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The COVID-19 pandemic has brought us many harsh lessons. Importantly, it has shown us how easy it is to manufacture panic and control entire populations through deceptive means. Topping the list of deceptive strategies is the use of a test that falsely labels healthy individuals as sick and infectious. This allows mass testing to drive the narrative that we’re in a lethal pandemic.
Of course, I’m talking about the now infamous reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test. The fact is, the PCR test is not designed to be used as a diagnostic tool as it cannot distinguish between inactive viruses and “live” or reproductive ones.1
This is a crucial point, since inactive and reproductive viruses are not interchangeable in terms of infectivity. If you have a nonreproductive virus in your body, you will not get sick and you cannot spread it to others. Secondly, many if not most laboratories amplify the RNA collected far too many times, which results in healthy people testing “positive.”
The Crucial Detail That Nullifies Most PCR Test Results

The video above explains how the PCR test works and how we are interpreting results incorrectly. In summary, the PCR swab collects RNA from your nasal cavity. This RNA is then reverse transcribed into DNA. Due to its tiny size, it must be amplified to become discernible. Each round of amplification is called a cycle, and the number of amplification cycles used by any given test or lab is called a cycle threshold (CT).

The higher the CT, the greater the risk that insignificant sequences of viral DNA end up being magnified to the point that the test reads positive even if your viral load is extremely low or the virus is inactive and poses no threat to you or anyone else.
Many scientists have noted that anything over 35 cycles is scientifically indefensible.2,3,4 A September 28, 2020, study5 in Clinical Infectious Diseases revealed that when you run a PCR test at a CT of 35 or higher, the accuracy drops to 3%, resulting in a 97% false positive rate.
Yet, a test known as the Corman-Drosten paper and tests recommended by the World Health Organization are set to 45 cycles,6,7,8 and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend running PCR tests at a CT of 40.9
The question is why, considering the consensus is that CTs over 35 render the test useless. When labs use these excessive cycle thresholds, you clearly end up with a grossly overestimated number of positive tests, so what we’re really dealing with is a “casedemic”10,11 — an epidemic of false positives.
Many are now questioning whether this was done on purpose to crash the global economy and provide cover for the implementation of what’s known as the Great Reset, which is nothing less than a global totalitarian takeover by unelected technocrats who seek to gobble up all the world’s assets.
Indeed, it seems quite clear we’re not dealing with a lethal pandemic in any real sense. Mortality statistics further prove this is the case, as overall mortality statistics have remained stable in 2020 and in line with previous years.12,13,14
In other words, people are dying from COVID-19, yes, but the illness is not killing an excess number of people. The same number of people would have died anyway, from something. Indeed, CDC data15 released August 26, 2020, showed only 6% of so-called COVID-19 deaths had COVID-19 listed as the sole cause on the death certificate.
“For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death,” the CDC stated, and any one of those comorbidities could have killed those people even if COVID-19 was nonexistent.
For Accuracy, Much Lower CTs Must Be Used

Now, if CTs above 35 are scientifically unjustified, just how low of a CT should be used? Quite a few studies have investigated this, so there’s no shortage of data at this point. The fact that the WHO, FDA and CDC still have not changed their CTs downward in light of all these data tells us they’re not interested in getting an accurate picture of the infection rate.

For example, an April 2020 study16 in the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases showed that to get 100% confirmed real positives, the PCR test must be run at 17 cycles. Above 17 cycles, accuracy drops dramatically.

By the time you get to 33 cycles, the accuracy rate is a mere 20%, meaning 80% are false positives. Beyond 34 cycles, your chance of a positive PCR test being a true positive shrinks to zero.
More recently, a December 3, 2020, systematic review17 published in the journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases assessed the findings of 29 different studies — all of which were published in 2020 — comparing evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection with the CTs used in testing.
Five of the studies included were unable to identify any live viruses in cases where a positive PCR test had used a CT above 24. What’s more, in order to produce live virus culture, a patient whose PCR test used a CT at or above 35 had to be symptomatic.
As reported by the authors, “12 studies reported that CT values were significantly lower … in specimens producing live virus culture.” In other words, the higher the CT, the lower the chance of a positive test actually being due to the presence of live (and infectious) virus.
“Two studies reported the odds of live virus culture reduced by approximately 33% for every one unit increase in CT,” the authors noted. Importantly, five of the studies included were unable to identify any live viruses in cases where a positive PCR test had used a CT above 24. What’s more, in order to produce live virus culture, a patient whose PCR test used a CT at or above 35 had to be symptomatic.
So, to summarize, if you have symptoms of COVID-19 and test positive using a PCR test that was run at 35 amplification cycles or higher, then you are likely to be infected and infectious.
However, if you do not have symptoms, yet test positive using a PCR test run at 35 CTs or higher, then it is likely a false positive and you pose no risk to others as you’re unlikely to carry any live virus. In fact, provided you’re asymptomatic, you’re unlikely to be infectious even if you test positive with a test run at 24 CTs or higher.
Fearmongering Success Hinges on Incorrect Use of PCR Test

The video above includes several interviews with experts who have openly criticized the use of PCR testing to diagnose infections such as COVID-19. These include:

The inventor of the PCR test, the late Kary Mullis (he has spoken about the test for other infections, such as HIV, but died in August 2019, a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out)

Michael Yeadon, Ph.D., a former vice-president and chief scientific adviser of the drug company Pfizer

Professor Carl Heneghan, director of the Oxford University Center for Evidence-Based Medicine

Emeritus professor of immunology Beda M. Stadler, former head of the Bern Institute of Immunology

Clare Craig, a consultant pathologist

Stephen A. Bustin, professor of molecular medicine and a world-renowned expert on the PCR test

In 1993, Mullis spoke about the use of the PCR test to diagnose HIV. He explained that all the test does is amplify molecules into something you can detect, but it cannot tell you whether those particles actually pose a risk to your health.
He also points out that, using PCR, you can essentially find just about anything in anyone because most of us are walking around with pathogens of all sorts, but the load is either too low to be of concern or the particles are just dead debris that pose no risk.
Bustin points out that when you get a positive result using a CT of 35 or higher, you’re looking at the equivalent of a single copy of viral DNA. The likelihood of that causing a health problem is minuscule. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci has admitted that using a PCR test with a CT above 35 renders it more or less useless because at that point, you’re just detecting dead nucelotides. No live virus can be detected at CTs that high.
Fatal Errors Found in Paper on Which PCR Testing Is Based

November 30, 2020, a team of 22 international scientists published a review18 challenging the scientific paper19 on PCR testing for SARS-CoV-2 written by Christian Drosten, Ph.D., and Victor Corman. The Corman-Drosten paper was quickly accepted by the WHO and the workflow described therein was adopted as the standard across the world.
According to Reiner Fuellmich,20 founding member of the German Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee (Außerparlamentarischer Corona Untersuchungsausschuss,21 or ACU),22,23 Drosten is a key culprit in the COVID-19 pandemic hoax.
The scientists demand the Corman-Drosten paper be retracted due to “fatal errors,”24 one of which is the fact that it was written (and the test itself developed) before any viral isolate was available. All they used was the genetic sequence published online by Chinese scientists in January 2020.
The fact that the paper was published a mere 24 hours after it was submitted also suggests it didn’t even undergo peer review. In an Undercover DC interview, Kevin Corbett, Ph.D., one of the 22 scientists who are now demanding the paper’s retraction, stated:25

“Every scientific rationale for the development of that test has been totally destroyed by this paper. It’s like Hiroshima/Nagasaki to the COVID test.
When Drosten developed the test, China hadn’t given them a viral isolate. They developed the test from a sequence in a gene bank. Do you see? China gave them a genetic sequence with no corresponding viral isolate. They had a code, but no body for the code. No viral morphology.
In the fish market, it’s like giving you a few bones and saying ‘that’s your fish.’ It could be any fish … Listen, the Corman-Drosten paper, there’s nothing from a patient in it. It’s all from gene banks. And the bits of the virus sequence that weren’t there they made up.
They synthetically created them to fill in the blanks. That’s what genetics is; it’s a code. So, its ABBBCCDDD and you’re missing some, what you think is EEE, so you put it in … This is basically a computer virus.
There are 10 fatal errors in this Drosten test paper … But here is the bottom line: There was no viral isolate to validate what they were doing. The PCR products of the amplification didn’t correspond to any viral isolate at that time. I call it ‘donut ring science.’ There is nothing at the center of it. It’s all about code, genetics, nothing to do with reality …
There have since been papers saying they’ve produced viral isolates. But there are no controls for them. The CDC produced a paper in July … where they said: ‘Here’s the viral isolate.’ Do you know what they did? They swabbed one person. One person, who’d been to China and had cold symptoms. One person. And they assumed he had [COVID-19] to begin with. So, it’s all full of holes, the whole thing.”

The conclusion of the review reads, in part:26

“A decision to recognize the errors apparent in the Corman-Drosten paper has the benefit to greatly minimize human cost and suffering going forward. Is it not in the best interest of Eurosurveillance to retract this paper? Our conclusion is clear. In the face of all the tremendous PCR-protocol design flaws and errors described here, we conclude: There is not much of a choice left in the framework of scientific integrity and responsibility.”

The critique against PCR testing is further strengthened by a November 20, 2020, study27 in Nature Communications, which found no viable virus in PCR-positive cases at all. The study evaluated data from 9,865,404 residents of Wuhan, China, who had undergone PCR testing between May 14 and June 1, 2020.

A total of 300 tested positive but had no symptoms. Of the 34,424 people with a history of COVID-19, 107 tested positive a second time. Yet, when they did virus cultures on these 407 individuals who had tested positive (either for the first or second time), no live virus was found in any of them!

Antibody Tests Are Equally Unreliable
Antibody tests are also turning out to have their share of quality problems. If you have antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, that would be evidence that your immune system successfully overcame the virus at some point in the past. However, the COVID-19 antibody test may also turn out positive if you have antibodies against common cold viruses.

June 30, 2020, the CDC admitted that prior exposure to coronaviruses responsible for the common cold can result in a positive COVID-19 antibody test, even if you’ve never been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 specifically.28

The saving grace is that studies29,30,31 suggest antibodies produced following exposure to coronaviruses that cause the common cold also appear to provide some general and long-lasting resistance against SARS-CoV-2.
One such study,32,33 published May 14, 2020, in the journal Cell, found 70% of samples from patients who had recovered from mild cases of COVID-19 had resistance to SARS-CoV-2 on the T-cell level, as did 40% to 60% of people who had not been exposed to SARS-CoV-2.
According to the authors, this suggests there’s “cross-reactive T cell recognition between circulating ‘common cold’ coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2.” In other words, if you’ve recovered from a common cold caused by a particular coronavirus, your humoral immune system may activate when you encounter SARS-CoV-2, thus rendering you resistant to COVID-19.
Another study34 discovered SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies are only found in the most severe cases — about 1 in 5. So, a negative antibody test doesn’t necessarily rule out the possibility that you’ve been infected and didn’t get sick. In fact, this finding suggests COVID-19 may actually be five times more prevalent than suspected — and five times less deadly than predicted.

In a letter to the editor35 published in the July 1, 2020, issue of American Family Physician, Drs. Mark Ebell, deputy editor for evidence-based medicine for the journal, and Henry Barry, reviewed some of the available data, noting that:

“When assessing whether patients had a previous infection and may be immune, it is important to avoid false-positives so that patients do not think they are immune when they are not.
Table 1 summarizes the false-positive rates at various population prevalence for the Cellex test and for a hypothetical test that is 90% sensitive and 99% specific. At relatively low population prevalences, which likely reflect current conditions in the United States and elsewhere, we would argue that false-positive rates are unacceptably high with the Cellex test.”

Ebell and Barry pointed out that many of the antibody tests that have provisional approval from the FDA still have not even been evaluated for accuracy. They also recommended that labs report test results “in a way that reflects the local population prevalence based on widespread testing and include the false-positive rate,” as this information “is needed to help family physicians better inform shared decision-making regarding previous infection and return to work or school.”
At present, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone including that data in their reporting, and the way things are going, I wouldn’t hold my breath in anticipation of such helpful numbers being included in the future either.
High Time to End Mass Testing Scam
If the vast majority of people who test positive for COVID-19 infection have no symptoms, don’t feel sick and don’t look sick, is COVID-19 really a “deadly” disease? Or, is it more like HPV — a viral infection that most people have without knowing it, and which 90% are able to eliminate without treatment?

The primary justification for the tyrannical governmental interventions of COVID-19 was to slow the spread of the infection so that hospital resources would not be overwhelmed, causing people to die due to lack of medical care.
These interventions were not about stopping the spread altogether or even reducing the number of people that would eventually get infected. They certainly were never meant to prevent all death. Any rational analysis would rapidly conclude that this simply isn’t possible, under any circumstance.
Short-term stay-at-home orders and business closings were only intended to slow down the spread so that, eventually, naturally-acquired herd immunity — the best kind — would prevent it from reemerging. Yet the goal posts keep shifting as we go along.
Two-week lockdowns turned into months in some areas. Eventually, we were told everything would go back to normal as soon as a vaccine became available. But once the vaccines started rolling out, the narrative changed again, and we were told we’d still need masks, social distancing and lockdowns well into 2021 or even 2022 even with a vaccine. What, exactly, is going on?
The only rational reason for why government interventions continue is because they’re meant to erode our personal freedoms and civil liberties and transfer wealth to unelected technocrats who are controlling the pandemic narrative. It’s all fearmongering based on a combination of wildly manipulated data and flawed tests.
Aside from PCR testing data, there’s no evidence of a lethal pandemic at all. As mentioned, while there is such a thing as COVID-19, and people have and do die from it, there are no excess deaths due to it.36,37,38 The total mortality for 2020 is normal.
So, unless we think we should shut down the world and stop living because people die from heart disease, diabetes, cancer, the flu or anything else, then there’s no reason to shut down the world because some people happen to die from COVID-19.
What You Can Do

The good news is the hoax is starting to be exposed. In November 2020, a Portuguese appeals court ruled39,40 that the PCR test is “not a reliable test for SARS-CoV-2” and that “a single positive PCR test cannot be used as an effective diagnosis of infection.” Therefore, “any enforced quarantine based on the results is unlawful.”41 The court also noted that forcing healthy people to self-isolate could be a violation of their fundamental right to liberty.
As detailed in “Coronavirus Fraud Scandal — The Biggest Fight Has Just Begun” and “German Lawyers Initiate Class-Action Coronavirus Litigation,” additional legal cases are also to be expected, all of which will help expose the fraud perpetrated. As for what you can do in the meantime, consider:

Turning off mainstream media news and turning to independent experts — do the research. Read through the science.
Continue to counter the censorship by asking questions — arm yourself with mortality statistics and the facts on PCR testing, so you can explain how and why this pandemic simply isn’t a pandemic anymore.
If you are a medical professional, especially if you’re a member of a professional society, write an open letter to your government, urging them to speak to and heed recommendations from independent experts.
Sign The Great Barrington Declaration,42 which calls for an end to lockdowns.
Join a group so that you can have support — Examples of groups formed to fight against government overreach include Us for Them, a group campaigning for reopening schools and protecting children’s rights in the U.K., and the Freedom to Breathe Agency, a U.S. team of attorneys, doctors, business owners and parents who are fighting to protect freedom and liberty.

By Ron Rosedale, M.D.

It is amazing how the little twists and turns of researchers can have such a profound impact on what we generally come to realize as “scientific truth.” Let me share a recent fascinating example of how this impacted one of the most powerful hormones in your body.
The Ob mouse is a strain of mouse that has a genetic mutation that makes it obese and unhealthy. It has been used for many years as a model of obesity to do research on, though the reason that it was obese had eluded scientists.
This changed when, in 1994, Jeffrey Friedman discovered that this mouse lacked a previously unknown hormone called leptin, and when it was injected with leptin it became thin, vibrant, and very healthy within weeks. This made headlines around the world, “the cure for obesity found” and pharmaceutical companies started tripping over themselves with trillion dollar signs in their eyes to be the first to genetically manufacture leptin on a large-scale.
This did not last long. When people were tested for leptin, it was found that, unlike the Ob mouse, they did not lack leptin; on the contrary almost all overweight and obese people have excess leptin.
These people were “leptin resistant” and giving extra leptin did little good.
The financial disappointment was extreme and scientists working for pharmaceutical companies said that leptin wasn’t important anymore since they could not find a drug to control it, and therefore the industry couldn’t make money on it. To make big money in medicine one needs a patent and this generally means remedies which are not commonly or easily available — that are not natural.
This illustrates two extremely unfortunate principles in modern medicine; only those therapies that will make lots of money (generally for the pharmaceutical industry or hospitals), ever get pursued and then taught to physicians (since most of medical education after medical school takes place by drug reps), and these therapies, almost by definition, will be unnatural.
This inhibition of extremely important knowledge is not only unfortunate, it is deadly, and is exemplified by how few people, including doctors, know anything about leptin, though I would consider it to be the most important chemical in your body that will determine your health and lifespan.

Two Hormones that are Vital for Optimal Health

Each and every one of us is a combination of lives within lives. We are made up of trillions of individual living cells that each must maintain itself. Even more significantly, the cells must communicate and interact with each other to form a republic of cells that we call our individual self.
Our health and life depends on how accurately instructions are conveyed to our cells so that they can act in harmony. It is the communication among the individual cells that will determine our health and our life.
The communication takes place by hormones. Arguably therefore, the most important molecules in your body that ultimately will decide your health and life are hormones.
Many would say that genes and chromosomes are the most important molecules, however once born your genes pretty much just sit there; hormones tell them what to do. Certainly, the most important message that our cells receive is how and what to do with energy, and therefore life cannot take place without that.
The two most important hormones that deliver messages about energy and metabolism are insulin and leptin.
Metabolism can roughly be defined as the chemistry that turns food into life, and therefore insulin and leptin are critical to health and disease. Both insulin and leptin work together to control the quality of your metabolism (and, to a significant extent, the rate of metabolism).
Insulin works mostly at the individual cell level, telling the vast majority of cells whether to burn or store fat or sugar and whether to utilize that energy for maintenance and repair or reproduction. This is extremely important as we shall see, for on an individual cell level turning on maintenance and repair equates to increased longevity, and turning up cellular reproduction can increase your risk of cancer.
Leptin, on the other hand, controls the energy storage and utilization of the entire republic of cells allowing the body to communicate with the brain about how much energy (fat) the republic has stored, and whether it needs more, or should burn some off, and whether it is an advantageous time nutritionally-speaking for the republic –you– to reproduce or not.

What Exactly is Leptin?

Leptin is a very powerful and influential hormone produced by fat cells that has totally changed the way that science (real science, outside of medicine) looks at fat, nutrition, and metabolism in general.
Prior to leptin’s discovery, fat was viewed as strictly an ugly energy storage depot that most everyone was trying to get rid of. After it was discovered that fat produced the hormone leptin (and subsequently it was discovered that fat produced other very significant hormones), fat became an endocrine organ like the ovaries, pancreas and pituitary, influencing the rest of the body and, in particular, the brain.
Leptin, as far  as science currently knows, is the most powerful regulator that tells your brain what to do about life’s two main biological goals: eating and reproduction. Your fat, by way of leptin, tells your brain whether you should be hungry, eat and make more fat, whether you should reproduce and make babies, or (partly by controlling insulin) whether to “hunker down” and work overtime to maintain and repair yourself.
I believe I could now make a very convincing and scientifically accurate statement that that rather than your brain being in control of the rest of your body, your brain is, in fact, subservient to your fat — and leptin.
In short, leptin is the way that your fat stores speak to your brain to let your brain know how much energy is available and, very importantly, what to do with it. Therefore, leptin may be “on top of the food chain” in metabolic importance and relevance to disease.

How Leptin Regulates Your Weight

It has been known for many years that fat stores are highly regulated. It appeared that when one tried to lose weight the body would try to gain it back. This commonly results in “yo-yo” dieting and in scientific circles one talks about the “set point” of weight. It has long been theorized that there must be a hormone that determines this.
Science points now to leptin as being that hormone.
In our ancestral history, it was advantageous to store some fat to call upon during times of famine. However, it was equally disadvantageous to be too fat. For most of our evolutionary history, it was necessary to run, to obtain prey and perhaps most importantly, to avoid being prey. If a lion was chasing a group of people it would most likely catch and eliminate from the gene pool the slowest runner and the one who could not make it up the tree — the fattest one.
Thus, fat storage had to be highly regulated and this is done, as is any regulation, through hormones, the most significant being leptin.
If a person is getting too fat, the extra fat produces more leptin which is supposed to tell the brain that there is too much fat stored, more should not be stored, and the excess should be burned.
Signals are therefore sent to an area of the brain in the hypothalamus (the arcuate nucleus) to stop being hungry, to stop eating, to stop storing fat and to start burning some extra fat off.
Controlling hunger is a major (though not the only) way that leptin controls energy storage. Hunger is a very powerful, ancient, and deep-seated drive that, if stimulated long enough, will make you eat and store more energy. Asking somebody to not eat, to voluntarily restrict calories even though they are hungry, is asking the near impossible. The only way to eat less in the long-term is to not be hungry, and the only way to do this is to control the hormones that regulate hunger, the primary one being leptin.

How Leptin Resistance Leads to Disease

More recently, it has been found that leptin not only changes brain chemistry, but can also “rewire” the very important areas of the brain that control hunger and metabolism. I’m not aware of any other chemical in the body that has been shown to accomplish this “mind bending” event.
This has really caught the attention of the scientific community. Further studies have now shown that leptin, or more correctly the inability of the body to properly hear leptin’s signals, in other words leptin resistance, plays significant if not primary roles in heart disease, obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis, autoimmune diseases, reproductive disorders, and perhaps the rate of aging itself.
It helps to control the brain areas that regulate thyroid levels and the sympathetic nervous system which also has huge impacts on blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis and aging. Leptin’s stimulatory effect on the sympathetic nervous system also helps determine the adrenal stress response including cortisol levels.

Leptin May Be Even More Critical Than Insulin

The importance of insulin in health and disease is becoming well-known. Aside from its obvious role in diabetes, it plays a very significant role in hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.
I was one of the first to speak publicly to doctors about insulin’s critical role in health well over a decade ago (see the transcribed talk Insulin and its Metabolic Effects) and I am even more convinced now.
However leptin may even supersede insulin in importance, for new research is revealing that in the long run glucose and therefore insulin levels may be largely determined by leptin.
It had been previously believed that the insulin sensitivity of muscle and fat tissues were the most important factor in determining whether one would become diabetic or not. Elegant new studies are showing that the brain and liver are most important in regulating a person’s blood sugar levels especially in type 2 or insulin resistant diabetes.
It should be noted again that leptin plays a vital role in regulating your brain’s hypothalamic activity which in turn regulates much of a person’s “autonomic” functions; those functions that you don’t necessarily think about but which determines much of your life (and health) such as body temperature, heart rate, hunger, the stress response, fat burning or storage, reproductive behavior, and newly discovered roles in bone growth and blood sugar levels.
Another very recent study reveals leptin’s importance in directly regulating how much sugar that the liver manufactures via gluconeogenesis.
Many chronic diseases are now linked to excess inflammation such as heart disease and diabetes. High leptin levels are very pro-inflammatory, and leptin also helps to mediate the manufacture of other very potent inflammatory chemicals from fat cells that also play a significant role in the progression of heart disease and diabetes. It has long been known that obesity greatly increased risk for many chronic diseases including heart disease and diabetes, but no one really knew why.

Leptin appears to be the missing link.

Could Leptin Also Affect  How Fast You Age?

Leptin will not only determine how much fat you have, but also where that fat is put. When you are leptin resistant you put that fat mostly in your belly, your viscera, causing the so-called “apple shape” that is linked to much disease. Some of that fat permeates the liver, impeding the liver’s ability to listen to insulin, and further hastening diabetes.
 
Leptin plays a far more important role in your health than, for instance, cholesterol, yet how many doctors measure leptin levels in their patients, know their own level, even know that it can be easily measured, or even what it would mean?
Leptin appears to play a significant role in obesity, heart disease, osteoporosis, autoimmune diseases, inflammatory diseases and cancer. These are the so-called “chronic diseases of aging”.
Could it perhaps affect the rate of aging itself?

The Biology of Aging

Scientists who study the biology of aging are beginning to look at that question. There are two endeavors, two drives that life has been programmed, since its inception, to succeed at and to succumb to. These are to eat and to reproduce.
If every one of our ancestors had not succeeded in eating and reproducing we would not be here, and this paper would be moot. All of your morphological characteristics from your hair to your toenails are designed to help you succeed at those two activities. That is what nature wants us to do. Nature’s purpose is not necessarily to have you live a long and healthy life, but to perpetuate the instructions, the genes that tell how to perpetuate life.
Even so-called “paleolithic” diets, though undoubtedly far better than what is generally eaten today, were not necessarily designed by nature to help us live a long and healthy life but, at best, to maximize reproduction. Nature appears to not care much about what happens to us after we have had a sufficient chance to reproduce. That is why we die.
But there are clues as to how to live a long and healthy life. And that brings us once again to fat–and leptin.
It takes energy to make babies; lots of it. Energy was and always will be a coveted commodity. Nature, and evolution, hates wasting it. It makes no sense to try and make babies when it appears that there’s not enough energy available to successfully accomplish that goal.
Instead, it seems that virtually all living forms can “switch gears” and direct energy away from reproduction and towards mechanism that will allow it to “hunker down” for the long haul and thus be able to reproduce at a future more nutritionally opportune time. In other words nature will then let you live longer to accomplish its primary directive of reproduction.
It does this by up regulating maintenance and repair genes that increase production of intracellular antioxidant systems, heat shock proteins (that help maintain protein shape), and DNA repair enzymes. This is what happens when you restrict calories (without starvation) in animals, and that has been shown convincingly for 70 years to greatly extend the life span of many dozens of species. Thus, there is a powerful link between reproduction, energy stores, and longevity.
Genetic studies in simple organisms have shown that that link is at least partially mediated by insulin (which in simple organisms also functions as a growth hormone), and that when insulin signals are kept low, indicating scarce energy availability, maximal lifespan can be extended— a lot; several hundred percent in worms and flies.
Glucose is an ancient fuel used even before there was oxygen in the atmosphere, for life can burn glucose without oxygen; it is an anaerobic fuel. The use of fat as fuel came later, after life in the form of plants soaked the earth in oxygen, for you cannot burn fat without oxygen.
The primary source of energy stores in people by far is fat, as many unfortunately are all too aware of. The primary signal that indicates how much fat is stored is leptin, and it is also leptin that allows for reproduction, or not.
It has long been known that women with very little body fat, such as marathon runners, stop ovulating. There is not enough leptin being produced to permit it. Paradoxically, the first pharmaceutical use of leptin was recently approved to give to skinny women to allow them to reproduce.

Leptin’s Role in Improving Your Metabolism

Leptin also is instrumental in regulating body temperature, partly by controlling the rate of metabolism via its regulation of the thyroid.
 
Metabolic rate and temperature has long been connected with longevity. Almost all mechanisms that extend lifespan in many different organisms result in lower temperature. Flowers are refrigerated at the florist to extend their lifespan. Restricting calories in animals also results in lower temperature, reduced thyroid levels, and longer life.
 
It should be noted that reduced thyroid levels in this case are not synonymous with hypothyroidism. Here, the body is choosing to lower thyroid hormones because the increased efficiency of energy use and hormonal signaling (including perhaps thyroid) is allowing this to happen.
Anything will dissolve faster in hot water than cold water. Extra heat will dissolve, disrupt and disorganize. This is not what I try to do to make someone healthy. It is commonly advised to “increase metabolism” and increase “thermogenesis” for health and weight loss.
Yet how many of you would put a brand of gasoline in your car that advertised that it would make your engine run hotter? What would that do to the life of your car? It is not an increase in metabolism that I am after; it is improved metabolic quality.
That will be determined at the quality of your leptin signaling.
If it is poor, if you are insulin and leptin resistant, your metabolism is unhealthy and high in what I call “metabolic friction”. If you then increase its rate you will likely accelerate your demise. To increase the quality of your metabolism you must be able to properly listen to insulin and especially to leptin.
If your fasting blood serum level of leptin is elevated you are likely leptin resistant and you will not be healthy unless you correct it.

How Do You Become Leptin Resistant?

This is the subject of much research. I believe people become leptin-resistant by the same general mechanism that people become insulin-resistant; by overexposure to high levels of the hormone.
High blood glucose levels cause repeated surges in insulin, and this causes one’s cells to become “insulin-resistant” which leads to further high levels of insulin and diabetes. It is much the same as being in a smelly room for a period of time. Soon, you stop being able to smell it, because the signal no longer gets through.
I believe the same happens with leptin. It has been shown that as sugar gets metabolized in fat cells, fat releases surges in leptin, and I believe that those surges result in leptin-resistance just as it results in insulin-resistance.
The only known way to reestablish proper leptin (and insulin) signaling is to prevent those surges, and the only known way to do that is via diet and supplements.
As such, these can have a more profound effect on your health than any other known modality of medical treatment.
When leptin signaling is restored, your brain can finally hear the message that perhaps should have been delivered decades ago; high leptin levels can now scream to your brain that you have too much fat and that you better start burning some off for your life is in danger.
Your brain will finally allow you access into your pantry that you have been storing your fat in. Your cells will be fed the food from that fat and they will be satisfied. They will not know whether that food came from your belly fat or from your mouth; nor will they care. They will be receiving energy that they need and will not have to ask for more. You will not be hungry.
This also makes counting calories irrelevant, for the calories that you put into your mouth today are not necessarily what your cells will be eating; that will be determined primarily by leptin. Whether or not you put food into your mouth, your cells will be eating, and if they cannot eat fat they must eat sugar.
Since little sugar is stored, that sugar will be had by making you crave it, or by turning the protein in your muscle and bone into sugar. This contributes in a major way to weakness and osteoporosis. Whether or not this lean tissue wasting happens is determined by your capacity, or incapacity, to burn fat, and that is determined by your ability to listen to leptin.
A strategic diet that emphasizes good fats and avoids blood sugar spikes coupled with targeted supplements (as recommended in my Rosedale Diet and Dr. Mercola’s Take Control of Your Health), will enhance insulin and leptin sensitivity so that you can once again hear their music, allowing your life to be the symphony it was meant to be.

A new study helps to explain how leptin, a hormone produced by fat tissue, influences your motivation to eat.
The researchers described for the first time a collection of leptin-responsive neurons in the brain’s lateral hypothalamic area (LHA). Those LHA neurons feed directly into the mesolimbic dopamine system, which controls the rewarding properties assigned to things.
The study therefore adds to growing evidence that leptin doesn’t turn your appetite on and off just by controlling whether you feel hungry or full. It can also make you want food more or less regardless of hunger.

Melatonin is best known as a sleep hormone because of its action controlling the circadian cycle. But melatonin also has antioxidant properties, and may have an important anti-aging role.
A recent study looked at artificially aged mice to determine the effects of melatonin on aging.  Such mice are used as a model to study the fundamental mechanisms of aging because they develop markers also found in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
According to the study, as reported by Green Med Info:

“… [T]reatment with melatonin … was able to reduce oxidative stress and the neurodegenerative calpain/Cdk5 pathway … and … markers of cerebral aging and neurodegeneration … indicating the neuroprotective and anti-aging effect of melatonin.”

Soy supplements are reputed to stave off hot flashes, night sweats, and other uncomfortable menopausal symptoms.  But the latest in a series of disappointing studies finds that soy supplements do not actually have any such effect, they do not reduce the aging-related bone loss that can lead to osteoporosis.
During menopause, a woman’s body produces less estrogen and progesterone. Soy protein has been considered a possible treatment ever since researchers observed that women in Asia tend to have lower rates of bone loss and osteoporosis.
According to CNN:

“So if soy isn’t beneficial, what options are women left with? To prevent bone loss, women should stick with the basics … That means getting enough calcium and vitamin D, [and] exercising regularly”.

By Dr. Mercola

Bioidentical hormone therapy has become widely adopted as a useful method of normalizing hormone levels. While it is far safer than synthetic or animal based hormones like Premarin, there are clearly some dangers associated with its use and the purpose of this article is to highlight some of the major ones.
This article is in no way meant to be a comprehensive review of the topic, but merely to point out some of the major concerns and approaches as I see them from having practiced medicine for nearly three decades.
If you have any interest. I would strongly recommend purchasing Dr. Wright’s new book Stay Young and Sexy. It is under $10 and simply the best book I have reviewed on the topic. If the book were $100 it would be worth the price. This book is a classic and should be in everyone’s natural medicine library. The publisher has also created a web site with a free hormone self assessment and sample chapters at www.stayyoungandsexy.com.

Natural Progesterone

I will focus much of this article on natural progesterone cream as it is one of the most popular and useful ones for women.Typically, women find rapid improvement in two of the most common premenopausal challenges which are PMS and painful cramps.  It can be also extraordinarily useful to prevent miscarriages but dosing would be continuous after conception.
Dr. John Lee was my original mentor in this area but he passed away a number of years ago and did not fully appreciate the challenges that are associated with using the creams on your skin.
Dr. Jonathon Wright, along with Dr. Lee, are considered the pioneers in introducing bioidentical hormone therapy in the United States. Dr. Wright is still alive and I believe has successfully resolved the challenge associated with using the creams. Before I discuss that though, let’s first do a brief review of why progesterone is important.
Natural progesterone is the identical hormone that is produced by a woman’s ovary. It is made from naturally occurring plant steroids found in the wild yam. It is NOT the synthetic version that is commonly purchased as tablets with a prescription such as Provera.
Synthetic progesterones, like Provera or medroxyprogesterone, can produce severe side effects including increased risk of cancer, abnormal menstrual flow, fluid retention, nausea, depression and can even increase risk of heart disease and stroke.
Side effects are extremely rare with natural progesterone. The only one of concern is that it can potentially alter the timing of your menstrual cycle.

Reasons Why Natural Progesterone Made by Your Body Is Good

Progesterone is a steroid hormone made by a woman’s ovaries when she ovulates and in smaller amounts by the adrenal gland. A menstruating woman will typically produce about 20 to 30 mg of progesterone a day during the luteal or last phase of her menstrual cycle.
While menopause doesn’t typically occur until age 50 or later, many women can start going out of balance in their 30s or even earlier. This decline in progesterone is not trivial for as women age into their fourth, fifth, and sixth decade, their progesterone levels continue to fall.  By the time they reach perimenopause as much as 75% or more of their youthful progesterone secretion may already be missing.
Natural progesterone is very useful to balance excess estrogen which can be a major risk for breast cancer. Natural progesterone is also different from estrogen in that your body can use it as a precursor or starting material to make other hormones such as adrenal hormones. It can even convert it into estrogen or testosterone if your body needs it.
Natural progesterone is made from a substance called diosgenin which is commonly extracted from wild yams or soybeans.  Even though it may be extracted from soy it is a highly purified hormone and there are absolutely no remnants of soy substances that would lead to any problem.

Estrogen Dominance

Many if not most women in our culture are estrogen dominant, so using the progesterone goes a long way towards balancing hormones which usually:

Decreases a woman’s risk for breast cancer,
Improves her PMS and breast tenderness and

The table below lists the properties of estrogen relative to progesterone. Some of the reasons that estrogen is frequently in excess in many women are:

Overproduction of estrogen. Ovarian cysts or tumors can lead to excess estrogen production. Stress also increases production, but probably the most common cause is obesity. All body fat has an enzyme which converts adrenal steroids to estrogen, so the more fat you have, the more estrogen is present.
Inability to breakdown estrogen. Excess estrogen is generally removed by the liver. Diseases of the liver like cirrhosis or decreased enzyme activity can lead to increased estrogen levels. Vitamin B6 and magnesium are necessary for the liver to neutralize estrogen. Increased sugar intake will also excrete magnesium and interfere with its ability to breakdown estrogen.
Exposure to pesticides in foods. Most of us eat foods that have pesticides on them. These and many other unnatural chemicals share a common structure with estrogen and serve as “false” estrogens which further stimulates the body’s estrogen receptors.
Estrogen supplementation. Clearly any additional estrogen given by prescription will increase the level unless it is properly balanced with natural progesterone.
Decreased production of progesterone. Progesterone is necessary to counterbalance estrogen. If women do not ovulate during their cycle they will not produce any progesterone that cycle. This happens commonly and worsens the already disturbed progesterone/estrogen balance. Decreased progesterone levels are one of the most common reasons for miscarriages.

To minimize your risk of cancer it is very important to understand that you should never take any supplemental estrogen without taking natural progesterone. Note that I use the term “natural’ progesterone, or the real hormone. Taking synthetic versions like Provera will actually increase your risk of cancers and heart disease.

Estrogen Effects
Progesterone Effects

Stimulates breasts cysts
Protects against breast cysts

Increases body fat storage
Helps use fat for energy and keep it off hips

Salt and fluid retention
Natural diuretic (water pill)

Depression and headaches
Natural anti-depressant

Interferes with thyroid hormone
Facilitates thyroid hormone action

Increases blood clotting and risk of stroke
Normalizes blood clotting

Decreases libido (sex drive)
Increases libido

Impairs blood sugar control
Normalizes blood sugar levels

Loss of zinc and retention of copper
Normalizes zinc and copper levels

Reduced oxygen level in all cells
Restores proper cell oxygen levels

Increased risk of endometrial cancer
Helps prevent endometrial cancer

Increased risk of breast cancer
Helps prevent breast cancer

Helps decrease bone loss slightly
Increases bone building

Why You Should AVOID All Oral Hormone Preparations

There are many ways to “naturally” address bioidentical hormone replacement but one of the most common mistakes is to use oral hormones.
If nature had intended to locate your ovaries in your stomach or somewhere else in your GI tract it might make sense for women to swallow progesterone. If your ovaries were in your GI tract, your body would certainly have been equipped with a way to process them safely and efficiently so that everything worked in perfect synchrony.
Of course your ovaries are not in your GI tract but in your pelvis outside your GI tract and connected to your uterus and vagina through your fallopian tubes. Your ovaries have direct access to your blood stream through a pelvic plexus of veins, which delivers their hormone secretions to your heart which in turn pumps them, unchanged to hormone sensitive cells throughout your entire body.
If you swallow steroid hormones you will seriously distort their natural metabolism  When you swallow them they will encounter potent stomach acids. The hormones that survive this assault then go to your liver where they will be further broken down. Your liver screens all molecules that enter your blood stream, passing some onward, modifying or detoxifying others, and rejecting a few. 
This routing of orally swallowed hormones is in sharp contrast to the way nature intended them to be distributed to your tissues.  If you swallow hormones only 10-15% will eventually reach the target tissues and you will need to take an oral dose that is 500% higher than you need. Over 30 different metabolites are created in your liver when you swallow the progesterone and any of these can then have unwanted side effects.
So if you or anyone you know currently use oral hormones like progesterone or DHEA or any hormone, I encourage you to strongly consider phasing them out. 
Like most good things in life if you use too much of the hormone cream, complications can develop and disrupt your hormone balance.

The Key to Safely and Effectively Using Progesterone Cream

If you want to copy nature and reproduce a hormonal environment that most closely resembles a normal premenopausal woman the first logical step would be to get the hormones directly into your blood stream, just the way your ovary does.
Hormones carefully measured and formulated in an appropriate cream or gel need only be rubbed once or twice a day into your mucous (epithelial) membranes. Since there are no destructive detours through your GI tract when administered this way, your tissues are exposed to the appropriate concentrations of the hormone without the side effects of 30 different liver metabolites.
I first started using these creams in the early 1990s be became gradually disenchanted with them after I noticed that they typically worked wonderfully initially but then invariably stopped working. This is now known as “dermal fatigue”. 
What happens, not only for progesterone cream, but for ANY hormone preparation you use by applying as a cream to your skin is that within a few weeks to a few months you will saturate the fat tissue with the hormones and they will actually stop working or can even make your symptoms worse.
The problem relates to the fact that progesterone is highly fat soluble and once applied to your skin will store itself in your fat tissue. When one initially uses the cream, there aren’t any problems as the fat stores are very low. But as time goes on, the cream accumulates and contributes to disruptions in your adrenal hormones such as DHEA, cortisol, and testosterone. I have learned that although progesterone cream is an enormously useful tool, it needs to be used very cautiously.
I found that many of the women who were on the cream have terribly elevated levels of this hormone. Progesterone is normally a cyclical hormone and the body really needs to see a change in the concentration to affect a proper physiological response. If the level is constantly above the concentration that it recognizes as “off” or low, this is not possible.
Fortunately, this is repairable. But it may involve going off the cream for as long as two years to wash the progesterone out of your system.

Best Way to Use Progesterone Cream

The key mistake that many well intentioned knowledgeable doctors, including myself made is to advise to use the cream on your skin. While this certainly provides better results than swallowing the hormones, it can still be improved.
There is a relatively minor tweak you can make with the creams which avoids nearly all of the side effects of applying the cream on your skin.
If you apply the cream to your mucous epithelial membranes that line your uterus and vagina you obtain a virtually ideal administration system. Not only is absorption through these membranes more complete than through your skin, but hormones absorbed through your vaginal membranes enter the very same pelvic plexus of veins that your ovaries normally empty into.
From here the hormones are carried to your heart and lungs and distributed to your tissues just as if your ovary had actually produced them.
Men also require hormones. Obviously men don’t have a vagina to use but we do have a rectum that has a similar mucosal epithelial surface and can be used to administer the hormones in a near ideal fashion without any of the complications previously described.

Timing and Dose of Progesterone Cream

For most premenopausal women the usual dose is 15-24 mg/day for 14 days before expected menses, stopping the day or so before menses.  So you would use the cream for twelve days and then stop. Typically this would mean you would start on day 12 of your cycle and stop on day 26.
The abrupt lowering of your progesterone level is the primary stimulus for your period to start.  Hopefully when it starts any PMS and painful periods will be dramatically reduced.
When a women is in menopause she may only need 15 mg but taken for the first 25 days of the month, then take 5 or 6 days off and restart on the first of the month.
For most women a single daily application will work. However, because the half-life is relatively short, some women find that they get a more satisfactory response by splitting the daily dose in two, half in the morning and half in the evening. If you are only taking the hormones in the morning and begin to feel symptoms later in the day, splitting the dose in two should solve this problem.

Testing of Your Natural Hormones

This is somewhat of a controversial area but basically involves three different types.

Blood
Saliva
Urine

I have never been a fan of blood testing as many of the hormones are secreted in a pulsatile fashion and it is difficult to get an accurate idea of the levels in this way.
Saliva testing is easier than urine but is not as accurate.
My current belief is that a 24 hour urine test is the preferred method and the one I use for myself and family. This is the one that Dr. Wright advocates in his own clinic. Dr. Wright has trained many hundreds of physicians in this system and if you are seeking further guidance in this area it would be wise to seek one of them to help you in this area.

By Dr. Mercola

Reaching puberty is a rite of passage that we’ve all been through, but children nowadays are reaching it earlier than ever before — a trend that has both health experts and parents alarmed.
Precocious puberty, which is the appearance of secondary sex characteristics like pubic hair or breast growth before age 8, or the onset of menarche before age 9, impacts at least 1 in 5,000 U.S. children, and the rate is on the rise.1
Even in the last three decades, children (particularly girls) are maturing at younger and younger ages (precocious puberty is 10 times more common in girls than in boys).

Puberty, Once the Norm at Age 15, Now Occurring in 7-, 8- and 9-Year-Olds

In the 19th century the onset of menstruation occurred around the age of 15. Now the average age of the first period, or menarche, is around 12. The time during and before puberty is one of rapid development and change, which is why even months matter when it comes to first menstruation. Before menstruation, girls will show beginning signs of development, such as breast “budding” and growth of pubic hair.
These signs are now becoming unsettlingly common among 7-, 8- and 9-year-old girls, to the extent that many health care providers, rather than labeling these children with a diagnosis that something is wrong, have simply changed the definition of what’s normal… but is it really “normal” for girls to mature at such a young age?
There are more questions than answers in the case of precocious puberty, but what is certain is that girls are developing earlier than they have even 10, 20 or 30 years ago.
One study in the journal Pediatrics revealed that by age 7, 10 percent of white girls, 23 percent of black girls, 15 percent of Hispanic girls and 2 percent of Asian girls had started developing breasts, with researchers noting:2

“The proportion of girls who had breast development at ages 7 and 8 years, particularly among white girls, is greater than that reported from studies of girls who were born 10 to 30 years earlier.”

Early puberty can set the stage for emotional and behavioral problems, and is linked to lower self-esteem, depression, eating disorders, alcohol use, earlier loss of virginity, more sexual partners and increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases. There is also evidence that suggests these girls are at increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and other cardiovascular diseases, as well as cancer, later in life.

Environmental Chemicals a Likely Factor

Scientists have brought forth a number of potential explanations for the rising rates of early puberty, but one that deserves special attention is environmental chemicals, and particularly estrogen-mimicking, “gender-bending” chemicals that easily leach out of the products that contain them, contaminating everything they touch, including food and beverages.
As the featured New York Times article reported:

” …animal studies show that the exposure to some environmental chemicals can cause bodies to mature early. Of particular concern are endocrine-disrupters, like “xeno-estrogens” or estrogen mimics. These compounds behave like steroid hormones and can alter puberty timing.

For obvious ethical reasons, scientists cannot perform controlled studies proving the direct impact of these chemicals on children, so researchers instead look for so-called “natural experiments,” one of which occurred in 1973 in Michigan, when cattle were accidentally fed grain contaminated with an estrogen-mimicking chemical, the flame retardant PBB.
The daughters born to the pregnant women who ate the PBB-laced meat and drank the PBB-laced milk started menstruating significantly earlier than their peers.”

This is an extreme case, but the truth is we are all part of a “secret experiment” of sorts, because hormone-disrupting chemicals are all around us. Bisphenol A (BPA), an industrial petrochemical that acts as a synthetic estrogen, is found in our plastics and our tin can linings, in dental sealants and on cash-register receipts. Laboratory tests commissioned by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) detected BPA in the umbilical cord blood of 90 percent of newborn infants tested — along with more than 230 other chemicals. As written in the New York Times:

“One concern, among parents and researchers, is the effect of simultaneous exposures to many estrogen-mimics, including the compound BPA, which is ubiquitous.”

No one knows what happens when a developing fetus or young child is exposed to hundreds of chemicals, many of which mimic your body’s natural hormones and can trigger major changes in your body even as an adult, let along during the most rapid and vulnerable periods of development (in utero and as a young child).
BPA is, unfortunately, but one example. Others include phthalates, a group of industrial chemicals used to make plastics like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) more flexible and resilient. They’re also one of the most pervasive of the endocrine disrupters, found in everything from processed food packaging and shower curtains to detergents, toys and beauty products like nail polish, hair spray, shampoo, deodorants, and fragrances.
Other environmental chemicals like PCBs and DDE (a breakdown product of the pesticide DDT) may also be associated with early sexual development in girls. Both DDE and PCBs are known to mimic, or interfere with, sex hormones.
Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), found in non-stick cookware, also falls into this dangerous category, as does fluoride, which is added to the majority of public water supplies in the United States. Research showed that animals treated with fluoride had lower levels of circulating melatonin, as reflected by reduced levels of melatonin metabolites in the animals’ urine. This reduced level of circulating melatonin was accompanied — as might be expected — by an earlier onset of puberty in the fluoride-treated female animals.

These Chemicals Also Increase Your Risk of Cancer and Heart Disease

If a chemical is capable of influencing the rate of your reproductive development, it stands to reason that it would be capable of influencing other hormone-sensitive growth processes as well, and this is indeed the case.
For instance, new research has detected the presence of paraben esters in 99 percent of breast cancer tissues sampled.3 Parabens are chemicals with estrogen-like properties, and estrogen is one of the hormones involved in not only puberty but also the development of breast cancer. They are widely used in household products such as:

? Deodorants and antiperspirants
? Shampoos and conditioners? Shaving gel
? Toothpaste

? Lotions and sunscreens? Make-up / cosmetics? Pharmaceutical drugs? Food additives

Recent research has also confirmed the existence of a previously unknown class of cancer-causing estrogen-mimicking compounds: metals. Yes, a broad range of metals have been shown to act as “metalloestrogens” with the potential to add to the estrogenic burden of the human body, thereby increasing the risk of breast cancer and also possibly early puberty. The following metals, which are added to thousands of consumer products, including vaccines, have been identified as being capable of binding to cellular estrogen receptors and then mimicking the actions of physiological estrogens:4

? Aluminum? Antimony? Arsenite? Barium? Cadmium? Chromium? Cobalt

? Copper? Lead? Mercury? Nickel? Selenite? Tin? Vanadate

Data from a long-running British health survey, meanwhile, has shown that if you have high levels of the chemical BPA in your urine, you may be at an increased risk of heart disease. Some of the greatest concern surrounds early-life, in utero exposure to BPA, which can lead to chromosomal errors in your developing fetus, causing spontaneous miscarriages and genetic damage. But evidence is also very strong showing these chemicals are influencing adults and children, too, and leading to decreased sperm quality, early puberty, stimulation of mammary gland development, disrupted reproductive cycles and ovarian dysfunction, obesity, cancer and heart disease, among numerous other health problems.

Avoiding Hormone-Disrupting Substances is Crucial for Children and Adults Alike

While young girls may show obvious signs of exposure to hormone-disrupting substances via early puberty, other signals are more insidious and may not show up until a disease is already present. Here are 11 measures you can implement right away to help protect yourself and your children from common toxic substances that could cause precocious puberty and other long-term health problems:

As much as possible, buy and eat organic produce and free-range, organic meats to reduce your exposure to added hormones, pesticides and fertilizers. Also avoid milk and other dairy products that contain the genetically engineered recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH or rBST)
Eat mostly raw, fresh foods. Processed, prepackaged foods (of all kinds) are a major source of soy and chemicals such as BPA and phthalates.
Store your food and beverages in glass rather than plastic, and avoid using plastic wrap and canned foods (which are often lined with BPA-containing liners).
Use glass baby bottles and BPA-free sippy cups for your little ones.
Make sure your baby’s toys are BPA-free, such as pacifiers, teething rings and anything your child may be prone to suck on.
Only use natural cleaning products in your home to avoid phthalates.
Switch over to natural brands of toiletries such as shampoo, toothpaste, antiperspirants and cosmetics. The Environmental Working Group has a great safety guide to help you find personal care products that are free of phthalates, parabens and other potentially dangerous chemicals.
Avoid using artificial air fresheners, dryer sheets, fabric softeners or other synthetic fragrances, many of which can also disrupt your hormone balance.
Replace your non-stick pots and pans with ceramic or glass cookware.
When redoing your home, look for “green,” toxin-free alternatives in lieu of regular paint and vinyl floor coverings.
Replace your vinyl shower curtain with one made of fabric.
Avoid non-fermented soy, especially if you’re pregnant and in infant formula.

Theo Colburn’s book Our Stolen Future is a great source for further investigation as it identifies the numerous ways in which environmental pollutants are disrupting human reproductive patterns. I believe it is one of the best resources on this topic and highly recommend it.

Vitamin D Also Linked to Early Puberty

It has been suggested that girls who live closer to the equator start puberty at a later age than girls who live in Northern regions. Since this indicates a potential connection with sun exposure, researchers decided to investigate whether vitamin D was, in fact, related. Upon measuring vitamin D levels in 242 girls aged 5-12, researchers from the University of Michigan School of Public Health found that those who were deficient were twice as likely to start menstruation during the study period as those with higher levels.5
Specifically, among the vitamin-D-deficient girls, 57 percent started their period during the study, compared to 23 percent with adequate vitamin D. However, researchers defined adequate vitamin D as ? 30 ng/mL, which is actually still a deficiency state! For optimal health, vitamin D levels should be a minimum of 50 ng/mL, which means the number of vitamin-D-deficient girls with early puberty was probably much higher than the study reported.
The earlier you enter puberty, the longer you’re exposed to elevated levels of the female hormone estrogen, which is a risk factor for certain cancers such as breast cancer. This has been the primary “link” between early puberty and cancer that has been explored, but it’s important to understand that vitamin D deficiency is also a major risk factor for cancer, heart disease and many other diseases. So it could be that some of the increased risks that come from early puberty are linked to low vitamin D levels.

What You Should Know About Obesity, Stress and Exercise

Obesity (which exposes girls to more estrogen because estrogen is both stored and produced in fat tissue) is another likely factor in early puberty. The New York Times reported:

“As Robert Lustig, a professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco’s Benioff Children’s Hospital, explains, fatter girls have higher levels of the hormone leptin, which can lead to early puberty, which leads to higher estrogen levels, which leads to greater insulin resistance, causing girls to have yet more fat tissue, more leptin and more estrogen, the cycle feeding on itself, until their bodies physically mature.”

As for stress, this, too, has been linked to early puberty, with girls whose parents divorced when they were between 3- and 8-years-old significantly more likely to experience precocious puberty. “Evolutionary psychology offers a theory,” the New York Times reports. “A stressful childhood inclines a body toward early reproduction; if life is hard, best to mature young. But such theories are tough to prove.” Interestingly, in addition to avoiding environmental chemicals, obesity and stress, and optimizing your vitamin D, regular exercise appears to be one of the best known ways to help prevent early puberty.

By Dr. Mercola

New research examining parabens found in cancerous human breast tissue points the finger at antiperspirants and other cosmetics for increasing your risk of breast canceri.
The research, which is also reviewed in an editorial published in the Journal of Applied Toxicology, looked at where breast tumors were appearing, and determined that higher concentrations of parabens were found in the upper quadrants of the breast and axillary area, where antiperspirants are usually appliedii.
Parabens are chemicals that serve as preservatives in antiperspirants and many cosmetics, as well as sun lotions. Previous studies have shown that all parabens have estrogenic activity in human breast cancer cells.
Another component of antiperspirants, aluminum chloride, has been found to act similarly to the way oncogenes work to provide molecular transformations in cancer cells. According to the authors of the editorial review, the research shows “signals of concern that such compounds are not as safe as previously generally considered, and further research is warranted.” Furthermore:

“The data from this latest study, the most extensive examination of parabens in human breast so far published, confirms previous work and raises a number of questions on the entire parabens, personal care product and human health debate, particularly relating to the source and toxicological significance of the paraben esters.”

Ninety-nine Percent of Breast Cancer Tissue Samples Contain Parabens

The featured study by Barr et.al. discovered one or more paraben esters in 99 percent of the 160 tissue samples collected from 40 mastectomiesiii. In 60 percent of the samples, all five paraben esters were present. There were no correlations between paraben concentrations and age, length of breast feeding, tumor location, or tumor estrogen receptor content. The median values in nanograms per tissue for the five chemicals were:

n-propylparaben 16.8
methylparaben 16.6
n-butylparaben 5.8
ethylparaben 3.4
isobutylparaben 2.1

While antiperspirants are a common source of parabens, the authors note that the source of the parabens cannot be established, and that 7 of the 40 patients reportedly never used deodorants or antiperspirants in their lifetime. What this tells us is that parabens, regardless of the source, can bioaccumulate in breast tissue.
And the sources are many. Parabens can be found in a wide variety of personal care products, cosmetics, as well as drugs. That said, it appears the dermal route is the most significant form of exposure. In the featured editorial, Philip Harvey and David Everett explain why:

“… [T]he dermal route of exposure is considered more plausible when intact esters are detected, and other authors reporting human exposures and body fluid concentrations of paraben esters consider cosmetics of some form or another as the likely sources… This is because the metabolic esterase activity of the gut and liver (relevant to oral exposure) is considered to greatly exceed that of the skin, and oral exposures would result in rapid liver metabolism of the esters to produce the common metabolite p-hydroxybenzoic acid… Paraben esters typically used in cosmetics pass through human skin in vitro/ex vivo, and Ishiwatrai et.al. (2007) has shown persistence of unmetabolized methylparaben in the skin”

Safety of Parabens has NEVER Been Established…

As incredible as it sounds, despite the fact that parabens are used in such a wide variety of products, the toxicology of these chemicals has barely been investigated. There is a complete lack of modern toxicology studies on these ingredients, and according to the featured review, not a single study on the chemicals’ carcinogenity follows acceptable regulatory standard carcinogenity study protocols.
The authors point out that one rat study from 1956 is still used as “the pivotal evaluation upon which human safety is judged!”

“This may be acceptable for certain chemicals for which there is limited human exposure but not for chemicals such as parabens for which such a large population is exposed, and which show significant tissue concentrations,” they write.

Furthermore, virtually all toxicology studies are based on the oral route of exposure, which means that risk assessment, according to Harvey and Everett, is “largely based on assumption, opinion and the technical regulatory instrument of GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe).”

The Estrogenic Activity of Parabens

Estrogens, whether synthetic or natural are a primary risk factor for breast cancer. Approximately 20 different studies have established that parabens have estrogenic activity, which makes them relevant when it comes to estrogen-sensitive cancers. A common excuse used to defend the absence of toxicological studies is that parabens are weak in terms of potency. For example, propylparaben and butylparaben are approximately 30,000 and 10,000 less potent than estradiol, respectively.

“However, estradiol occurs in breast tissue in the pictogram per gram of tissue range… but the results reported by Barr et.al. [the featured study] show tissue concentrations of parabens, in the worst cases, in the microgram per gram of breast tissue range, which is one million-fold higher than that of estradiol. Clearly, the magnitude of exposure would seem to more than compensate for the reduction in potency,” Harvey and Everett write.

But that’s not all. A 2011 study reported that methylparaben promotes cell cycling and makes human breast cells more resistant to apoptosis, which, according to the authors can provide the molecular basis for malignant tumor proliferation. Harvey and Everett also cite another study from 2007, which found that propylparaben and butylparaben cause detectable DNA damage.

Rise in Breast Cancer Likely Linked to Chemical Exposures

Harvey and Everett point out that the hypothesis that chemicals in personal care products might be harmful to your health and contribute to breast cancer has a basis in two key observations:

Breast cancer rates have increased in recent decades, which correlates with many lifestyle factors that have undergone significant change during that same time, such as diet, obesity, and use of personal care products containing untested chemicals
Tumors are disproportionately located in the upper, outer quadrant of the breast, and more tumors are found in the left breast than the right, suggesting it may be related to products applied topically to those areas (most people are right-handed, which could make you a bit more heavy-handed when applying products under your left arm than your right)

In my view, one of the key observations by Harvey and Everett is that:

“The tenet that there “is no evidence that personal care products (antiperspirants or deodorants) are related to breast cancer” is technically correct, but only because studies have not been conducted to investigate any relationships. Such arguments provide false assurance by masking the inadequacies of empirical evidence and knowledge.”

Aluminum—Another Cancer-Promoting Ingredient in Antiperspirants

Antiperspirants work by clogging, closing, or blocking the pores that release sweat under your arms—with the active ingredient being aluminum. (If you are using a deodorant-only product it is unlikely to contain aluminum but might contain other chemicals that could be a concern, such as parabens.) Not only does this block one of your body’s routes for detoxification (releasing toxins via your underarm sweat), but it raises concerns about where these metals are going once you roll them (or spray them) on.
Like parabens, aluminum salts can also mimic estrogen, and, just like the featured study, previous research has shown that aluminum is also absorbed and deposited into breast tissueiv. The researchers suggested raised levels of aluminum could even be used as a biomarker for identification of women at increased risk of developing breast cancer.
Aluminum salts can account for 25 percent of the volume of some antiperspirants, and a review of the common sources of aluminum exposure for humans found that antiperspirant use can significantly increase the amount of aluminum absorbed by your body. According to the review, after a single underarm application of antiperspirant, about .012 percent of the aluminum may be absorbedv. This may not sound like much until you multiply it by one or more times a day for a lifetime, which adds up to massive exposure to aluminum—a poison that is not supposed to be in your body, and may be more toxic than mercury. Aside from vaccinations, your antiperspirant may be your largest source of exposure to this poisonous metal!

Be Cautious with Natural Deodorants, Too

There are many brands of aluminum-free deodorants on the market, and many of these are safe alternatives. “Crystal” deodorant stones, which are a popular natural deodorant alternative often used by health-conscious shoppers looking to avoid aluminum, often claim to be aluminum-free, but some actually contain a different type of compound known as an alum, the most common form being potassium alum, also known as potassium aluminum sulfate.
Potassium Alum or Ammonium Alum are natural mineral salts made up of molecules that are too large to be absorbed by your skin. They form a protective layer on your skin that inhibits the growth of odor-causing bacteria. These deodorants are recommended by many cancer treatment centers, but while this may be a better alternative to most antiperspirants and deodorants on the market, it is not completely aluminum-free. Also remember to check the remaining ingredients, keeping a watchful eye out for parabens.
For the last few decades I have not used antiperspirants or deodorants–even natural ones. I noticed that they would cause a yellow stain in the armpit of my shirts. At first I thought the stain was due to my sweat but I quickly realized it was the chemicals in the antiperspirants. I routinely substitute soap and water in my armpits and that seems to work. Although last year I noticed that if I sunbathe my axilla regularly, the UV light actually sterilized my armpits in addition to raising my levels of vitamin D. There is no odor even without using soap and water. Essentially you tan your armpits. The effect is not long lasting and the bacteria repopulate in a day or so unless you expose your armpits to sunlight.

What Can You Do to Prevent Breast Cancer?

Aside from skin cancer, breast cancer is the most common cancer among U.S. women. Unfortunately, while the American Cancer Society widely encourages women to get mammograms, they do not do nearly enough to spread the word about the many ways women can help prevent breast cancer in the first place. The following lifestyle strategies will help to lower your risk of breast cancer:

Radically reduce your sugar/fructose intake. Normalizing your insulin levels by avoiding sugar and fructose is one of the most powerful physical actions you can take to lower your risk of cancer. Unfortunately, very few oncologists appreciate or apply this knowledge today. The Cancer Centers of America is one of the few exceptions, where strict dietary measures are included in their cancer treatment program. Fructose is especially dangerous, as research shows it actually speeds up cancer growth.
Optimize your vitamin D level. Ideally it should be over 50 ng/ml, but levels from 70-100 ng/ml will radically reduce your cancer risk. Safe sun exposure is the most effective way to increase your levels, followed by safe tanning beds and then oral vitamin D3 supplementation as a last resort if no other option is available.
Maintain a healthy body weight. This will come naturally when you begin eating right for your nutritional type and exercising using high-intensity burst-type activities, which are part of my Peak Fitness program. It’s important to lose excess weight because estrogen is produced in fat tissue.
Get plenty of high quality animal-based omega-3 fats, such as those from krill oil. Omega-3 deficiency is a common underlying factor for cancer.
Avoid drinking alcohol, or limit your drinks to one a day for women.
Breastfeed exclusively for up to six months. Research shows this will reduce your breast cancer risk.
Watch out for excessive iron levels. This is actually very common once women stop menstruating. The extra iron actually works as a powerful oxidant, increasing free radicals and raising your risk of cancer. So if you are a post-menopausal woman or have breast cancer you will certainly want to have your Ferritin level drawn. Ferritin is the iron transport protein and should not be above 80. If it is elevated you can simply donate your blood to reduce it.

References:

i Journal of Applied Toxicology January 12, 2012: 32(3); 219-232
ii Journal of Applied Toxicology February 1, 2012: 32(5); 305-309
iii Journal of Applied Toxicology January 12, 2012: 32(3); 219-232
iv Journal of Applied Toxicology April 2011: 31(3):262-9.
v Pharmacology and Toxicology April 2001: 88(4):159-67

By Dr. Mercola

The US Preventive Services Task Force recently published its draft recommendations on hormone replacement therapy1.
While the task force has previously sparked controversy with its recommendations for breast cancer and PSA prostate cancer screening, their recommendations for hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women taking hormones to prevent chronic disease has been met with little resistance.
The group is changing its recommendations for menopausal women who use hormone therapy, either estrogen alone, or in combination with progestin to prevent heart disease, osteoporosis, and cognitive decline.
They are accepting public comments on the draft until June 26, at which point the group will decide whether to make the draft recommendations final. According to a recent report by CNN2:

“… The task force recommendations “are aimed at older women, who are generally healthy asking, ‘If I take a pill a day, will I prevent a heart attack?” [Dr. Carolyn] Crandall [professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA] said.
… In the face of pretty good evidence, the balance of potential benefits and potential harms leads us not to recommend the use of these therapies,” said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, a task force member.
The proposed recommendations do not apply to women younger than 50 who have undergone surgical menopause or who are taking hormone therapy to manage menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes, according to the panel.
… “The balance of benefits or harms may be different with young women, so you can’t say this absolutely applies to younger women making hormone therapy decisions,” Crandall said.”

HRT as Preventive Strategy against Chronic Disease Not Supported by Data

The task force based their new recommendation on a recent review of the results from nine clinical trials published over the past decade3. The main question the group sought to answer was whether or not hormone replacement therapy (HRT) should be used by otherwise healthy menopausal women “to prevent a hypothetical future health event such as heart disease or cognitive decline.” Alas, according to the task force, “There is no evidence that the therapies would prevent those conditions4.
However, I would point out that this analysis is based on the use of synthetic hormones, not bioidenticals, which I’ll discuss more in a moment. That said, according to the featured CNN article:

“Years ago, in addition to providing relief for menopause symptoms, hormone therapy was thought to offer protection against cardiovascular problems, osteoporosis and dementia, so doctors routinely prescribed it to otherwise healthy women. That practice fell out of favor about 10 years ago when a large clinical trial — the Women’s Health Initiative — designed to confirm these hypotheses was halted early. Women involved in that trial were actually at higher risk for many of the problems that hormone therapy was supposed to prevent.”

Indeed, many large-scale trials, including the Women’s Health Initiative, have indicated that taking estrogen alone, or the combination of estrogen and progestin, actually increased women’s chances of developing strokes, dementia, deep vein thrombosis, urinary incontinence and gallbladder disease.

“The bottom line is clinicians must take all clinical parameters into account for the patient and prescribe the lowest dose for the shortest duration of time,” said Dr. Joseph Sanfilippo, vice chairman of reproductive sciences at Magee-Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, in an e-mail to CNN5.”

There are Better Ways to Prevent Heart Disease than HRT

Heart disease prevention is indeed an important concern, but there are far more effective, not to mention safer ways to prevent heart attacks and strokes than using HRT. Key lifestyle strategies that will help protect your heart naturally include:

Boost your good cholesterol and lower your triglyceride levels: Many people strive to reduce their cholesterol levels to protect their heart, but high levels of good (HDL) cholesterol are believed to be protective against heart disease. Meanwhile, high triglycerides are an incredibly potent risk factor. In combination, high triglycerides and low HDL levels are an even bigger risk; this ratio is even more important to your heart health than the standard good vs. bad cholesterol ratio.
In fact, one study found that people with the highest ratio of triglycerides to HDL had 16 times the risk of heart attack as those with the lowest ratio of triglycerides to HDL.
You can increase your HDL levels by exercising and getting plenty of omega-3 fats like those from krill oil. Triglycerides are easily decreased by exercising and avoiding grains and sugars in your diet.
Get enough high quality animal based omega-3 fats: Regularly taking a high-quality animal-based omega-3 supplement such as krill oil is one of the easiest ways to help promote your heart health.
Check your iron levels: If you have excessive levels in your body you are at risk of major oxidation, or premature aging as excessive iron acts as a catalyst to increase your free radical formation though excessive oxidation. Excess iron will also increase your risk of heart disease and cancer. If you are a man, or a woman in menopause, you should get your iron levels tested and, if they’re too high, take steps to reduce them. The simplest way to reduce your iron levels is by donating blood.
Normalize your insulin levels: Elevated insulin levels can lead to insulin resistance, a major risk factor for heart disease. Carefully avoiding sugar/fructose and grains, combined with regular exercise are the most effective strategies for getting your insulin levels back to normal.
Avoid FAKE Estrogens. These are also called xenoestrogens and are pervasive in modern culture. Non-organic foods are loaded with pesticides and herbicides that have potent xenoestrogenic activity. Addtiionally, plastics have BPS and phthalates and many cosmetics have parabens. It is wise to avoid all of these items as they are potent estrogenic influences which can increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer.
Keep your mouth healthy: Gum disease can trigger heart attacks, so make sure you keep your teeth, gums and mouth clean.

Should You Treat Menopause with HRT?

As stated earlier, the panel’s recommendation to avoid HRT is only directed to menopausal women who are using synthetic hormones as a preventive measure. It does not apply to women who are managing symptoms of menopause (such as hot flashes, mood swings, and depression), or younger women who take hormones due to having their ovaries removed (surgically-induced menopause).
In these cases, hormone therapy can still be useful, and in the case of surgically-induced menopause, a necessity. However, it’s a complex topic, and synthetic hormone replacement does have its risks, which is why I do not recommend using them. There are a number of different kinds of estrogen: Pharmaceutical estradiol comes from plant molecules modified in a lab, while Premarin and Prempro contain potent horse estrogens that are manufactured from the urine of pregnant mares. All of these are synthetic versions that have their share of side effects.

Can You Believe Drug Companies Used to Pay Me to Promote HRT?

Yes, at one time I was part of the dark side. Many of you may not know this about me, but after finishing my medical residency training in the mid-80s, I was actually a paid speaker for the drug companies. I got paid to fly around the country to lecture physicians about estrogen replacement therapy. At the time, I was convinced it was an ideal strategy for menopausal women because I was manipulated and deceived by the overwhelming “evidence” that was published in the respected peer-reviewed medical journals.
Only decades later would I finally understand the massive corruption and collusion between the drug companies, medical journals and federal regulatory agencies that provided the illusion of scientific legitimacy when the real primary purpose was to increase their sales.
I still believe replacing your hormones can be a good strategy. But in my journey of learning about and truly coming to understand health, I’ve realized that using synthetic hormones, and even natural hormones from animals, is not a wise choice.
A much better alternative is to use bioidentical hormones. These are natural hormones that are “bioidentical” to the ones your body produces. The bioidentical that is prescribed 80 percent of the time is estriol. It’s natural, not a drug, and you get it at compounding pharmacies. It has been used safely for decades, and I believe it’s particularly useful when your ovaries have been removed or you’ve had a hysterectomy. 

The Ideal Way to Administer Bioidentical Hormones

Keep in mind that when it comes to administering bioidentical hormones, some delivery methods are clearly superior to others. Oral supplementation is perhaps your worst option, as your liver processes everything in your digestive tract first, before it enters your bloodstream. Any method that bypasses your liver will therefore be more effective. Hormone creams are one common alternative that achieves this. However, since hormones are fat-soluble, they can build up in your fatty tissues and lead to having too much in your body. This in turn can disrupt other hormones. It’s also near impossible to accurately determine the dose when using a cream.
That is why I STRONGLY recommend trans mucosal administration. Please
listen to my interview at the top of the article with Dr. Wright in
which we discuss this near the end of the interview. 

 
What to do BEFORE Taking Hormones for Menopause

Natural bioidentical hormones can offer relief from menopausal symptoms, but I recommend not using them as your first go-to option. Treating hormone imbalances requires a whole-body approach; the best approaches are often preventive and involve diet, exercise and other lifestyle-based strategies.
For instance, both estrogen and progesterone are necessary in the female cycle, and their balance is key for optimal health. Many premenopausal women have an imbalance of these hormones. And if you have insufficient levels of progesterone to counter excessive estrogen, this imbalance can be further exacerbated by chronic stress. Therefore, your answer might not necessarily lie in using hormones, but rather addressing your stress levels so that your body can normalize your hormone levels naturally.
Likewise, a healthful diet, low in processed foods (which are high in health-harming sugars/fructose, grains, genetically engineered ingredients, trans fats, processed salt, and other chemical additives) and high in whole organic foods, along with regular exercise, can go a long way to keeping your hormones balanced as you age. It’s important to realize that processed foods—all those refined carbohydrates, and processed and heated fats, all serve to raise your estrogen to abnormal levels—as much as twice the normal, which are maintained for the better part of the adult lives of most American women.
This is a MAJOR contributing cause of menopausal symptoms in the first place. Additional strategies you can try before resorting to bioidentical hormones include:

Phytoestrogens: Consuming plenty of phytoestrogens (plant-estrogens) such as licorice and alfalfa before menopause can also help moderate your day-to-day estrogen levels so that when menopause comes, the drop won’t be so dramatic. Just don’t make the mistake of using unfermented soy, which can wreak havoc on your health in a number of different ways.
Optimize your vitamin D levels: This is a must for gene regulation and optimal health. For more information, I recommend you watch my one-hour video lecture on this essential nutrient.
Polyphenols: Certain polyphenols have also been shown to have some HRT-like benefits without the drawbacks, and are associated with a lowered risk of heart disease. Royal Maca seems to be an amazing adaptogenic herbal solution for menopause that has helped many women. Be sure to avoid the inexpensive varieties, as they typically don’t work. If you chose this option make sure to obtain the authentic version from Peru.
Animal-based omega-3 fat: You’ll also want to get plenty high quality animal-based omega-3 fats, such as krill oil.
Black cohosh: Black Cohosh may help regulate body temperature and hot flashes. In many cases, these lifestyle strategies will be very effective in relieving menopausal symptoms, but in cases where it is not enough, bioidentical hormones may be able to help. However, you’ll want to make sure you get your hormonal levels checked properly before embarking on any kind of hormone supplementation program, and work with a knowledgeable health care practitioner who can guide you.

References:

i US Preventive Services Task Force, Menopausal Hormone Therapy for the Primary Prevention of Chronic Conditions: U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Recommendation Statement DRAFT, May 2012
ii CNN May 29, 2012
iii US Preventive Services Task Force, Menopausal Hormone Therapy for the Primary Prevention of Chronic Conditions, A Systematic Review to Update the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Recommendations, May 2012
iv CNN May 29, 2012
v See reference iv

By Dr. Mercola

Reaching puberty is a rite of passage that we’ve all been through, but children are now reaching it earlier than ever before, and while precocious puberty in girls has received most of the attention, we now know the trend applies to boys as well.

In the 19th century, the onset of menstruation in girls occurred around the age of 15. Now the average age of the first period is around 12. Some girls develop breasts as early as age seven1 .

According to a recent study in the journal Pediatrics2, boys are now beginning sexual development anywhere from six months to two years earlier than the medically accepted standard based on previous studies.

African-American boys were found to hit the onset of puberty the soonest, starting around the age of nine. Caucasian and Hispanic boys begin developing around the age of 10.

“The causes and public health implications of this apparent shift in US boys to a lower age of onset for the development of secondary sexual characteristics in US boys needs further exploration,” the authors write.

Indeed, while some may shrug off the trend of earlier maturation, it’s actually pretty significant, as it can affect both physical and psychological health in a number of ways, including raising the future risk for hormone-related cancers. Girls who enter puberty earlier are at an increased risk of breast cancer, for example, due to the early rise in estrogen.

The trend also raises serious questions about environmental factors spurring this development. Lead researcher Marcia Herman-Giddens told CNN Health3:

“The changes are too fast. Genetics take maybe hundreds, thousands of years. You have to look at something in the environment. That would include everything from (a lack of) exercise to junk food to TV to chemicals.”

Environmental Chemicals a Likely Factor

Scientists have brought forth a number of potential explanations for the rising rates of early puberty, but one that deserves special attention is environmental chemicals, and particularly xeno-estrogens, i.e. estrogen-mimicking chemicals. These compounds behave like steroid hormones and can alter the timing of puberty, and affect disease risk throughout life.

In adults, xeno-estrogens have been linked to decreased sperm quality, stimulation of mammary gland development in men, disrupted reproductive cycles and ovarian dysfunction, obesity, cancer and heart disease, among numerous other health problems.

We’re surrounded by hormone-disrupting chemicals these days, many of which are plasticizers. Bisphenol A (BPA) for example, is an industrial petrochemical that acts as a synthetic estrogen, and can be found plastics and tin can linings, in dental sealants, and on cash-register receipts. Three years ago, laboratory tests commissioned by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) detected BPA in the umbilical cord blood of 90 percent of newborn infants tested — along with more than 230 other chemicals!

In September 2010, Canada declared BPA a toxic substance, but to date no other country has followed suit, although BPA has been banned in baby bottles in Canada, Europe and the United States. Frustratingly, the US FDA has denied the request to ban BPA, however many American companies have voluntarily removed the chemical from their products, in response to consumer demand. So, if you check around, you can find a lot of BPA-free products.

However, buyer beware, as it recently came to light that some companies are simply replacing the offending BPA with another less known but equally toxic chemical called bisphenol-S (BPS)! Not only does BPS appear to have similar hormone-mimicking characteristics to BPA, but research suggests it is actually significantly less biodegradable, and more heat-stable and photo-resistant, than BPA.

10 Top Offenders that Can Disrupt Your Hormones

Beside BPA and BPS, other top offenders you should be aware of, and watch out for, include:

Phthalates, a group of industrial chemicals used to make plastics like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) more flexible and resilient. They’re also one of the most pervasive of the endocrine disrupters, found in everything from processed food packaging and shower curtains to detergents, toys and beauty products like nail polish, hair spray, shampoo, deodorants, and fragrances. Exposure to phthalates can lead to incomplete testicular descent in fetuses, reduced sperm counts, testicular atrophy or structural abnormality and inflammation in newborns.
Fluoride, which is added to the majority of public water supplies in the United States. Research has shown that animals treated with fluoride had lower levels of circulating melatonin, as reflected by reduced levels of melatonin metabolites in the animals’ urine. This reduced level of circulating melatonin was accompanied — as might be expected — by an earlier onset of puberty in the fluoride-treated female animals.

Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a likely carcinogen found in grease- and water-resistant coatings and non-stick cookware.
Methoxychlor and Vinclozin, an insecticide and a fungicide respectively, have been found to cause changes to male mice born for as many as four subsequent generations after the initial exposure.

Nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs). Known to be potent endocrine disrupters, these chemicals affect gene expression by turning on or off certain genes, and interfere with the way your glandular system works.
Bovine growth hormones (rBGH) commonly added to commercial dairy have been implicated as a contributor to premature adolescence.

MSG, a food additive that’s been linked to reduced fertility.
Non-fermented soy products, which are loaded with hormone-like substances.

DDE (a breakdown product of the pesticide DDT)
PCBs

New Concern: Metalloestrogens

Recent research has also confirmed the existence of a previously unknown class of cancer-causing estrogen-mimicking compounds: “metalloestrogens.” The following metals, which are added to thousands of consumer products, including vaccines, have been identified as being capable of binding to cellular estrogen receptors and then mimicking the actions of physiological estrogens:4

Aluminum
Antimony
Arsenite
Barium
Cadmium
Chromium
Cobalt

Copper
Lead
Mercury
Nickel
Selenite
Tin
Vanadate

Tips to Reduce Exposure to Hormone-Disrupting Substances

While young girls and boys may show obvious signs of exposure to hormone-disrupting substances via early puberty, other signals are more insidious and may not show up until a disease is already present. You can cut back on your family’s exposure to these dangerous chemicals by following these 12 guidelines. Pregnant women and women who may become pregnant should pay particular attention to reducing their exposure as much as possible to protect the health of their unborn baby:

Eat whole, preferably organic, produce and free-range, organic meats to reduce your exposure to added hormones, pesticides and fertilizers. Also avoid milk and other dairy products that contain the genetically engineered recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH or rBST)
Eat mostly raw, fresh foods. Processed, prepackaged foods (of all kinds) are a major source of soy and chemicals such as BPA and phthalates.
Store your food and beverages in glass rather than plastic, and avoid using plastic wrap and canned foods (which are often lined with BPA-containing liners).
Use glass baby bottles and BPA-free sippy cups for your little ones.
Make sure your baby’s toys are BPA-free, such as pacifiers, teething rings and anything your child may be prone to suck on.
Only use natural cleaning products in your home to avoid phthalates.
Switch over to natural brands of toiletries such as shampoo, toothpaste, antiperspirants and cosmetics. The Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Database5 is a great resource for finding personal care products that are free of phthalates, parabens and other potentially dangerous chemicals.
Avoid using artificial air fresheners, dryer sheets, fabric softeners or other synthetic fragrances.
Replace your non-stick pots and pans with ceramic or glass cookware.
When redoing your home, look for “green,” toxin-free alternatives in lieu of regular paint and vinyl floor coverings.
Replace your vinyl shower curtain with one made of fabric.
Avoid non-fermented soy, especially if you’re pregnant. Also, never use soy-based infant formula.