do, and I couldn't have been happier. While everybody else on the airplane was suffering through foods loaded with sodium and additives, I was crunching away on Lydia's Organics food bars.

The healing power of natural sunlight

I'm also excited about sunshine, and the increasing realization of just how important natural sunlight is to your health. The more I learn about sunshine, the more fascinating it becomes. Sunlight is an essential nutrient for optimal human health. It's something that every person needs, and yet as I am increasingly observing, very few people get sufficient sunlight. Part of that is because most of us work indoors, and so we sit under artificial light rather than getting the natural light nature intended our bodies to have.

There are some interesting issues here as far as workplace health, and what employers could do to help their employees receive some healing natural sunlight. There are also some widespread health implications in this. Imagine if people went outside in increasing numbers... think of what we could do as an entire nation in terms of preventing disease and reducing health care costs. If every person went outside for five minutes a day and got some sunshine on their skin, we would see dramatic reductions in breast cancer, prostate cancer, schizophrenia and depression, obesity, osteoporosis, and even nervous system disorders. All of this is due to vitamin D of course, and vitamin D deficiency seems to be present at epidemic levels in our modern society. But the good news is you can counteract all of this by simply going outside and getting sunshine on your skin on a regular basis.

Sea kelp for garden plants

Another item I'm excited about is the research I'm conducting on the use of sea kelp on garden plants, and how this impacts human health when people eat foods right out of their garden. Preliminary research is showing that when plants are treated with sea kelp, in powdered or liquid concentrate form, they produce fruits and vegetables with much higher levels of antioxidants and phytochemicals. These plants are also more resistant to disease and pests, and they produce larger yields.

But even more interesting, when human beings consume these fruits and vegetables, they receive additional health benefits, such as enhanced immune system function, that would not be available if they were eating plants that were not treated with sea kelp. Sea kelp is something that's quite inexpensive to use, and it seems to offer tremendous benefits to the home gardener. And since I'm a person who always recommends that people grow their own food and eat it right out of the garden as much as they can, sea kelp is certainly going to be one of the top nutritional supplements for plants that I'm going to be covering in future articles.

New aeroponic technology

Speaking of growing your own plants at home, I'm very excited about a new upcoming product announcement that I will be covering in great detail, an aeroponic growing system. This new aeroponic growing system will be sold to consumers, allowing them to grow garden vegetables with almost no hassle. With an aeroponic system, there's obviously no soil needed whatsoever. Thanks to the simplicity of this high tech system, it's going to be a hands-off product, where you just put in the seeds of whatever garden vegetables you want, press a button to tell it to go, and then the system takes over from there. A few weeks later, you have large plants, and a few months later, you have produce growing right out of this new aeroponic technology system.

This is exciting because it will allow people who aren't gardeners to effectively grow their own produce, even without gardening knowledge or much space. You could grow garden vegetables in a windowsill, for example. With all of the new research showing the health benefits of fresh fruits and vegetables, eating these fruits and vegetables straight out of garden in their raw, live, state is going to be an essential part of maintaining optimum health.

In fact, this could open up a whole new wave of interest in people growing their own dietary supplements. If you're growing your own okra, and eating it raw right off the plant, as I do, for example, you're going to experience a lot of health benefits from those live okra pods. But if you're growing your own berries, such as blueberries, you can see even greater health benefits. Research has shown blueberries are even more effective at lowering LDL cholesterol levels than statin drugs. Again, this is something you don't hear very much from doctors, or certainly from the pharmaceutical industry, but it's been proven true -- blueberries are better than statin drugs. And now, with these upcoming aeroponic growing systems, consumers finally have a realistically simple way to grow their own berries.

The system I'm talking about isn't ready yet -- the manufacturer says it will take another six months, probably. But I'll keep you posted on this when it's finally available.

When this new technology is finally releases, I can see a lot of people growing strawberries right out of their kitchens, or growing blueberries and eating them right off the vine as medicine. Remember, it was Hippocrates that said let your food be your medicine, and when it comes to food, there's nothing healthier than growing it yourself. So in the months and years ahead, you will definitely see me emphasizing the importance of becoming a gardener, even if you're using a simple-to-use aeroponic system in a windowsill that you don't even have to mess with in any complicated way. To me, it's simply astounding to think of all the medicinal foods that people could be growing in these aeroponic systems.

Think about it. You could even grow your own aloe vera plants right in your kitchen, chop off a leaf and squeeze out the gel, and put that into a blended drink. You would receive enormous cardiovascular benefits from doing so. This is a habit that I have adopted, and since I grow aloe vera plants outside, in the desert sun, I have the luxury of being able to eat raw aloe vera leaves anytime I want. But for most people, that isn't an option because they don't live in the desert. With an aeroponic system, they could do this indoors. These aeroponic systems, by the way, should cost somewhere around $100 each, which is very affordable, and unlike the aeroponic systems available today, these new consumer targeted systems are going to be very easy to use, and there will be no assembly required.

Astaxanthin - vitamin X

One of the next things I'm really excited about is a product called astaxanthin. It’s something I've done a considerable amount of research on, and in fact I plan to do a rather large report on it in the future. Astaxanthin is harvested from microalgae, and is a pigment phytochemical that alga produce when they become stressed and think that their environment is changing for the worse.

It's the same pigment that makes shrimp or salmon look red, and when it is extracted from microalgae and encapsulated, it becomes an extremely potent antioxidant with tremendous health benefits. In some of the research I've done on astaxanthin, I've already seen how the nutritional supplement is practically eliminating arthritis pain in users. It is also making people practically immune to flus and colds, reducing muscle aches and pains, and giving people better mental clarity and higher levels of energy throughout the day. I currently recommend two companies, and I've been told they both recently lowered their prices on astaxanthin, so it's a better deal than ever:

AstaFactor fro Mera Pharmaceuticals

BioAstin from Cyanotech

Of course, I was curious about how such a simple-sounding nutritional supplement could deliver such astounding health benefits, so about a year ago I bought some astaxanthin and started trying it myself. I'm happy to report to you that the results are in. Astaxanthin greatly reduced my muscle soreness from intense exercise (i.e. gymnastics), and at the same time increased my flexibility. This was an unexpected side effect, because it was not reported in any of the study literature surrounding astaxanthin.

As you may know, I engage in gymnastics on a regular basis, do a lot of yoga and Pilates, and I'm a very physical person. But part of the downside to that is I'm frequently sore, and I tend to feel a lot of chronic soreness in the muscles and joints that I stretch and work heavily as part of these exercise routines. I'm 35 years old, and out there throwing my body around on the gymnastics floor like a 17-year-old. Because the astaxanthin nutritional supplement greatly reduced my muscle soreness and increased my flexibility, I'm now seeing gains in stretching ability and flexibility that I hadn't seen for a very long time. What might have taken me six months to accomplish in terms of stretching is now taking me only two to three weeks.

A nutritional sunscreen

Another exciting benefit from astaxanthin is that it greatly enhances your body's adaptability and resistance to excessive exposure to sunlight. This benefit to astaxanthin was reported by employees at the manufacturer in Kona, Hawaii. They were able to take astaxanthin and go windsurfing all afternoon long without getting sunburned.

For my part, I'm under the sun on a regular basis. As a result, I have fairly dark skin coloration for a white guy. But I knew that when I went to Hawaii, I was going to get burned if I went under the sun without any sunscreen for an entire afternoon, especially out on the ocean, where I was getting not only the direct rays from the sun, but also the rays bouncing off of the water.

So, as an experiment, since I'd been taking astaxanthin, I decided to go outside and try this without any sunscreen whatsoever. Now that's not something I recommend other people do, but I wanted to try it myself to find out what the results would be. The results were rather interesting. I didn't burn at all, but I did see some slight redness on my skin after three hours, which faded later that evening. Remember, this is three hours of intense tropical sunlight with a double dose. I am not a dark-skinned person to begin with, by any means; in fact, I remember growing up as a child, I was always the first one who got sunburned. I was the easiest to get burned of anybody I knew. So here I was in Hawaii, under the tropical sun, getting a double dose of rays, and basically relying on astaxanthin to help protect me from the sun. And it turns out that it worked. Yes, my skin turned a little bit red after three hours, but I took two more astaxanthin and the redness faded that evening, and by the next day, the only result you could see was a slightly darker tan.

So astaxanthin, it seems, functions as a sort of internal sunscreen, a nutritional sunscreen. It helps you increase your resistance to excess sun radiation without having to put on external sunscreen, and as you may know, I certainly don't like external sunscreens because they often contain toxic, cancer-causing chemicals all by themselves.

Most sunscreens, for example, are made with artificial chemical fragrances, and these chemicals are absorbed right through the skin. They go right to the liver, where they cause liver damage, and they tend to function as carcinogens in the human system. So, sunscreen is something that I don't recommend people use. Of course, common sense should prevail here. If you are pale-skinned and not used to getting a lot of sunlight, and you are planning on going hiking and getting six hours of sun on your skin, definitely consider using some natural sunscreen rather than burning yourself to a crisp. I'm just saying using sunscreen on a regular basis is not something I recommend.

Tofu 2 Go

Moving on, I'm also interested in a fairly new product called Pete's Tofu 2 Go. These Tofu 2 Go products are tasty tofu snack products. They come in a variety of flavors, and they have both marinated tofu cubes and a dipping sauce. It kind of reminds me of dipping Chicken McNuggets into that sweet and sour sauce at McDonald's. I don't know if McDonald's still offers that, since I haven't eaten there in probably 7 or 8 years, but I remember growing up I would eat at McDonald's all the time, and one of my favorite items was, of course, the Chicken McNugget items. This new Tofu 2 Go product brings back some of the pleasant memories of chowing down on Chicken McNuggets, but of course, without all the detrimental health effects of actually eating fried, pressed chicken parts.

These tofu products aren't fried, and they don't contain animal protein, of course -- they're made with tofu. But here's the most interesting part about this…they're sold in a nice, full-color plastic wrapper package, so it's the kind of product that looks like it would normally be manufactured with ingredients such as taste enhancers. I would have expected to look at the ingredients label for this product and see something like yeast extract, which is really a code name for monosodium glutamate (MSG), a neurotoxin chemical that overexcites the nerves in the nervous system, causes imbalances in the endocrine system making it very difficult to lose weight, and can cause extreme headaches, mental cloudiness, dizziness, and so on. Unfortunately, a lot of natural products these days contain MSG, hidden as an ingredient called yeast extract.

In fact, there's a product I purchased at Trader Joe's called Kitchen Basics Natural Roasted Vegetable Stock. This was supposed to be a vegetable stock liquid that you would use to make soups, and the ingredients say "natural flavor", with an asterisk. The box says that it's made from corn. Well, it turns out that it also contains free glutamine because the minute I drank this vegetable stock product, I immediately got a severe MSG headache.

Because I have very high body awareness, I know what an MSG headache feels like, and I never get headaches unless it's something that I've eaten. So this product, Kitchen Basics, apparently contains MSG in an ingredient that they call "natural flavor," and yet right on the box it says "No MSG, No Fat, and No Glutens." I think that's a very misleading product, and it's something that people should not purchase.

But at the same time, this Tofu 2 Go didn't have any MSG at all. There's no yeast extract, and even after eating an entire package, I suffered no headache at all, indicating that there was no hidden MSG in this product. I'm sure that was an important product formulation decision made by the manufacturer of Pete's Tofu, and by the way, you can learn more about this product at PetesTofu.com.

Interview with Dr. Elson Haas

Moving on, I'm also excited about an interview I completed with one of the best-known doctor-authors in the industry, Dr. Elson Haas, who's the author of "Healthy Living with the Seasons" and "Healthy Living with Nutrition." He's also known as the detox doc, and he has a new book called "The New Detox Diet," which I strongly recommend everybody pick up, read, and follow.

"The New Detox Diet" strongly supports most of the things I've been talking about here on this website. Most notably, it talks about what ingredients you should avoid. Dr. Haas refers to these ingredients as SNACCs, standing for sugar, nicotine, alcohol, caffeine and chemicals. These are some of the same ingredients I call metabolic disruptors. Dr. Haas talks about how damaging these substances are to human health, and how people can get off of these ingredients in order to experience greatly improved health, clarity of mind, and enhanced immune system function, weight loss, and so on. We'll have some feature articles in the near future about this interview, so you will get to hear more of his thoughts on a variety of topics.

Unsweetened soy protein powders

There's another product I'm talking about called the Unsweetened Simply Natural Spirutein protein powders. You may be familiar with the Spirutein protein powders, because they're quite visible on the shelves of practically every health food store. These powders are made primarily from soy protein and fructose, which is why I'm not excited about the product line in general, as I don't recommend protein powders made with fructose.

However, they now have a line that is unsweetened. They call it the Simply Natural line of Spirutein protein powders, and these are fantastic. The flavors are wonderful, the lineup offers a considerable variety of flavors, and of course there's a little bit of spirulina in these products as well, but not that much, by the way. I think that if any product had much spirulina in it, it would be green, but these Spirutein powders aren't green, indicating that there's really not much spirulina in them.

If you want spirulina, go to any health food store and buy some spirulina powder or capsules. I've been taking a whole lot of spirulina these days, blending in a couple of tablespoons in every breakfast shake, and I feel all the better for it.

But getting back to these Spirutein products, their product line is great if you buy the unsweetened products, because you can sweeten it yourself using stevia. They create a fantastic base for any kind of blend. One of my favorite blends is to buy the Simply Natural Spirutein Peaches and Creme flavor, throw in some soy milk, and a heavy dose of stevia, and a large scoop of spirulina powder. Mix that up and enjoy. It's a delicious drink.

If you want some extra fat, one of the things I do is throw in a raw egg and blend that up, because a raw egg gives you all sorts of fats and oils that are good for you. I can't recommend that everybody else do that, because there is a risk of salmonella poisoning from eating raw eggs, and if you don't have a super-performing immune system, you may find yourself getting sick. Personally, I eat raw eggs all the time and I have never had any problems. In any case, the Unsweetened Simply Natural Spirutein protein powders are definitely on my recommended list.

If you're vegan or just can't stand the thought of swallowing raw eggs, go with macadamia nut oil instead of raw eggs.

Speaking of spirulina, there have been some questions recently about whether it's okay to eat spirulina in huge doses, given how much vitamin A is in the product. People say gee, if you have too much of vitamin A won't you compromise your health in some way? Isn't that dangerous to be eating too much of vitamin A?

There is such a thing as vitamin A toxicity. That's because vitamin A is a fat soluble vitamin, and there have been studies showing the levels of toxicity associated with consuming this. But I think it's very difficult to reach a toxic level of consumption with vitamin A, unless you're taking it as an isolated vitamin. If you go out to the store and buy a vitamin A in capsules or gel caps and start chowing down on that, then sure, you could potentially get an overdose of vitamin A, and before long you're going to start showing toxicity symptoms. But getting vitamin A in a natural form with a natural complementary base of nutrients, like you get in spirulina, is very different. I don't believe there's a very high risk at all of vitamin A toxicity, even if you're chowing down on very large doses of spirulina on a regular basis. And I submit my own experience as a demonstration of that -- I consume large amounts of spirulina, perhaps more than any person I know, and yet I don't show any of the symptoms of vitamin A toxicity at all. But just to be safe, always work with your health care provider before starting any nutritional supplements, including spirulina.

A solution for constipation

In fact, there's one thing I want to mention here for those suffering from constipation or bowel disorders, if you really want to give yourself a helping hand, go out and consume large quantities of spirulina powder on a daily basis, in your breakfast shakes or other fruit shakes. At the same time, get yourself some aloe vera juice or gel, and buy some okra and eat it raw. I found that these three things give your intestinal tract lots of lubrication, and this makes things much easier when it comes time to pass fecal matter. If you're constipated or you're not having at least one or two bowel movements a day, you probably could use some help in this area.

A lot of people turn to fiber, and fiber is fine, because it does get things moving, but it doesn't lubricate the digestive tract. If you want to lubricate, you need these polysaccharides and these lubricating substances found in plants like okra and aloe vera, and even in spirulina. You also need to be drinking plenty of water. If you do all these things together, I guarantee you're going to have a much easier time taking care of your bowel movements on a regular basis.

I know this is an uncomfortable subject for a lot of people, but the fact is, if you have to push when you're going to the bathroom, there's something wrong. A normal, natural bowel movement does not involve pushing at all. It involves sitting down, letting the peristaltic action of your bowels do all the work, and basically passing a large amount of fecal matter in just a few seconds. The feces should be well-formed, in other words it should be solid. It should pass without effort, and it should have a medium-dark color, but not too dark, but more of a medium color, to indicate that it is healthy.

Now, if you're sitting down and actually having to work at creating a bowel movement, if it takes you a lot of pushing and grunting, then there's definitely something wrong. You're not getting enough water in your day, or you're not eating foods that help lubricate the bowels and digestive tract. So make it a point to get more spirulina in your diet, get more okra, get more aloe vera especially, and if you can eat raw aloe vera gel, that's the best of all (don't eat the whole leaf, because the whole leaf contains a bitter orange liquid that can cause diarrhea). You will notice a difference within probably two to three days, and once you notice this difference, you will never go back to the old way. Because hey, if you can do it with less effort, why not do it that way for the rest of your life? Going to the bathroom shouldn't be a cardiovascular workout. It should just be something you do easily and simply and painlessly, in order to get on with your day.

And another point on this, sorry to sidetrack so much, but this important -- if you're not having at least one bowel movement a day, then there's also something wrong. The body was designed to move fecal matter through the system rather quickly, and healthy people will have two to three bowel movements a day. If you're not having at least one a day, you're probably eating far too much red meat, white flour, sugar, fried foods, or other processed or manufactured foods. You're probably not getting enough fiber in your diet.

You might suffer from a calcium deficiency that's affecting the peristaltic action of the smooth muscles in your bowels and large intestine, or from a magnesium deficiency. There could be vitamin B deficiencies involved here, or even vitamin D deficiencies. So to enhance your colon health, it is extremely important to avoid consuming large quantities of red meats and processed foods, while at the same time, making sure you supplement your health with all of those nutritional supplements that you know are good for you. These are the superfoods and the green foods, and things like cod liver oil and plant-derived mineral supplements.

Spry gum with xylitol

Moving along, another product that I am increasingly excited about is called Spry gum. It is something I've mentioned to several people now, and they're chewing on it too. Spry gum is a gum that's sweetened with xylitol, which is of course an alternative sugar replacement product derived from trees. Xylitol looks and tastes just like sugar to you, but in your mouth, xylitol actually inhibits the acid production by bacteria that would normally be working to create cavities in your mouth when they consume sugar.

By chewing on xylitol, you’re actually causing these bacteria in your mouth to tire out and eventually die before they can actually produce acid. See, they think xylitol is sugar, so they go to work on it. But it's not sugar, so they can't metabolize it in the way they would metabolize sugar, and as a result they finally just wear out and die. So, Spry gum actually protects your mouth from cavities. And at the same time, it's a delicious gum to chew, but be sure to get the cinnamon flavor or the spearmint flavor, and avoid some of the other flavors, like fruit flavor, because the flavor fades away in about three seconds in the fruit flavor.

Nature's Way Alive Whole Food Energizer still rocks...

Moving on, I'm still excited about the Alive vitamin supplement that I've been recommending for quite some time. I've noticed this product is increasingly popular these days. The full name Nature's Way Alive Whole Food Energizer.

Recently, I was being illegally frisked and searched by TSA authorities at an airport when they noticed I had all sorts of vitamin supplements in my luggage. They said, "What are those?" I said, "Well, I'm a nutritionist and these are all my vitamin supplements." All of a sudden, I was surrounded by three or four TSA employees who started asking me what supplement they should be taking, because they're looking for a good multivitamin, but they don't know what to take. I told them, "Hey, the only thing you need is this Alive supplement by Nature's Way. That's all you need if you're looking to take one pill." They were really excited to hear about this, so they wrote it down, and they looked like they were going to go out and buy this supplement the very next day.

In any case, if you're not taking Alive supplements today, I strongly recommend that you go out and buy a couple of bottles of them, and start taking them. I continue to be a strong proponent of this nutritional supplement, because it contains so many of the food groups that we know are now beneficial to health. It not only prevents chronic disease in a huge way, but when taken in very large doses as a food, I believe it can even help treat and reverse chronic disease.

Think about what's in it. There’s the green foods blend, with spirulina; there are also amino acids and concentrated powders from garden vegetables, many of which are known to be anti-cancer vegetables; there are also concentrated fruit powders, including fruits that are known to reverse macular degeneration, to lower cholesterol, ward off heart disease and cardiovascular disorders, and even boost immune system function. The Alive supplement also contains concentrated mushroom extracts, digestive enzyme blends, and even healthy fat in the form of omega-3 fatty acids.

This is just a fantastic product. It's almost a product I would have designed if I were going to go out and design a multivitamin product. Of course, I don't make products, nor do I sell them, so I wouldn't be doing that, but if I were, this is probably a similar recipe to what I would design. The only problem people have with the Alive supplement is they don't take enough. They think it's like a pill, so they take one or two a day and call it quits. Well that's nothing; that's like eating one piece of broccoli a day and expecting to see miraculous anti-cancer benefits.

If you're going to be treating this supplement as whole food concentrate, you need to put some serious doses into your body -- several grams a day at least. Some days I will take six or eight of these pills. Remember, these aren't drugs; these are food concentrates; they are food, and your food should be your medicine. This is sort of like eating a lot of fruits and vegetables every day, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing that.

New protein shake from Nature's Way

There's now a protein shake mix offered by Nature's Way that has the exact same name -- the Alive Whole Food Energizer Protein Drink, or something similar. It might be called a meal replacement drink. I've checked this out, as I was quite excited to see this on the shelf, so I immediately went to read the ingredients label, and found that, unfortunately, it is sweetened with fructose. Of course, this protein drink is off my list of recommendations due to the fructose, but I still strongly recommend the whole food vitamins in the nutritional supplement form. So remember, what you're looking for is Nature's Way Alive Whole Food Energizer.

Introducing effervescent compost tea

Due to the popularity of the Alive supplement, Nature's Way recently came out with an effervescent version of the Alive Whole Food Energizer. This is a tablet that you drop into a glass of water, then it fizzes like Alka-Seltzer. I recently picked up a box of these and decided to give them a try.

Let me save you the trouble: these are downright nasty. I'm sorry to say it, because I really love the Nature's Way company, but this effervescent formula tastes sort of like compost tea with an aftertaste of heavy metals. I know it's good for you, but I just couldn't stomach it. And I drink some pretty raunchy-tasting stuff. I'll chug a glass of raw spirulina, or unflavored psyllium husk, or straight chlorella with water. But I dare not drink this effervescent Alive Whole Food Energizer again. It's MUCH easier just to take the tablets.

More research supports nutrition

One of the other things I'm excited about these days is that we're seeing a tremendous amount of research coming out now supporting the main points I've been talking about over the last few years. We're seeing all sorts of new evidence about the dangers of pharmaceuticals, and we've seen new warnings and even outright bans on some of the most popular yet dangerous drugs on the market. That's going to benefit millions of people now who are going to live longer thanks to the fact that they aren't being harmed by these dangerous prescription drugs.

We've seen evidence coming out now finally proving that antidepressants do in fact cause people to commit suicide and commit violent acts. This is something I've been warning people about for years and until recently, most people would look at me with a blank stare when I said antidepressants actually make you commit suicide. Finally the FDA even has acknowledged it, and we're seeing the truth come out.

They can't suppress the truth about these prescription drugs forever. There are eventually so many people harmed by them that the statistics cannot be covered up or denied any longer. Pharmaceutical companies can certainly suppress studies and get drugs approved under questionable "science" to begin with. Then, they can market them and convince an entire population to start taking them, but they can't cover up the real side effects forever. Eventually, after a period of years, the side effects become obvious, and I believe a few years down the road, the same thing is going to happen with statin drugs.

Many prescription drugs cause the symptoms they claim to treat

By the way, it's really interesting to find that these drugs often tend to cause the very same symptoms they are promoted as preventing. The case in point is antidepressant drugs. They're supposed to prevent depression, right? But they actually cause people to commit suicide, so what kind of drug is that? It's causing people to do the very thing the drug is supposed to prevent. Vioxx is another example. When I interviewed Paul Chek the other day, he talked about seeing so many clients who had inflammatory problems (problems with inflammation), and who were on COX-2 inhibitors such as Vioxx. He found that the patients' joint pain and inflammation problems actually became worse once they got on these anti-inflammatory drugs. He described the situation in his own words, stating that these anti-inflammatory drugs cause the very same symptoms they were marketed to prevent.

Prescription drugs often actually cause the very same problems they are designed to suppress or eliminate, and when they're not causing the same problems, they are causing other problems that need other prescription drugs. This creates a chain of prescription drug dependence, and I think one of the best examples of this is statin drugs.

Let’s say a person goes to their doctor with high cholesterol levels. The doctor says, "Well, you've got to be on a statin drug for the rest of your life." So the uninformed, ignorant patient says, "Okay, I'll do anything you say, doc," and then starts taking statin drugs. Statin drugs, of course, interfere with the production of CoQ10 at the cellular level, throughout the body. It interferes with the mitochondria in the cells, and as a result, people suddenly have CoQ10 deficiencies, and they can't manufacture cholesterol the way they used to be able to as well. Suddenly, they are lacking in sex hormones, because sex hormones are manufactured from cholesterol, and now that they are taking statin drugs they can't make cholesterol. So now they have no sex drive left.

Of course, they think this is just an aging problem. They think it's just because they're getting old; they no longer have any sex drive, so what do they do? They go back to the doctor. The doctor says, "Well, you need Viagra." So now they're on statin drugs and Viagra. That's two prescriptions that they've got to take on a regular basis, and who knows what the side effect of Viagra is when consumed over a long period of time?

The point to all of this is that the same guy could have gone to his doctor and said, "Doc, my cholesterol is too high," and then the doctor could have said, "Well, all you need to do is eat some blueberries and stop consuming hydrogenated oils and trans fats in your foods. That's all you need to do. Your cholesterol is going to come down naturally." And the guy would say, "Oh, okay I can do that. I can eat blueberries. I can avoid foods made with hydrogenated oils. I can do that." And if the patient was sent home with that advice, the doctor probably never see the patient about the cholesterol problem again, because the cholesterol problem would disappear. They don't need prescription drugs.

Let your food be your medicine

The truth is all starting to come out now about this. The research is supporting what I've been saying all along. We've seen all sorts of research coming out now supporting the good news about feeding your body right. We're seeing a lot of information about vitamin D supplementation with cod liver oil. We're seeing research on herbs like turmeric, now being shown to be a strong anti-cancer herb and something that boosts immune system function. We're learning how cinnamon can control blood sugar levels in diabetics. We're learning about the super healing powers of fruits such as blueberries and raspberries. We're seeing more research on garlic and how garlic can prevent cancer. We're also seeing research on ginseng and how ginseng extracts prevent colds and flus during the flu season. The list goes on and on.

Research is finally starting to show that diseases are not only prevented, but in many cases reversed, by consuming foods as medicine. And that's good news, because that's the kind of research that empowers people. It gives people options to taking prescription drugs and undergoing radical therapies such as chemotherapy.

So the big news in all of this is that it's all coming out, but it's just taking time. And it leads me to the conclusion that the things I am writing about today, the information you get from the books I write or on this website, is the information that will be considered common sense maybe ten years from now. When all of this is proven, when medicine has been revolutionized, and when the dangerous side effects of prescription drugs are finally fully realized and acknowledged, you're going to see the whole population turning to foods and natural substances as their medicines.

Don't wait around for organized medicine to catch up

Ten years from now, it's going to be a very different landscape, and a lot of people want to wait around for the evidence to actually come out and prove every single thing about food, herbs, and nature before they're going to do it. Well, that's fine for them, but it's going to take ten years or longer for that information to come out.

The good news is that you don't have to wait. You can trust in nature and your body's innate healing ability right now. You don't have to have scientific evidence that blueberries are going to reduce cholesterol in order to actually eat blueberries and receive the beneficial effects. You don't have to wait for the good news about salmon oil and how it enhances cardiovascular health in order to eat salmon. You could have been eating salmon 10 years before this evidence came out, and you would still get the benefits, even though the science wasn't there yet.

And there are all sorts of things that the science isn't available on yet. Some of these include seaweed extracts. Sea vegetables have potent anti-cancer properties. There's one called fucoidan which is extracted from marine plants and seaweeds, and I think it will someday be proven as a very strong anti-cancer agent. I also think there's a lot more research that's going to come out about the beneficial effects of eating raw berries such as blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries, not to mention the superfruits such as acai, goji berries, and the like.

Plants are natural pharmaceutical factories

In the near future, we're going to see a lot more research about the importance of eating live foods – that is, foods right off the vine -- versus cooked foods. I think someday there will be an element discovered that is in live foods but missing in foods that have been taken away from the vine for several days. The closer you can get to the garden (the shorter the time between picking a fruit or a vegetable and consuming it), the better it is for your health. I think there's some currently undetectable, unquantifiable element in live foods that is so beneficial for human health, and yet is completely underestimated and not even acknowledged by modern science.

And I think it's also fascinating to remember that plants are pharmaceutical factories built by nature. They are living miracles. By absorbing sunlight, taking carbon dioxide out of the air, and pulling nutrients from the soil, they use a genetic blueprint to manufacture foods that actually reverse disease in the human body. I find that absolutely amazing, and I think that households in the future will all be engaged in growing these health-enhancing fruits and vegetables using aeroponic systems in order to enhance their health.

I think every family that can afford one will have a growing unit right in their house, and they will be pulling berries right off the vine and eating those, and they will be grabbing zucchini or okra or tomatoes right off the vine -- right in this growing unit -- and eating those raw. That's how people are going to stay healthy in the future, not by downing a dozen meds every day.

Nature really has provided everything that you as a human being need to live, and once again, you don't have to wait around for science to catch up to nature. Science is never going to have all the answers to this stuff. They're never going to be able to research every single phytochemical, every phytonutrient in the world. Even if they did somehow manage to catalog everything that they knew about, there would be a whole new discovery of energetic elements.

The homeopathy of plants

There's something I call the homeopathy of plants. Homeopathic medicine is something that has now been proven to be scientifically verifiable. Water has memory, and if you consume water that has been energized with the right elements, it can have a physiological effect on your body.

Plants are also made primarily with water, so the water in the plant has homeopathic properties as well. The question is what the homeopathic properties of the water in the plants are. If you eat a bowl of grapes, you're consuming not only the grape skin, grape fiber, grape sugars, the phytochemicals, and the phytonutrients, you're also consuming water in the grape, and that water has the vibration of a grape. There's a whole new universe to explore here of what I call vibrational nutrition, or the homeopathy of plants.

Modern science hasn't even scratched the surface on this. There could be a whole new school of vibrational nutrition that looks at the different characteristics and vibrations of different plants as they come out of the garden. The vibration of water from grapes is probably very different than the vibration of water from a zucchini plant, or water from a tomato plant. And there are important questions here, such as how that vibration is altered based on the farming practices. If someone is a corporate farmer so he's only interested in profit and greed, how does that change the homeopathic water properties of the water in the plants, versus a small, organic farmer who loves his plants, and who brings joy and happiness to his garden each and every day? Because honestly, I think those two plants are entirely different, and I think they have a different effect on the human body. If you eat a happy grape, that's going to give you a much different health effect than eating a greedy grape, so to speak.

So these are things that we're only beginning to explore right now in terms of nutritional science. Frankly, most doctors don't even understand the basics of chemical nutrition, and wouldn't even acknowledge that vibrational nutrition exists at all. But this is what's coming down the road. This is an area I'm going to be increasingly looking at and bringing information to you on, as I find out what's relevant. This is something that is going to be common sense fifty years from now. Everybody's going to understand that water has memory, and that what goes into the water and into the plants is very, very important for human health.

In fact, if you want to make all food healthier, set up prayer stations where people of all sorts of different religions and spiritual backgrounds either meditate or pray over the food as it passes by them on its way out to the grocery stores. By praying over the foods, you alter the memory of the water in those foods. You make those foods happier, more balanced, and more calming. If you actually had prayer stations with volunteers who would come in and pray or meditate over the foods, you could actually enhance the health and vibrancy of the entire human population without having to add a single ingredient to the products.

That's the future of medicine. See, when Hippocrates said let your food be your medicine, he probably had no idea that he was talking about something that existed at many, many levels. It's not just physical; it's not just chemical; it's also energetic, and that's the future of food.

Stick around. It's going to get really interesting.