Alicia Priest, Today’s Vancouver Woman |

From the perspective of the status quo, it was the kind of “news” that’s best ignored. So that’s exactly what most newspapers, radio, and TV outlets did—even though the revelation appeared in a respected, peer-reviewed science journal and the subject concerned the health of millions of children and young adults.

In March [2005], the journal Pediatrics published an article titled “Calcium, Dairy Products, and Bone Health in Children and Young Adults: A Re-evaluation of the Evidence.” The scientists who did the review belong to the Washington, D.C.–based organization Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. PCRM members are often dismissively referred to as animal-rights advocates. They de-scribe themselves as “doctors and laypersons working together for compassionate and effective medical practice, research, and health promotion.”

However you view them, you can’t knock their methodology. The scientists examined 58 published studies on the relationship between calcium, dairy products, and bone health. After excluding studies that did not control for exercise, weight, puberty, or vitamin D—all things that influence bones—they concluded that there is “scant evidence” that dairy products promote bone health in children

That conclusion contradicts everything we’re told about cow juice, first by our mothers and then by the government and dairy industry. Milk is listed as one of the four basic food groups by the Canada Food Guide, which recommends that teens have three to four milk servings a day, adults two to three. The U.S. government recently boosted its milk recommendation from two cups to three cups a day for everyone above age nine.

Milk is touted as Mother Nature’s near-perfect food. Indeed, the current B.C. Dairy Foundation ad campaign—aimed at kids and teens—features a thawed-out caveman who now drinks milk. Why? “Because, of course,” the ad says, “it’s always been survival of the fittest.” (The ads, found at drinkmilk.ca, are very clever and screamingly funny.)

But, you’ve got to wonder if milk is really essential. Physical activity and vitamin D are just as critical to building bones as calcium is. True, there are few food sources for vitamin D and it is added to milk. The main source, however, is the sun on our skin, a good reason to spend some time outdoors every day, preferably half-naked. (See Loving the Sun)

Being active and being outdoors could partially explain what’s known as the calcium paradox. That’s the puzzle of why societies that consume the most dairy also have the highest rates of osteoporosis and broken bones. People in Asia, for instance, drink almost no milk and have a very low incidence of bone fractures.

Dr. T. Colin Campbell is professor of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University. He headed a massive epidemiological study of the traditional Chinese diet, disease, and lifestyle called “The China Project.” From 1983 to 1990, Cornell researchers visited more than 10,000 people in 130 villages across China from the southern coast to the Gobi desert. They found a population that relied on plant-based sources such as vegetables and whole grains for their calcium. The populations also had much less heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity than North Americans. (See Campbell’s recent book, The China Study: the Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted.

“Dairy consumption in China was essentially zero for most of their history,” Campbell says during an interview from Ithaca, New York. “And, of course, according to the dogma and the assumptions that we have in the West, we would assume that, if dairy consumption is not high enough, we’re going to run the risk of osteoporosis. It certainly is not true.”

And then there’s the argument that humans, like other animals, were never designed to drink milk—especially from another species—after they’d finished their mothers’ milk. If your ancestors came from Great Britain, Scandinavia, France, Germany, or the Netherlands, you likely can drink cow milk without an unpleasant reaction. If they came from Eastern Europe, Russia, Greece, Italy, or another Mediterranean country, you may or may not be able to. But if they come from just about anywhere else on the globe, chances are you can’t consume dairy without a loud protest from your body. People who are lactose intolerant lack the enzyme needed to digest milk. Symptoms of lactose intolerance include cramping, bloating, gas, stomach pain, and diarrhea.

A few years ago, scientists identified the gene responsible for lactose intolerance. Because it is found in all lactose-intolerant people across distant ethnic groups, they deduced that it is a very old gene and is, in fact, the original form. When humans migrated north and started milking cows as a survival strategy 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, the gene mutated to allow them to digest milk.

Lactose intolerance is the biological norm. No caveman ever touched cow milk.

healingarts | April 7, 2011 |

Paul Krugman | NYTimes

The obvious model for those hoping to reverse the fattening of America is the campaign against smoking. Before the surgeon general officially condemned smoking in 1964, rising cigarette consumption seemed an unstoppable trend; since then, consumption per capita has fallen more than 50 percent.

But it may be hard to match that success when it comes to obesity. I’m not talking about the inherent difficulty of the task – getting people to consume fewer calories and/or exercise more may be harder than getting people to stop smoking, but we won’t know until we try. I’m talking, instead, about how the political winds have shifted.

Public health activists were successful in taking on smoking in part because at the time corporations didn’t know how to play the public opinion game. By today’s standards, the political ineptitude of Big Tobacco was awe-inspiring. In a famous 1971 interview on “Face the Nation,” the chairman of the board of Philip Morris, confronted with evidence that smoking by mothers leads to low birth weight, replied, “Some women would prefer having smaller babies.”

Today’s food industry would never make that kind of mistake. In public, the industry’s companies proclaim themselves good guys, committed to healthier eating. Meanwhile, they outsource the campaigns against medical researchers and the dissemination of crude anti-anti-obesity propaganda to industry-financed advocacy groups like the Center for Consumer Freedom.

More broadly, the ideological landscape has changed drastically since the 1960′s. (That change in the landscape also has a lot to do with corporate financing of advocacy groups, but that’s a tale for another article.) In today’s America, proposals to do something about rising obesity rates must contend with a public predisposed to believe that the market is always right and that the government always screws things up.

You can see these predispositions at work in an article printed last month in Amber Waves, a magazine published by the Department of Agriculture. The article is titled “Obesity Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences,” suggesting that government efforts to combat obesity are likely to be counterproductive. But the authors don’t actually provide any examples of how that might happen.

And the authors suggest, without quite asserting it, that because people freely choose obesity in a free market, it must be a good thing.

“Americans’ rapid weight gain may have nothing to do with market failure,” the article says. “It may be a rational response to changing technology and prices. … If consumers willingly trade off increased adiposity for working indoors and spending less time in the kitchen as well as for manageable weight-related health problems, then markets are not failing.”

How can medical experts who see obesity as a critical problem deal with an ideological landscape tilted in the direction of doing nothing?

One answer is to focus on the financial costs of obesity, and the fact that many of these costs fall on taxpayers and on the general insurance-buying public, rather than on the obese individuals themselves. (To their credit, the authors of the Amber Waves article do mention this issue, although they play it down.)

It is more important, however, to emphasize that there are situations in which “free to choose” is all wrong – and that this is one of them.

For one thing, the most rapid rise in obesity isn’t taking place among adults, who, we hope, can understand the consequences of their decisions. It’s taking place among children and adolescents.

And even if children weren’t a big part of the problem, only a blind ideologue or an economist could argue with a straight face that Americans were rationally deciding to become obese. In fact, even many economists know better: the most widely cited recent economic analysis of obesity, a 2003 paper by David Cutler, Edward Glaeser and Jesse Shapiro of Harvard University, declares that “at least some food consumption is almost certainly not rational.” It goes on to present evidence that even adults have clear problems with self-control.

Above all, we need to put aside our anti-government prejudices and realize that the history of government interventions on behalf of public health, from the construction of sewer systems to the campaign against smoking, is one of consistent, life-enhancing success. Obesity is America’s fastest-growing health problem; let’s do something about it.

healingarts | July 8, 2005 |

Paul Krugman | NYTimes

The Center for Consumer Freedom, an advocacy group financed by Coca-Cola, Wendy’s and Tyson Foods, among others, has a Fourth of July message for you: worrying about the rapid rise in American obesity is unpatriotic.

“Far too few Americans,” declares the center’s Web site, “remember that the Founding Fathers, authors of modern liberty, greatly enjoyed their food and drink. … Now it seems that food liberty – just one of the many important areas of personal choice fought for by the original American patriots – is constantly under attack.”

It sounds like a parody, but don’t laugh. These people are blocking efforts to help America’s children.

I’ve been looking into the issues surrounding obesity because it plays an important role in health care costs. According to a study recently published in the journal Health Affairs, the extra costs associated with caring for the obese rose from 2 percent of total private insurance spending in 1987 to 11.6 percent in 2002. The study didn’t cover Medicare and Medicaid, but it’s a good bet that obesity-related expenses are an important factor in the rising costs of taxpayer-financed programs, too. Fat is a fiscal issue.

But it’s also, alas, a partisan issue.

First, let’s talk about what isn’t in dispute: around 1980, Americans started getting rapidly fatter.

Some pundits still dismiss American pudge as a benign “affliction of affluence,” a sign that people can afford to eat tasty foods, drive cars and avoid hard physical labor. But all of that was already true by 1980, which is roughly when Americans really started losing the battle of the bulge.

The great majority of us (yes, me too) are now overweight, and the percentage of adults considered obese has doubled, to more than 30 percent. Most alarmingly, obesity, once rare among the young, has become common among adolescents, and even among children.

Is that a bad thing? Well, obesity clearly increases the risks of heart disease, diabetes, back problems and more. And the cost of treating these weight-related diseases is an important factor in rising health care spending.

So there is, understandably, a movement to do something about rising obesity, especially among the young. Bills that would require schools to serve healthier lunches, remove vending machines selling sweets and soda, and so on have been introduced in a number of state legislatures. By the way, Britain – with the second-highest obesity among advanced countries – has introduced stringent new guidelines on school meals.

But even these mild steps have run into fierce opposition from conservatives. Why?

In part, this is yet another red-blue cultural conflict. On average, people living outside metropolitan areas are heavier than urban or suburban residents, and people in the South and Midwest are heavier than those on the coasts. So it’s all too easy for worries about America’s weight to come off as cultural elitism.

More important, however, is the role of the food industry. The debate over obesity, it turns out, is a lot like the debate over global warming. In both cases, major companies protect their profits not only by lobbying against policies they don’t like, but also by financing advocacy groups devoted to debunking research whose conclusions they don’t like.

The pro-obesity forces – or, if you prefer, the anti-anti-obesity forces – make their case in part by claiming that America’s weight gain does no harm. There was much glee on the right when a new study, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, appeared to reject the conventional view that obesity has a large negative effect on life expectancy.

But as officials from the C.D.C. have pointed out, mortality isn’t the only measure of health. There’s no question that obesity plays an important role in many diseases that diminish the quality of life and, crucially, require expensive treatment.

The growing availability of such treatment probably explains why the strong relationship between obesity and mortality visible in data from the 1970′s has weakened. But the cost of treating the obese is helping to break the back of our health care system.

So what can we do?

The first step is to recognize the industry-financed campaign against doing anything for the cynical exercise it is. Remember, nobody is proposing that adult Americans be prevented from eating whatever they want. The question is whether big companies will have a free hand in their efforts to get children into the habit of eating food that’s bad for them.

healingarts | July 4, 2005 |

Kelly Hearn | COMMON GROUND

Psssst, summer’s coming, so it’s time to study up on sunscreens.

There are debates swirling about the health impacts of sunscreens. What’s up with that? Are some safer than others? How should sunscreens be used? Or should we just stick to the shade?

The key is balance and, importantly, avoiding the wrong sunscreens.

Plans vary. But fortunately there are resources and tips to help.

Smart sunning requires finding that level of exposure that gives our body the sun-derived Vitamin D it needs while avoiding three types of skin cancer: melanoma, squamous cell and basal cell.

First off, we have to recognize that vitamin D is a key nutrient the body needs to fight a variety of diseases such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, high blood pressure and some forms of cancers. And experts say a surprising number of people lack Vitamin D. So, generally speaking (and there are always exceptions) we do need some sun … sans sunscreen.

Calculated Sun Time

With that in mind, what are the sunscreen rules?

Michael F. Holick, Ph.D., M.D., has been researching this and discusses it in his book, The UV Advantage. Holick, who’s also professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics at Boston University School of Medicine, says more than 120 peer-reviewed studies demonstrate that moderate exposure to UV (that’s ultraviolet) light will give the body the vitamin D it needs without significant skin damage.

Holick says that slathering SPF 15 sunscreen all over your body (about one ounce) prevents its ability to make vitamin D by 95 percent. For that reason, he says everyone needs a little unprotected time in the sun, depending on the latitude, time of day, season and degree of skin pigmentation. His book offers tables for knowing how much to get but, he says, there’s a rule of thumb: Typically for very light skin Caucasians — who will get mild pinkness after a half-hour in the sun — he recommends only a fraction of that, some five to 12 minutes, two to three times a week. After that, with a base tan built up, he says, the fair skinned can stay in the sun about twice that time. Then bring on the hats and sunscreen. Those of you with darker skin extrapolate accordingly (or buy his book).

Toni Bark, M.D., medical director for the Center for Disease Prevention and Reversal in Chicago, recommends if you’re going to be in the sun, start your day by putting antioxidant vitamin lotions on your exposed skin. “Many studies have shown vitamins C and E to be protective against cellular damage caused by either the sun or free radicals in general,” she says.

As an avid hiker and skier of sunny slopes, the doctor, 45, swears by her personal program that includes, first thing in the morning, using a lotion with 20 percent vitamin C if she’s going to be outside. With that, she mixes pure vitamin E oil, putting it on the parts of her body that will be exposed to sun. She’ll do her time in the sun without sunscreen and then apply it. All the while, giving her body the protective “force field” of the antioxidants, vitamins C and E.

Absorb or Block Those Rays?

When shopping for a sunscreen, experts say consumers should buy broad-spectrum products that block both UVB and UVA rays. And, this is where it starts to get dicey … know your sunscreens!

Importantly, Bark says, sunscreens are lumped into two categories, the chemical types and the physical or mechanical types. Chemical sunscreens, she says, generally absorb UVB radiation, the so-called “burning rays” of the sun and then disperse that energy through chemical reactions generating those maverick “free radicals” that rust our cells from the inside out. “There has been a growing body of evidence that this free radical formation causes DNA damage and or breakage,” she advises. (Some sunscreen brands are better than others; we’ll get to that.)

In contrast, says Bark, physical or mechanical sunscreens — notably called sun blocks — come in the old-fashioned form of titanium dioxide and zinc oxide, white creams that reflect radiation rather than absorb it. As founder of Plan-It-Green and Apothecare, companies that sell healthy, enviro-friendly products, the physical sunscreens are Bark’s favorite form of sun protection.

Even so, the problem for sunscreen makers is that the white stuff wears like clown make-up (not always a popular look) so companies have shrunk the molecules to eliminate the problem. “But this was done at the expense of toxicity,” Bark notes, “and these smaller-molecule physical sunscreens have been shown to cause some DNA damage as well.” So if you use the mechanical sun blocks, maybe start a beach trend and wear the Bozo make-up (she says it does come in different fun colors!).

The Dark Side of Sunscreens

Manufacturers use a confusing mix of chemicals to make sunscreens. But the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a frequently cited watchdog organization, has authored a report to help us know what’s, ahem, getting under our skin.

In a remarkable interactive database, entitled Skin Deep (see info box), EWG offers a safety assessment of 166 sunscreens and tanning oils. The report, which contains info about specific products, found that:

• 80 of the reviewed products may pose cancer risks.
• 11 contain ingredients that damage the skin and may increase risk of skin cancer.
• 52 products contain ingredients that may contain impurities linked to breast cancer.

To help consumers get wise, the EWG has also flagged 10 products it says carry the highest potential danger. Topping the list is “Murad APS Oil-Free Sunblock Sheer Tint” containing a cocktail of questionable chemicals, including triethanolamine, which EWG says may form cancer-causing nitrosamines when rubbed into the skin. In fact, six of the 10 products identified as those “you may want to avoid” contain triethanolamine, including Banana Boat and Coppertone products marketed for kids.

Complicating matters, the report says many sunscreens contain chemicals that have not been assessed for safety. For example, the Banana Boat product, “Baby Magic Sunblock Spray, SPF 48” ranked high for potential health dangers, containing 16 unstudied chemicals.

So know what you’re getting and seek out the least questionable products. The EWG helps by listing what it says are “Better Choices.” Ironically, both Coppertone (Sport Sunblock Gel, SPF 30) and Banana Boat (Protective Tanning Oil Sunscreen, SPF 15) have products on this list as well. Among natural-products companies, Jason and the French company Mustela make the grade.

It’s important to remember that health data is very limited on many of the chemicals used in sunscreens (and other personal care products). Think of groups like EWG as erring on the side of caution, calling attention to the fact that ill-understood and potentially harmful chemicals may present cumulative health impacts after consistent, long-term use—not single applications.

Kelly Hearn writes from and suns himself in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

healingarts | June 20, 2005 |

Elaina Love | CommonGround

Many of us suffer from food sensitivities and allergies and without recognizing the symptoms or the cause. Because food is so essential to our physical, mental, and emotional well being, it affects our entire way of life when these sensitivities develop. Physical reactions to food sensitivities can be as mild as hot feet and as severe as depression or anaphylactic shock. Sometimes people to deal with the symptoms with pharmaceuticals, pills, herbs, and even surgery. While these may provide a temporary “fix” for the problem, you can never be truly healthy unless you find out why your body is doing what it is doing.

Before discovering my own food allergies, I was cranky, had severe eczema, painful PMS that lasted for days, and other debilitating physical and emotional pain including arthritis, fatigue and depression. I thought it was just something I had to live with. I had no idea that I had the power to cure myself.

Ninety percent of all food allergies can be attributed to these foods: dairy products, soy, shellfish, wheat, tree nuts, peanuts, egg whites.

To find out if you are reacting to certain foods, you can either get a blood test (it can cost $500 or more); or you can do your own research by eliminating the suspect foods from your diet for a week, then reintroducing them one at a time and noticing any reactions.

After I determined which foods I was allergic to, I had some decisions to make. I could either choose to keep eating those foods and live with the symptoms, or decide my health and well-being were more important. In my case, the offending foods were wheat, eggs, dairy and soy. Because I was a vegetarian who ate meat substitutes which were made with wheat, dairy or soy, my food choices appeared to be severely limited. I began making recipes from allergy-free cookbooks, and I looked for prepared and packaged foods that were allergen- free. While meticulously reading the labels, looking for the offending ingredients, I found that wheat, eggs and dairy are common ingredients in countless numbers of packaged foods. Even soy sauce and licorice contain wheat!

I also discovered a book on intestinal cleansing. It contained testimonials that inspired me to try an intestinal cleanse for myself. After a month, I had an amazing increase in my energy and many of my previous symptoms vanished. During the cleansing process, I discovered the surprising health benefits of raw, living foods made from a base of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. It was the answer to my prayers. Not only did these newly discovered recipes contain none of my reactive foods, they were also so satisfying that they quickly replaced the old “comfort foods.” I completely transformed my diet and lifestyle. It is exciting to eat comforting foods knowing that they not only make me feel good but they are also highly nutritious.

After completing several cleanses and eating primarily raw, living foods, I am now able to eat foods to which I was previously allergic. I will never go back to my previous eating habits though because grains and starches make me tired and slow me down, and dairy products make me feel bloated and stuffed.

On a diet consisting of mostly raw, living foods, I have increased energy, and I look and feel better.

Elaina Love, a professional chef and instructor, writes about food. For more of her recipes, visit www.purejoylivingfoods.com

healingarts | May 27, 2005 |

Kelly Hearn | Conscious Choice

It’s everywhere and here’s why limiting your kids’ exposure makes good health sense.

For five decades, fluoride has been pitched as insurance against mottled teeth, a prerequisite for a healthy smile, a trophy for modern preventive medicine. But as the chemical has been added to drinking water and ingested by millions of Americans each day, scientists and activists are warning that both adults — and kids in particular — are getting far too much fluoride, translating to potentially severe health problems.

Mainstream medical associations, corporations and the U.S. government have invested money and reputation trumpeting the benefits of water fluoridation programs, saying community water fluoridation is an equitable, cost-effective way to prevent dental cavities, especially for poor children. Opponents say spiked water supplies combined with a sea of fluoride-containing products like toothpastes, gels and rinses are delivering large and harmful exposures — and kids are getting the brunt of it.

J. William Hirzy, a fluoride expert and chemist in residence at the American University in Washington, D.C., is one in a list of established scientists who oppose community fluoridation programs. Hirzy is disturbed that fluoride is added to municipal drinking water supplies at a level far greater than what nature delivers. “Human breast milk has about 1/100th the level of fluoride that so-called optimally fluoridated water has,” says Hirzy. “If Mother Nature had intended for human beings to get fluoride at that level, the human breast would have accommodated [it].”

This is where the effectiveness of fluoride in preventing cavities clashes with numerous health concerns about ingestion of the chemical. It’s generally accepted that limited amounts of fluoride prevent cavities but few realize the potential dangers that lurk with overexposure — or, as some call it, toxicity.

“It is now the consensus view of the dental research community that fluoride’s primary benefit to teeth comes from topical application to the exterior of teeth, not from ingestion through the water supply,” says Michael Connett, project director of the Fluoride Action Network, a Burlington, Vermont-based watchdog group. “Since … the risks are primarily from ingestion … adding fluoride to the nation’s water — and thereby to the bulk of the nation’s processed food — is not a good way of minimizing ingestion of fluoride.”

Hardest on the Kids

There are growing worries about fluoride’s effect on children’s behavior and other neurological functions. A 1995 study conducted by a leading neurotoxicologist, Phyllis Mullenix, Ph.D., and published in the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology showed that baby rats — depending on when they were exposed to fluoride dosages similar to what human children receive — exhibited hyper- and hypo-activity. Some scientists believe this could be a link to the widespread problem of hyperactivity in many kids.

Mullenix, who formerly conducted research at Harvard’s Children’s Hospital, reported impacts on the central nervous system that flagged fluoride as having the potential to cause motor dysfunction, IQ deficits and/or learning disabilities in humans. Moreover, her work found traces of fluoride in the animals’ brains, which also contradicted the widely held assumption that fluoride does not cross the blood-brain barrier. Her findings upset the toothpaste industry and fluoridation supporters, she says, and eventually cost her her job at Forsyth Dental Center, which historically supported systematic fluoridation.

Fluoride toxicity is also fingered as a cause of thyroid dysfunction, especially that of underactive thyroid, termed hypothyroidism, a widespread medical condition that can cause fatigue, weight gain, cramps and a slow heart rate. In the mid-1900s minute doses of fluoride were used to correct overactive thyroid function. This has not escaped the observation of Hirzy, the chemist, who says the amount of fluoride most of us are exposed to in drinking water, processed foods and dental products is far beyond doses used to suppress an overactive thyroid. He theorizes that currently accepted fluoridation levels in water systems could slow thyroid functioning, leading to hypothyroidism.

Clearly, health issues linked to fluoride toxicity and the science behind it are controversial. But less disputed is the fact that fluoride overexposure, from water and personal care products, causes dental fluorosis — the mottling of teeth. The Journal of Public Health Dentistry (2002) found that dental fluorosis has increased in the U.S. and Canada over the last three decades in communities with and without fluoridated water.

In two other studies published in 1999, the same Public Health Dentistry journal noted that some children exceed the total daily fluoride ingestion simply by using toothpaste alone. (Age and body weight dictate an appropriate amount of fluoride needed to prevent cavities — see info box). In the second study, it found that more than 50 percent of infants are currently formula fed by one month of age, and, because of fluoride in the formula, they “are likely to be continuously exposed to high intakes of it for 9 or 10 months …”

Other research points to specific food products increasing risk of fluorosis. The Journal of the American Dental Association (1996) presented data suggesting that young children who drink substantial quantities of juice “possibly should not receive dietary fluoride supplements, since they might be at increased risk of developing dental fluorosis.” Another of its articles (1997) found high-fluoride-content chicken in infant food.

Yet other research, a 2001 study by Oregon State University, showed that foods made with mechanically separated chicken contribute to fluoride intake, reporting that infant foods had the highest amounts of fluoride, followed by packaged chicken sticks, luncheon and canned meats. The study’s authors concluded “a single serving of chicken sticks alone provides roughly half of a child’s upper limit of safety for fluoride.” This is because fluoride gets stored in animals’ bones and teeth, and some industrial deboning methods can leave residual pieces of both in the food.

Additionally, ingesting fluoride happens in a variety of other ways. Many pesticides sprayed on vegetables contain fluoride; sodas are made with fluoridated water. Tea leaves accumulate fluoride from water and soil.

Connett, of the Fluoride Action Network, and other activists point to the fact that countries in Western Europe which do not fluoridate water have shown the same decline in tooth decay as the U.S. and currently have the same low levels of childhood tooth decay. The fact that Europeans can independently choose their fluoride exposure — by using products such as fluoridated toothpaste (or not) makes activists like Connett wonder aloud, “If Europe can do the job with individual fluoride products, then why can’t we do the same here?”

Most people are surprised to learn that the chemicals used to fluoridate water — hexafluorosilicic acid and its sodium salt — are actually waste materials taken from pollution scrubbers used in the phosphate fertilizer industry. Fluoridation critics allege that corporate coziness with government has turned North America’s public water systems into toxic dumping grounds for industrial pollutants. Investigative journalist Christopher Bryson, author of The Fluoride Deception, documents how fluoridation of water is linked to multiple layers of conspiracies and fraud within the military-industrial complex. Hence, the political will to mirror Europe may grow as anti-fluoridation opponents spread information. In fact, more than 60 U.S. communities have rejected water fluoridation since 1999.

Kelly Hearn is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C. and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

healingarts | May 25, 2005 |

Morgan Spurlock, from Don’t Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America

Every waking moment of our lives, we swim in an ocean of advertising, all of it telling us the same thing: consume, consume. And then consume some more. The epidemic of overconsumption begins with the things we put in our mouths. The United States is the fattest nation on earth. Sixty-five per cent of American adults are overweight; 30 per cent are obese. In the decade between 1991 and 2001, obesity figures almost doubled.

But the truly shocking thing is that we’ve taught our kids how to be fat, too. Obesity rates in American children remained stable throughout the 1960s, but they began to climb in the 1970s. In the past 20 years, the rate of obesity has doubled in children and trebled in teenagers. Kids are starting to clock in as obese as early as the age of two. If we find that surprising, we shouldn’t.

During the McMonth I endured for Super Size Me, in which I ate every meal at McDonald’s, every day – taking up the option to have a Supersize portion whenever I was offered it – I couldn’t get over how many kids there were in the restaurants almost any time that I walked in. Children with their parents. Gaggles of them stopping off for breakfast or for a pre-dinner snack in their cute little school uniforms. Kids in all the play areas. Kids as little as three and four having Happy Meal McBirthday parties. Or, in a McDonald’s in Houston, at 9am, a mother with her two very overweight kids who, having just finished their fat-filled breakfasts, were now eating hot fudge sundaes.

Ray Kroc, the man behind the McDonald’s empire, understood from Day McOne that youngsters were his target market. He had no sooner bought the company from the McDonald brothers than Ronald McDonald was brought in to attract the kiddies to the burgers and shakes.

The first Ronald was the TV weatherman Willard Scott in his younger, but apparently not leaner, days. Scott had been doing Bozo the Clown on local television. When the show was canceled, an enterprising McDonald’s franchisee asked him to come up with a clown figure that would lure the kids into the restaurant. Kroc saw it, liked it and extended the idea to the whole country.

But first he canned Scott. Kroc understood the negative publicity implications of an icon who looks as though he’s been eating too much of the company’s food. To this day you’ll never see Ronald McDonald eating the food; not in any commercial. He dances and sings, grins and giggles, and smiles at the kids while they stuff their faces, but he never touches the grub. Why? Presumably because, as the late Eazy-E said in the song “The Dopeman”: “Don’t get high off your own supply.”

Kroc also understood the value of promoting McDonald’s as a caring, family-friendly sort of place, a place with a heart, not heart disease. Early on, he began linking McDonald’s with various children’s charities. One executive told John F Love, author of McDonald’s: Behind the Arches: “It was an inexpensive, imaginative way of getting your name before the public and building a reputation to offset the image of selling 15-cent hamburgers. It was probably 99 per cent commercial.”

Thus the Ronald McDonald House Charities were born. They have now provided housing (and McMeals) for the families of more than two million seriously ill children. Never mind the fact that today an increasing number of children are going into hospital because of eating-related illnesses.

Talking of which, one of the most shocking things I saw during my McMonth was a McDonald’s in Texas Children’s Hospital – a hospital that is now stapling obese children’s stomachs. To me, that seemed utterly irresponsible, a flagrant violation of the doctor’s pledge of “Primum non nocere” (First, do no harm). In fact, hospitals across the US have fast-food franchises in them. The top-ranked pediatric hospital in the country, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, has a McDonald’s outlet. Why shouldn’t there be one in Houston?

Recently, a combination of good information and bad publicity has encouraged some hospitals to reconsider their food-service contracts. But Ronald won’t always leave without a fight. The Cleveland Clinic, for example, wants to rid America’s leading heart hospital of its McDonald’s. But according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer of 22 November last year, the clinic’s chief executive, Dr Toby Cosgrove, received a letter from a McDonald’s corporate vice-president called Marty Ranft, which “defended the franchise, and vowed … that ‘McDonald’s has no intention of terminating’ the remaining 10 years on its lease”.

The doctors at Texas Children’s Hospital told me they had young patients who were dying of cancer, and it was hard to get them to eat anything. At least these poor kids would eat some fries, take a bite of a burger: food they were familiar with. It was junk that they had been eating all their lives.

But it’s not enough to get young people to come to your restaurants; you have to get them to keep on coming back. McDonald’s operates something like 8,000 Playlands around America. They’re especially attractive to children in neighborhoods in which playgrounds are scarce. Burger King has about 3,200 of its own. Then there’s the Happy Meal, launched in the US in 1979. It cost a buck in those days. Inside a cardboard box with a circus theme, children found a McDoodler stencil, a puzzle book, a McWrist wallet, an ID bracelet and McDonaldland character erasers.

The meal-plus-toys packaging proved to be an instant hit, with the first Star Trek Happy Meals that very year. Soon, toy versions of all your favorite McDonald’s mascots were included: Ronald, Grimace, Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese, Big Mac, Birdie and Captain Crook. Later, toys would be themed for tie-ins with brands and films such as Barbie, Hot Wheels, The Little Mermaid, Finding Nemo and so on. By 2003, Happy Meals accounted for about 20 per cent of all meals sold (about $3.5bn in annual revenue).

And let’s not forget the Mighty Kids Meal, introduced in America in 2001. McDonald’s realized that by the time kids were eight or nine years old they felt they had outgrown the Happy Meal. Those were for little boys and girls. So the Mighty Kids Meal comes in a slightly more “grown-up” package. It offers bigger meals: a double cheeseburger, double hamburger or a six-piece chicken McNuggets, but still comes with a toy. We may be older, but we still like toys.

In 2004, McDonald’s celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Happy Meal with a year-long barrage of promotions and advertisements. The company also launched a version for adults, the Go Active! Adult Happy Meal. This included a salad, a bottle of water, a book that told you how to exercise, and an adult “toy”: a Stepometer, so you could measure how few steps it was from the counter to your car.

Good old Ronald. Under his smiling, caring guidance, an entire generation of overweight American adults who grew up following him into their local McDonald’s are now raising their own overweight children to follow in their heavy footsteps.

Recently, the magazine Advertising Age cited Ronald McDonald as No 2 on its list of top 10 advertising icons of the 20th century. Who was No 1? It was the Marlboro Man.

* * *

Adults bear an enormous responsibility for the obesity epidemic among children. Yet there’s also no question that even conscientious parents and guardians, who really do try to do well by kids and teach them healthy life choices, are not playing on anything like a level field. They’re going up against billions and billions of dollars spent every year in corporate marketing, all aimed at teaching kids to make exactly the opposite sorts of choices.

McDonald’s and the other fast-food chains make no secret of the fact that kids are their primary targets. “We have living proof of the long-lasting quality of early brand loyalties in the cradle-to-grave marketing at McDonald’s, and how well it works,” James McNeal, a well-known children’s marketing guru and the author of Kids As Customers, has said. “We start taking children in for their first and second birthdays, and on and on, and eventually they have a great deal of preference for that brand. Children can carry that with them through a lifetime.”

Today, corporations spend more than $15bn every year on marketing, advertising and promotions meant to program American children to consume, consume and consume some more. Why? Because they realize that children not only have more expendable income of their own, but they influence how their parents spend their hard-earned bucks, too – to the tune of more than $600bn a year. What do children choose to buy with all that cash? What do you think?

Nor is it just their current expenditure that corporations want a slice of: they’re looking at the long term. Brand logos for all sorts of crap now turn up on nursery blankets, crib toys and mobiles. In my office, I have a collection of baby bottles shaped like little bottles of 7 Up, DR Pepper and Pepsi. I found them on eBay. When we contacted the California manufacturer, Munchkin Bottling, they told us they had produced these things for a few years in the mid-1990s. They’d developed the concept themselves, then licensed the various drinks companies’ names and logos. Think about the associations formed in infants’ minds by these things. Think about the mentality that sees nothing wrong in marketing them.

Not to be outdone, McDonald’s marketing genius M Lawrence Light – the guy who rolled out the “I’m lovin’ it” campaign – wants to surround the youth of the world with McDonald’s brand images. “Light wants to turn everything he can into an ad for McDonald’s,” wrote Business Week magazine in July 2004. “He’s pushing the Oak Brook chain to open clothing shops so kids will walk around in T-shirts with the Golden Arches logo, just as they already do with Old Navy or Disney. He envisions a deal with the National Basketball Association to play the five-note tagline of the ‘I’m lovin’ it’ ad in the stadium every time a player shoots a three-pointer. He’s even toying with making the jingle available over the internet so it could be downloaded as a mobile phone ring tone.”

Light chose China as the market in which to open the first McKids store. “There will be 25 McKids stores there,” he told Business Week. “It’s got a line of toys, a line of clothes, a line of videos, all directed at young kids.” Why China? Because after years of communist rule, these children can’t get enough American products. A company like McDonald’s can easily swoop in and corrupt young consumers from the start.

This is adapted from ‘Don’t Eat This Book’, by Morgan Spurlock..

healingarts | May 23, 2005 |

Dharma Singh Khalsa, from The Pain Cure: The Proven Medical Program that Helps End Your Chronic Pain

Pain is a more terrible Lord of mankind than even death itself. —Albert Schweitzer

Torture Victims

If you are in chronic pain, you probably feel alone and frightened. You may feel helpless. You might even feel as if life’s no longer worth living. I understand. I understand completely. You have the worst medical problem a person can have.

Chronic pain is the most devastating physical malady that exists. It’s even more overwhelming than having a terminal illness, according to patients of mine who have suffered from both conditions.

Being in pain, hour after hour, day after day, rips away your strength, your hope, your personality, and even your love.

Chronic pain is a demonic force that can destroy everything it touches.

But people are strong. I’m constantly amazed by their courage. When life knocks them down, they struggle back up. They do it again and again, all their lives.

If you’re a pain patient who is reading this page right now, you must certainly be strong, because you’re still trying to find a way out of your suffering. Despite everything, you still have hope. I salute your bravery. In my eyes, you’re a hero.

But you can only stand so much, right? You’re human: that’s your blessing, but it’s also your vulnerability. You probably suffered stoically for months or even years, but after a while your endurance gave out and the pain took over. Finally, you probably began to feel alone and helpless.

By now, you may even feel like a victim of torture. Researchers have found that torture victims and chronic pain patients endure a very similar experience—a horrific experience that can kill the will of even the strongest person.

Right now, you may be hoping that I’ll say, “The good news is, I can help you.”

It’s true. I can help you. Your pain can probably be cured.

But I have even better news than that: You can help yourself. If you read this book carefully, and put its advice into your life, you’ll no longer need me. Your own body has a healing force that will enable you to rise above your pain, and feel whole and happy once again.

When I tell this to my patients, some are thrilled—but others are disappointed. They want me to tell them that I’m the hot new medical pioneer with the miraculous new potion for their pain. That attitude is understandable, because modern medicine has packaged itself as a purveyor of technological miracles. Many of today’s doctors enjoy being seen as latter-day sorcerers who can fix every ill with a magical pill.

That may be good marketing, but it’s not good medicine—because it’s just not true.

There is “magic” in medicine. But this magic—this almost supernatural force—won’t come to you in a bottle. It will come to you when you do the honest hard work of tapping into your own inner resources.

When you do this, you will conquer your pain.

The human body performs the greatest miracles of modern medicine all by itself. As physicians, we will never be able to replicate the body’s natural healing force. The body’s own power lies far beyond the pale mimicry of human engineering.

Your body can heal the pain it now feels. When you cut your finger, you fully expect your body to heal the injury, don’t you? You should not expect less of your body in its fight against pain. Your body’s inner healing power is unimaginably strong.

Working with my patients—today’s true medical pioneers—I have developed a comprehensive, proven program for chronic pain that gives them access to their own inner healing power. I believe that helping patients reach this power is the greatest thing a doctor can do.

About fifteen years ago, when I first began to develop this approach, it was considered very avant-garde. My pain program at the University of Arizona’s teaching hospital in Phoenix was the first holistic pain management program in the southwestern United States.

Since then, though, many of the most prominent pain clinics in America have adopted the therapies I employ and have enjoyed superb results.

However, even though my approach has been accepted by many mainstream pain clinics, most of the individual physicians in America are still uninformed about this approach to pain, and therefore they often fail to cure pain. One reason they fail is that they do not address the role that the brain plays in pain. That’s a big mistake. The brain helps start chronic pain—and the brain can help stop it.

If you read my first book, Brain Longevity: The Breakthrough Medical Program that Improves Your Mind and Memory, you know that I consider the brain one of the most amazing entities in the universe. In that book I showed that if the human brain is properly nurtured and medically supported, it can overcome terrible chronic conditions—even Alzheimer’s disease.

In this book I will show you how your brain can help you cure your chronic pain.

Your brain, in fact, has virtually no limits, other than those you impose with your own human frailty.

I can show you ways to overcome that frailty. I can show you a path that will lead to your mastery over pain.

But it’s up to you to walk that path. It won’t be easy. But good things never are.

On this path, you’ll have to give up many of the special indulgences that your pain may have granted you: a sedentary lifestyle, a sense of privilege, drugs that temporarily make you feel good, and the pity of others.

But all of your sacrifices will be repaid many times over. You will regain your sense of personal power, and your ability to control your own life. You’ll once again have the energy to do the things you love, and to do things for the people you love. You’ll even get reacquainted with a very special person: your own true self.

I have seen this happen many, many times. In fact, when patients work hard, it happens most of the time. I have helped cure many hundreds of “hopeless” cases of chronic pain.

I have been able to achieve “impossible” victories against pain for one central reason: my pain program has evolved far beyond the old-fashioned, traditional approach to pain. Unlike many doctors who treat pain, I don’t rely on just pills, injections, and surgery. That limited approach, which I and many other doctors now consider outdated, often gives temporary relief but rarely stimulates the permanent healing of chronic pain.

My program is different. It battles chronic pain on every level: the biochemical level, the structural level, the psychological level, and the spiritual level. This thorough approach is absolutely essential—because if you have chronic pain it has probably invaded every part of your life.

To get your life back, to get your true self back, and to overcome the pain that has violated your body, mind, and spirit, you will need to engage in a comprehensive, coordinated program.

My program can be your path to recovery. It will oppose every possible aspect of your pain, and help you reach new heights of mental, physical, and spiritual well-being.

My program, as you will soon see, is unique. It still has components that are not yet commonly used by even the best pain clinics. For example, my program employs many advanced brain-enhancing modalities—some of which were described in Brain Longevity—that will give you the extra brain power you’ll need to defeat your pain.

In addition, my program draws upon not only the very latest discoveries from modern technological medicine but also employs ancient healing methods that have withstood the test of time.

This combination of modern medicine and ancient healing is still not widely used in America, but it’s incredibly potent. It will enable you to marshal your own healing power, and cure your pain.

If you’re suffering now, it might be hard for you to imagine feeling whole and happy again. But that feeling—though deeply buried—already exists within you. It’s waiting for you.

You can return to a life of feeling great. Others have. Others will.

Now it’s your turn.

Let’s begin!

Pain Is Not Suffering

Pain and suffering are different things.

Pain is a physical sensation. Suffering is one possible reaction to that sensation. But suffering is not the only possible reaction to pain.

It’s possible to experience pain without suffering from it.

When you learn to experience pain without suffering, you will be set free. You will be able to love your life again, even though your life may still contain some pain, as all lives do.

When you reach this point, your chronic, disabling pain, for all practical purposes, will be cured.

In addition, when you achieve the ability to experience some pain without suffering from it, you will gain much more than just freedom from constant hurt. You will attain a power of mind and spirit that is rare in this world. Generally, this power is achieved only by enlightened yogic masters and by other people who are very spiritually evolved. Why just them? Because, as a rule, only they are motivated enough to do the hard work that creates this power.

But you have your pain for motivation, and pain is the most powerful motivator of all. Your pain may now be a curse, but when you learn to harness it as a motivator, you will transform your curse into a blessing.

I remember once telling an elderly arthritis patient that his pain need not cause suffering, and he blew up at me. “That’s easy for you to say,” he snapped, waving a gnarled finger in my face, “but if your hand hurt like this hand hurts, I don’t think you’d say that. You don’t know how this feels!”
He was right about one thing: I didn’t know how he felt. If you’re free of pain, you can never really imagine the dark cruelty of chronic pain. That’s one of the reasons chronic pain is so shattering. It separates people. It obliterates understanding and creates isolation. One result of this psychological isolation is that the divorce rate among people with chronic pain is almost 80 percent.

“I don’t know how you feel,” I told the elderly man, “but I do want to help you, and I think I can. So let’s start right now. I’d like you to imagine a hypothetical situation. Let’s say you’re a kid again, and you’re attending a very strict, old-fashioned school. Imagine that you have a mean teacher who constantly singles you out for punishment. One day he asks you a question, and you give the wrong answer. So he stands you in front of the class, makes you hold out your hand, and slaps your palm with a ruler. Smack! It really stings! On this day he dishes out the punishment again and again, and you’re powerless to stop it. Pretty soon you’re so depressed and angry that when lunchtime comes, you don’t even feel like eating your lunch or playing with your buddies. All you can think about is how much your hand is throbbing, and the more you think about it, the more it hurts. You’re really suffering.

“Finally, you’re saved by the bell—school’s out. You go to your Little League baseball game, but you don’t even feel like playing. You do play, though, because you’re a tough little kid who won’t give up.

“You’re the catcher. You’re a good catcher, the only one who can handle your team’s best fastball pitcher. The first time he zings one in, though, your poor hand feels like it’s going to explode. But the batter is way behind the pitch and he strikes out. Everybody cheers. So you keep calling for fastballs, and you start to dominate the hitters. Three up, three down! Boom, boom, boom! You could call for some curves or change-ups—to give your hand a break—but your pitcher’s fastball is really hopping, so you stick with the hard stuff. Pretty soon you own the batters, and you feel great. Every time the ball slaps into your mitt, you feel like a hero. You’re not thinking about your hand anymore, or your teacher, or anything except how good it feels to be in the game. You love the cheers from the crowd, and the smell of the grass, and the friendship of your teammates. Nothing else exists.

“Finally, last out. Game’s over. Your coach comes over and pats you on the back. He says, ‘Great game! How’s your catching hand?’ You tell him it’s fine, but when you pull off your mitt, your hand looks like a pink balloon. Your coach says, ‘Better put some ice on that.’ You tell him you will, but then you start playing a pickup game with your buddies. Your hand is hot and sore. But you want to keep playing. You have pain, but you’re not suffering.”

The elderly arthritis patient nodded. He got my point, and looked encouraged. He was a strong man, and that was good, because he was in for the fight of his life.

“My pain program,” I told him, “can help you feel good enough to get back in the game, so to speak. Then your own spirit is going to take over. And when that happens, I don’t think anything is going to stop you.”

“What will happen if I don’t get back into the swing of things?” he asked.

“If you don’t, you’ll continue to suffer. It might get worse.”

I was understating. In fact, if he didn’t get back into a proactive, take-charge lifestyle, he would probably fall victim to the worst nightmare that pain patients face: chronic pain syndrome.

healingarts | May 2, 2005 |

John Robbins, from Diet for a New America: How Your Food Choices Affect Your Health, Happiness, and the Future of Life on Earth

You might think that your doctor would be a reliable guide to your optimum diet, and would convey to you any emerging truths of sound nutritional research that significantly affect your health. But actually, most doctors don’t know very much about nutrition. You’d think they would, but they don’t. That’s not their department. They have been trained to treat disease with drugs and surgery. They have not been trained to prevent disease through healthy life and diet-styles.

Nutritional education is not just inadequate in contemporary medical schools; in most cases it’s nonexistent. At the 69th annual meeting of the American Medical Women’s Association, one doctor drew knowing laughs when she told the audience about her lack of nutritional training. Said Dr. Michelle Harrison:

“They had one lecture — on a Saturday morning — and it wasn’t compulsory. I don’t remember what was in the lecture, because I didn’t go.”

Only 30 of the nation’s 125 medical schools have a single required course in nutrition. A recent Senate investigation revealed that the average physician in the United States received less than three hours of training in nutrition during four years of medical school.

Thirty years ago, when many doctors smoked cigarettes themselves, it would have been pretty hard to elicit sound advice from them on the health consequences of smoking. Many doctors, in fact, recommended smoking to non-smokers, as a way of dealing with social nervousness. It wasn’t that these doctors were evil people, or lackeys for the tobacco industry. It was, rather, that they hadn’t been told anything in medical school about the relationship between smoking and major health problems. They lived in the same culture as everyone else, in which smoking was seen as totally legitimate. In fact, a famous Camel cigarette commercial loudly trumpeted: “More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette,” and made a point of linking good healthcare with smoking their brand.

Today, a similar situation exists with respect to the health consequences of a meat habit. Today’s physician is exposed to the same propaganda promoting meat and dairy product consumption as the rest of us, and he hasn’t the nutritional training that would enable him to evaluate these messages any more intelligently than we can. Furthermore, the meat, egg, and dairy industries are particularly keen on “educating” doctors with their biased view of nutrition. The Meat Board, for example, has presented a series of extremely expensive full page color ads in the Journal of the American Medical Association, presenting a nutritional slant that one nutritional authority, Dr. Kenneth Buckley, did not find at all impressive. He called it:

“slick and deceitful propaganda, coloring and twisting the facts in the most manipulative way.”

The Lowest and Highest Life Expectancies in the World

After World War II, scientists began for the first time to compile comprehensive statistics correlating the diet-styles and health of all the populations in the world.

One fact that emerged consistently was the strong correlation between heavy flesh-eating and short life expectancy. The Eskimos, the Laplanders, the Greenlanders, and the Russian Kurgi tribes stood out as the populations with the highest animal flesh consumption in the world — and also as among the populations with the lowest life expectancies, often only about 30 years.

It was found, further, that this was not due to the severity of their climates alone. Other peoples, living in harsh conditions, but subsisting with little or no animal flesh, had some of the highest life expectancies in the world. World health statistics found, for example, that an unusually large number of the Russian Caucasians, the Yucatan Indians, the East Indian Todas and the Pakistan Hunzakuts have life expectancies of 90 to 100 years.

The United States has the most sophisticated medical technology in the world, and one of the most temperate of climates. One of the highest consumers of meat and animal products in the world, it also has one of the lowest life expectancies of industrialized nations.

The cultures with the very longest life spans in the world are the Vilcambas, who reside in the Andes of Ecuador; the Abkhasians, who live on the Black Sea in the USSR; and the Hunzas, who live in the Himalayas of Northern Pakistan. Researchers discovered a “striking similarity” in the diets of these groups, scattered though they are in different parts of the planet. All three are either totally vegetarian or close to it.

Particularly striking to researchers who have visited these cultures is that the people not only live so long, but that they enjoy full, active lives through their many years, and show no signs of the many degenerative diseases that afflict the elderly in our culture.

“They work and play at 80 and beyond; most of those who reach their 100th birthday continue to be active, and retirement is unheard of. The absence of (excess protein) in their diets engenders slower growth and slim, compact body frames. With age, wisdom accumulates, but physical degeneration is limited so the senior citizens of these remote societies have something unique to contribute to the lives of others. They are revered.”

The Lab Results Speak

At Yale, Professor Irving Fisher designed a series of tests to compare the stamina and strength of meat-eaters against that of vegetarians. He selected men from three groups: meat-eating athletes, vegetarian athletes, and vegetarian sedentary subjects. Fisher reported the results of his study in the Yale Medical Journal. His findings do not seem to lend a great deal of credibility to the popular prejudices that hold meat to be a builder of strength.

“Of the three groups compared, the… flesh-eaters showed far less endurance than the abstainers (vegetarians), even when the latter were leading a sedentary life.”

Overall, the average score of the vegetarians was over double the average score of the meat-eaters, even though half of the vegetarians were sedentary people, while all of the meat-eaters tested were athletes.

A comparable study was done by Dr. J. Ioteyko of the Academie de Medicine of Paris. Dr. Ioteyko compared the endurance of vegetarians and meat-eaters from all walks of life in a variety of tests. The vegetarians averaged two to three times more stamina than the meat-eaters. Even more remarkably, they took only one-fifth the time to recover from exhaustion compared to their meat-eating rivals.

Wherever and whenever tests of this nature have been done, the results have been similar. Doctors in Belgium systematically compared the number of times vegetarians and meat-eaters could squeeze a grip-meter. The vegetarians won handily with an average of 69, whilst the meat-eaters averaged only 38. As in all other studies which have measured muscle recovery time, here, too the vegetarians bounced back from fatigue far more rapidly than did the meat-eaters.

World Records

The achievement of vegetarian athletes are particularly noteworthy considering the relatively small percentage of vegetarian entrant. Athletes, after all, are not immune from the cultural conditioning that meat alone gives the required strength and stamina. Yet some have adopted vegetarian diets and the results invite scrutiny.

Dave Scott, of Davis, California is universally recognized as the greatest triathlete in the world. He has won Hawaii’s legendary Ironman Triathlon a record four times, including three years in a row, while no one else has ever done it more than once. The event consists, in succession, of a 2.4-mile ocean swim, a 112-mile cycle, and then a 26.2-mile run.

Dave calls the idea that people, and especially athletes, need animal protein a “ridiculous fallacy.” There are many people who consider Dave Scott the fittest man who ever lived. Dave Scott is a vegetarian.

I don’t know how you might determine the world’s fittest man. But if it isn’t Dave Scott it might well be Sixto Linares. This remarkable fellow tells of the time:

“when I became a vegetarian in high school, my parents were very very upset that I wouldn’t eat meat… After fourteen years, they are finally accepting that it’s good for me. They know it’s not going to kill me.”

During the fourteen years that Sixto’s parents begrudgingly came to accept that his diet wasn’t killing him, they watched their son set the world’s record for the longest single-day triathlon, and display his astounding endurance, speed, and strength in benefits for the American Hearth Association, United Way, the Special Children’s Charity, the Leukemia Society of America, and the Muscular Dystrophy Association. So deeply ingrained, however, is the prejudice against vegetarianism that even as their son was showing himself possibly to be the fittest human being alive, his parents only reluctantly came to accept his diet. Sixto says he experimented for awhile with a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet (no meat, but some dairy products and eggs), but now eats no eggs or dairy products and feels better for it.

It doesn’t seem to be weakening him too much. In June 1985, at a benefit for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Sixto broke the world record for the one-day triathlon by swimming 4.8 miles, cycling 185 miles, and then running 52.4 miles.

Then there’s Edwin Moses. No man in sports history has ever dominated an event as Edwin Moses has dominated the 400-meter hurdles. The Olympic Gold Medalist went eight years without losing a race, and when Sports Illustrated gave him their 1984 “Sportsman of the Year” award, the magazine said, “No athlete in any sport is so respected by his peers as Moses is in track and field.” Edwin Moses is a vegetarian.

Paavo Nurmi, the “Flying Finn,” set twenty world records in distance running, and won nine Olympic medals. He was a vegetarian.

Bill Pickering of Great Britain set the world record for swimming the English Channel, but that performance of his pales beside the fact that at the age of 48 he set a new world record for swimming the Bristol Channel. Bill Pickering is a vegetarian.

Murray Rose was only 17 when he won three gold medals in the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia. Four years later, at the 1960 Olympiad, he became the first man in history to retain his 400 meter freestyle title, and he later broke both his 400 meter and 1500 meter freestyle world records. Considered by many to be the greatest swimmer of all time, Rose has been a vegetarian since he was two.

You might not expect to find a vegetarian in world championship body-building competitions. But Andreas Cahling, the Swedish body builder who won the 1980 Mr. International title, is a vegetarian, as has been for over ten years of highest level international competition. One magazine reported that Cahling’s “showings at the Mr. Universe competitions, and at the professional body-building world championships, give insiders the feeling he may be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

Another fellow who is not exactly a weakling is Stan Price. He holds the world record for the bench press in his weight class. Stan Price is a vegetarian. Roy Hilligan is another gentleman in whose face you probably wouldn’t want to kick sand. Among his many titles is the coveted Mr. America crown. Roy Hilligan is a vegetarian.

The Rise and Fall of the Protein Empire

Not all authorities agree on a precise figure for our daily needs of protein, but their calculations do fall within a specific range. It is a range that runs from a low estimate of two and a half percent of our total daily calories up to a high estimate of over eight percent. The figures at the high end end include built-in safety margins, and are not “minimum” allowances, but rather “recommended” allowances.

If we ate nothing but wheat (which is 17% protein), or oatmeal (15%), or pumpkin (15%0, we could easily have more than enough protein. If we ate nothing but cabbage (22%), we’d have over double the maximum we might need.

In fact, if we ate nothing but the lowly potato (11% protein) we would still be getting enough protein. This fact does not mean potatoes are a particularly high protein source. They are not. Almost all plant foods provide more. What it does show, however, is just how low our protein needs really are.

There have been occasions in which people have been forced to satisfy their entire nutritional needs with potatoes and water alone. Individuals who have lived for lengthy periods of time under those conditions showed no signs whatsoever of protein deficiency, though other vitamin deficiencies have occurred.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the virtual symbol of male muscular development, says in his book, Arnold’s Body Building for Men:

“Kids nowadays…tend to go overboard when they discover body building and eat diets consisting of 50 to 70% protein–something I believe to be totally unnecessary… (In) my formula for basic good eating: eat about one gram of protein for every two pounds of body weight.”

This formula is in keeping with the range we have already discovered. To meet Arnold Schwarzenegger’s suggested protein quota, you’d do fine without meat, eggs, or dairy products. If you ate only broccoli, I’d probably wonder whether you had lost your marbles, but you’d get more than four times Schwarzenegger’s suggested requirement.

Osteoporosis and the Protein Connection

Unfortunately, the loss of calcium and other minerals from the bones is a gradual process which goes on steadily for a long time before it becomes evident. There is no flashing red light to warn us that our bodies are losing calcium. And it is usually not apparent until loose teeth, receding gums, or a fractured hip show how brittle and chalky the bones have become. The end result of the skeletal structure’s gradual erosion is calcium-deficient bones that may break with the slightest provocation. Even a mere sneeze may crack a rib.

One of the reasons the decreasing bone density is hard to detect until it reaches such an unfortunate stage is that even in extreme cases of osteoporosis, the calcium level of the blood is usually normal. In the body’s ranking of needs, the blood level of calcium takes definite priority over the bone level of calcium. The body needs calcium in the blood for vital operations, such as controlling muscular contractions, including the heart, blood clotting, transmission of nerve impulses, and other utterly essential tasks. When the body needs to supply calcium to the blood for any reason, it acts as if the bones were a “bank” of stored calcium, and through a series of biochemical reactions a “check” is drawn on the calcium bank. Your body draws calcium from your bones to supply calcium to your blood.

I used to believe that bones lost calcium only if there were not enough calcium in our diets. The National Dairy Council is the foremost spokesman for this point of view, and the solution they propose, not at all that surprisingly, is for us all to drink more milk and eat more dairy products. This point of view does seem logical. But modern nutritional research clearly indicates a major flaw in this perspective. Osteoporosis is, in fact, a disease caused by a number of things, the most important of which is excess dietary protein!

The correspondence between excess protein intake and bone resorption is direct and consistent. Even with very high calcium intakes, the more excess protein in the diet the greater the incidence of negative calcium balance, and the greater the loss of calcium from the bones. In other words, the more protein in our diet, the more calcium we lose, regardless of how much calcium we take in.

Summarizing the medical research on osteoporosis, one of the nation’s leading medical authorities on dietary associations with disease, Dr. John McDougall, says:

“I would like to emphasize that the calcium-losing effect of protein on the human body is not an area of controversy in scientific circles. The many studies performed during the past fifty-five years consistently show that the most important dietary change that we can make if we want to create a positive calcium balance that will keep our bones solid is to decrease the amount of proteins we eat each day. The important change is not to increase the amount of calcium we take in.”

Losing a War We Could Prevent

In 1971, President Nixon signed the Conquest of Cancer Act, thereby officially inaugurating what has become known as the “War on Cancer.” Today, the war continues. Every day the National Cancer Institute spends over three million dollars. They are joined in the fray by organizations such as the American Cancer society, which spend another million dollars a day.

You might think that with so much money being spent, we’d be making progress. But the war on cancer isn’t going very well. We aren’t massacring the enemy; it’s massacring us.

“Everyone should know the war on cancer is largely a fraud.”
— Dr. Linus Pauling, two-time Nobel prize winner

The most common caners — cancers of the lung, colon, breast, prostate, pancreas, and ovary — together account for most cancer deaths. the death rate from these cancers has either stayed the same, or increased, during the past 50 years. And the statistics for the less common cancers are equally bleak.

John Bailar, former editor of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, who worked for the Institute for 25 years, told the 1985 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that today more people with benign or mild diseases are being included in the statistics, in order to make it seem like more cancer victims are being cured.

Another tactic, which makes it appear things are getting better than they are, is to define a cancer patient as “cured” if he or she has survived for five years after being diagnosed, and is free of obvious symptoms. With early enough detection, many cancer victims will indeed fit this criteria of “cured.” However, in many cases, this early detection does not change the date of death, but only the length of time the person is aware he or she has cancer. One prominent physician who has seen more than enough of modern cancer treatment has grown very cynical:

“The real beneficiaries of early detection are the providers of health care, who now have a longer time in which to treat the victims before they die. This means they can charge more for doctor’s visits, more procedures, more tests, and longer hospital stays. The American Cancer Society … has put hope up for sale. Unfortunately to date, it has been selling mostly false hope.” — Dr. John McDougall

Two Searches

In 1976, the United States Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, under the chairmanship of Senator McGovern, convened public hearings on the health effects of the modern American diet. After listening to the testimony of the nation’s leading cancer experts, McGovern was not particularly delighted with the war on cancer, calling it a “multi-billion dollar medical failure.”

At one point in the proceedings, McGovern pointedly asked National Cancer Institute director Arthur Upton how many cancers are caused by diet. The head of the largest cancer organization in the world replied “up to 50 percent.”

McGovern was dumbfounded. “How can you assert the vital relationship between diet and cancer,” he demanded, “and then submit a preliminary budget that only allocates a little more than one percent (of National Cancer Institute funds) to this problem?” Dr. Upton responded sheepishly: “That question is one which I am indeed concerned about myself.”

Organizations like the National Cancer Institute are not encouraged to focus much attention on prevention because there is vastly more money to be made in treatment, and far more glamour in the possibility, however remote, of a cure. Attention is further drawn away from prevention by food industries whose products are known to be involved. They apply immense pressure on government and public health organizations to keep them from informing the public as to what is known about dietary prevention. The result is that you and I are continually being told to put our faith and our money into cancer treatment, and into the hope for an eventual cure. We are not told how to keep cancer from happening in the first place. The tragic result is that we are losing a war we could prevent.

Colon Cancer

In the 1970′s, a number of studies were published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute which reported what was then startling news. Researchers were finding that the incidence of colon cancer was high in precisely those regions where meat consumption was high, and low where meat consumption was low.

It was found, in fact, that there is not a single population in the world with a high meat intake which does not have a high rate of colon cancer. Even the conservative journal of the Association for the Advancement of Science concluded:

“Populations on a high-meat, high-fat diet are more likely to develop colon cancer than individuals on vegetarian or similar low-meat diets.”

The digestion of meat itself produces strong carcinogenic substances in the colon and meat-eaters must produce extensive bile acids in their intestines to deal with the meat they eat, particularly deoxycholic acid. This is extremely significant, because deoxycholic acid is converted by clostridia bacteria in our intestines into powerful carcinogens. The fact that meat-eaters invariably have far more deoxycholic acid in their intestines than do vegetarians is one of the reasons they have so much higher rates of colon cancer.

The human intestine has a very hard time handling the putrefying bacteria, high levels of fat, and lack of fiber that characterize meat, dairy products, and eggs. There are other animals, though, whose intestines seem designed for the task. The human intestine is anatomically very different from that of the natural carnivores, such as dogs and cats. Because of the design of their intestines, these animals are virtually guaranteed short transit times.

Our bowel walls are deeply puckered; theirs are smooth. Ours are full of pouches, theirs have none. Our colons are long, complex pathways, like a winding mountain road full of hairpin turns; theirs are short, straight chutes, like wide open freeways. The toxins from putrefying flesh are not the problem for them that they are for us because everything passes through them so much more quickly. Dogs, cats, and the other natural carnivores do not get colon cancer from high-fat, low-fiber, flesh-based diets. But we do.

Reducing your intake of pesticides

The most effective way to reduce your intake of toxic chemicals is to minimize or eliminate your intake of meats, fish, dairy products and eggs. Choosing organic or unsprayed produce would be the next step.

Some people feel that eating “organically raised” beef and poultry is a good way to limit their intake of pesticides. It is important to realize, though, that while meat products labeled “natural” or “organic” may be better than the typical factor farm commercial products, they still will include the concentrated toxins from all the foods the livestock ate. These lethal chemicals accumulate in the fatty tissues of animals in much greater concentrations than are found in fruits and vegetables. Pesticide authority Lewis Regenstein writes:

“Meat contains approximately 14 times more pesticides than do plant foods; dairy products 5.5 times more. Thus, by eating foods of animal origin, one ingests greatly concentrated amounts of hazardous chemicals. Analysis of various foods by the FDA shows that meat, poultry, fish, cheese and other dairy products contain levels of these pesticides more often and in greater amount than other foods.”

Contaminated mother’s milk

In 1976, the EPA analyzed the breast milk of vegetarian women, and discovered the levels of pesticides in their milk to be far less than the average. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine made a similar comparison, and found:

“The highest levels of contamination in the breast milk of the vegetarians, was lower than the lowest level of contamination (in) non-vegetarian women … The mean vegetarian levels were only one or two percent as high as the average levels in the United States.”

This is a tremendously important statistic. The breast milk of the average vegetarian nursing mother in the United States contains only one or two percent of the pesticide contamination as that experienced in the national average.

Wasting the food we have

The livestock population of the United States today consumes enough grain and soybeans to feed over five times the entire human population of the country. We feed these animals over 80% of the corn we grow, and over 95% of the oats.

It is hard to grasp how immensely wasteful is a meat-oriented diet-style. By cycling our grain through livestock, we end up with only 10% as many calories available to feed human mouths as would be available if we ate the grain directly.

To supply one person with a meat habit food for a year requires three-and-a-quarter acres. To supply one lacto-ovo vegetarian with food for a year requires one-half acre. To supply one pure vegetarian [vegan] requires only one-sixth of an acre. In other words, a given acreage can feed twenty times as many people eating a pure vegetarian diet-style as it could people eating the standard American diet-style.

According to the Department of Agriculture statistics, one acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes. That same acre of land, if used to grow cattle feed, can produce less than 165 pounds of beef. In a world in which a child dies of starvation every two seconds, an agricultural system designed to feed our meat habit is a blasphemy.

The ground beneath our feet

The U.S. Soil Conservation Service reports that over 4 million acres of cropland are being lost to erosion in this country every year. That’s an area the size of Connecticut. Our annual topsoil loss amounts to 7,000,000,000 tons. That is 60,000 pounds for each member of the population.

Of this staggering topsoil loss, 85 percent is directly associated with livestock grazing.

Timber!

The United States has converted approximately 260 million acres of forest into land which is now needed to produce the wasteful diet-style most Americans take for granted. Since 1967, the rate of deforestation in this country has been one acre every five seconds.

But the primary cause of deforestation is not urban development. For each acre of American forest that is cleared to make room for parking lots, roads, houses, shopping centers, etc., seven acres of forest are converted into land for grazing livestock and/or growing livestock feed.

The fountain of life

Over half the total amount of water consumed in the United States goes to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock. Enormous additional quantities of water must also be used to wash away the animals’ excrement. It would be hard to design a less water-efficient diet-style than the one we have come to think of as normal.

To produce a single pound of meat takes an average of 2,500 gallons of water — as much as a typical family uses for all its combined household purposes in a month.

To produce a day’s food for one meat-eater takes over 4,000 gallons; for a lacto-ovo vegetarian, only 1,200 gallons; for a pure vegetarian, only 300 gallons. It takes less water to produce a year’s food for a pure vegetarian than to produce a month’s food for a meat-eater.

healingarts | April 3, 2005 |

Thom Hartmann | CommonDreams

Years ago, a popular and wry sign to hang in one’s office or on one’s cubicle said, “A Clean Desk Is The Sign Of A Sick Mind.” There is a very faint grain of truth to that, which highlights an opportunity for the media to use Terry Schaivo’s tragic situation to actually save lives of girls and women (and a few men) in non-vegetative states.

For years it was believed that anorexia (not eating) and bulimia (eating and vomiting or “purging”) were signs of an exogenous “induced” (life-experience-caused) mental illness. The most common theories constituted a hodge-podge of ideas ranging from “bad parenting” and child abuse to the more Freudian “poor toilet training,” and psychotherapy to treat anorexia and/or bulimia centered around trying to remember, bring out, relive, and/or relieve these “causes.” These therapies rarely worked, and often made situations worse by focusing on the loci of the obsession.

Then along came the SSRI drugs – selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors – antidepressants like Prozac. In the course of researching these drugs, it was accidentally discovered that they were often successful in treating people with obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD), and that people with anorexia and, particularly, bulimia responded well to them. (The downside of the SSRI’s is that they cause lack of affect and increase the chances of suicide, as recent studies and the stories of so many school shooters on SSRI drugs show.)

This revolutionized psychiatry’s perspective of these eating disorders, causing many in the field to conclude that they were really subsets of OCD, where the obsession had settled on body weight or image, instead of the traditional OCD flags such as hand-washing, magical thinking, or evening-up (counting syllables in road signs, touching with one had what had been touched with the other, etc.).

It also implied that OCD was genetically mediated, had to do with variations in the levels of specific neurotransmitters (especially serotonin), had little to do with upbringing (other than experiences determining where the focus of the OCD would settle), and has been in the human genome for millions of years.

This last observation, like the dopamine-mediated conditions of ADHD producing Edisons and Franklins, has led some in the field to the conclusion that a certain level of OCD is useful and necessary for a functioning society, and that there’s a touch – more or less – in all of us. It’s what causes some people to keep their homes or garages super-neat, be fastidious about their appearance, or maintain that “clean desk” of office lore. In small doses, sub-clinical OCD works to keep us organized.

But slightly-above-average OCD levels also create a vulnerability in individuals who carry the genes for it, which the marketing industry recognized three decades ago when it began applying psychographic analysis to advertising strategies, and now aggressively exploits. Is your hair shiny enough? Are your teeth white enough? Is your body thin enough?

This genetic predisposition to sub-clinical (and thus “normal”) OCD appears to make its carriers particularly vulnerable to advertising. As the BBC reported in 1999, just 38 months after the introduction of television to parts of Fiji, purging – bulimia – among teenage girls had gone from being virtually unknown to being something practiced by fully 15 percent of all young women. They “got it” that being “desirable” meant being thin, but didn’t have the money to buy the weight aids advertised. The cheaper solution was just to put a finger down the throat and upchuck the most recent meal.

Bulimia can lead to a variety of problems. Gastro-intestinal reflux disorder (GIRD) is often the result of stomach acids burning the esophagus on their way up during purging, leading in some cases to a lifetime dependence on antacids or prescription stomach acid inhibitors. Teeth are eaten away by stomach acids. Nutritional deficiencies – particularly mineral deficiencies – abound. And in extreme cases the imbalance of minerals produced by this (particularly the lack of potassium) can cause heart attacks, such as the one that stopped the flow of blood and oxygen to Terry Schaivo’s brain, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state.

As The National Association for Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Eating Disorders notes: “Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses; a woman with anorexia is 12 times more likely to die than a woman her age without an eating disorder. Individuals with bulimia risk severe electrolyte imbalances, kidney disturbances, heart problems and other serious, life threatening medical complications.”

Terry Schiavo gives us, at the end of her life, a gift – a chance to use her case to share with other young girls and women the outcome of anorexia and bulimia. In a larger and more important context, it provides us with an opportunity to open a culture-wide discussion of the psychological and – ultimately – physical dangers of exposure to personal-image-based advertising and marketing, as well as the dangers of simply “treating” this largely advertising-driven problem with SSRI drugs, which can also devastate young people’s lives.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author, former psychotherapist and founder in 1978 of a community for abused and severely emotionally disturbed children (The New England Salem Children’s Village), former CEO of an advertising agency, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent book on evolutionary psychiatry is “The Edison Gene.”

healingarts | March 31, 2005 |