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Free Speech Threatened by Censorship Extremists

March 23, 2021, Senator Bernie Sanders diverted from party lines and spoke out against Twitter’s ban of former President Trump, saying “yesterday it was Donald Trump who was banned and tomorrow it could be somebody else who has a very different point of view.” He also noted that it is risky to have a “handful of high tech people” controlling speech in America.1
Indeed, Trump is far from alone in being censored these days, but Sanders is not telling the whole truth when he lays all of the blame for censorship on Big Tech. Disturbingly, a number of elected government officials are using their positions of power to actually pressure tech platforms into silencing voices of the opposition, or simply those whose speech they don’t agree with. As reported by Jonathan Turley:2

“… Sanders’ … view … is in sharp contrast to his Democratic colleagues who celebrated the ban and called for more censorship. One of the leading voices of censorship in the Senate is Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) [who] chastised Big Tech for waiting so long to issue such bans: ‘The question isn’t why Facebook and Twitter acted, it’s what took so long and why haven’t others?’ …

Democrats have abandoned long-held free speech values in favor of corporate censorship … When Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey came before the Senate to apologize for blocking the Hunter Biden story before the election as a mistake, senators pressed him and other Big Tech executive for more censorship.”

Public Officials Call for Selective Elimination of Free Speech
Other public officials calling for the selective elimination of free speech include:

Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, who pressed Facebook and Twitter to make their bans of Donald Trump permanent
California U.S. House Democrats Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, who went so far as to demand a dozen cable, satellite and streaming TV companies censor or remove entire news networks (Fox News, Newsmax and OANN)3
Pennsylvania Congressman Mike Doyle, who asked Facebook and Twitter to remove a dozen accounts, including mine, from their platforms during a House hearing on disinformation and extremism4
Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, who recently urged Twitter to expand its censorship categories to prevent the sharing of “climate denialism” views5

See how quickly things escalate? In less than a year, we’ve gone from massively censoring COVID-19 treatment information, the origin of the virus and COVID-19 vaccine information, to censoring election disputes and conservative news networks, to now calling for the censoring of climate information. And, believe me, it will not stop there either. It’ll go on and on until all bases of human thought are covered.
Doyle isn’t the only one calling for the illegal elimination of my First Amendment rights. A dozen state attorneys general are also urging social media platforms to remove my content,6 and this based on the opinions of two small, mysterious groups that no one knows anything about. As reported by The Hill, March 27, 2021:7

“Public health officials have been warning about the dangers of vaccine misinformation as the country seeks to inoculate enough Americans to reach herd immunity. Just this week the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter were questioned before Congress on their responsibility to combat disinformation spread on their platforms …

Ahead of the hearing, a group of 12 state attorneys general sent a letter to Facebook and Twitter calling for ‘immediate steps to fully enforce your companies’ guidelines against vaccine misinformation.’

A recent report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate and Anti-Vax Watch found that most of the anti-vaccine content circulating online can be tied to 12 people, several of whom are figures in the health and wellness spheres.”

Journalism Has Died an Ignoble Death
The Financial Times also published a hit piece citing the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) report:8

“Social media companies are facing renewed pressure to clamp down on a small but dedicated group of anti-vaccine campaigners that researchers blame for flooding platforms with misinformation.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate has urged Facebook, Google and Twitter to ban 12 people it has found are responsible for about two-thirds of online anti-vaccine content, among them Robert F Kennedy Jr … and the alternative medicine entrepreneur Joseph Mercola …

Mercola, the most prolific among them, has 3.6m followers across his Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, all of which are active.

In one of the sample posts highlighted by the CCDH, Mercola wrote on Instagram: ‘Forced vaccination is part of the plan to ‘reset’ the global economic system.’ Mercola’s office did not respond to a request to comment.”

Standard practice in journalism has always been to contact the person you’re writing about and give them an opportunity to respond to accusations. Of all the news outlets that published the CCDH’s accusations, only the Financial Times reached out to us for comment — 30 minutes before publication.
Still, we sent them a response before the deadline was up. As you can see, they claim we didn’t, which is a blatant lie. They asked us to comment on the report, and we sent them our thoughts about the group that produced the report, the CCDH. Obviously, they chose to not include it, and to lie instead. This way, we end up looking “guilty.” This is beyond exceptionally dishonest journalism, but that seems to be the norm these days. 
Overall, the fact that multiple news outlets published the report of a tiny, obscure group, on or about the same day, without asking any questions about the group itself, is a surefire indication that a PR company is directing this censorship campaign.
That’s what PR companies do — they craft the messaging and coordinate the timing of the publication of that information. Reporters, meanwhile, have surrendered to this top-down dissemination of “news” and ceased to even pretend that they’re following journalistic standards.
CCDH Is a Tool for Global Technocracy
As detailed in “Pressure Mounts to Ban My New Book From Amazon,” the CCDH is a one-man organization with undisclosed funding and highly suspect connections to the global “deep state.” You cannot even access the group’s “About” page unless you go through the extra step of doing an online search for “CCDH and Imran Ahmed,” the CCDH’s founder CEO.9
Aside from Ahmed, the CCDH consists of a single “Patron,” British TV personality and Countdown host Rachael Riley,10 and a seven-person board of directors that “supports and scrutinizes” Ahmed’s work. And, while funding is stated as coming primarily from “philanthropic trusts,” no specific trusts are listed.
Digging into the composition of the board of directors provides us with some interesting clues as to what the CCDH really is, though. Through the connection of co-founder Morgan McSweeney — who left the CCDH for a chief of staff position with Labor Leader Keir Starmer — we can deduce that the CCDH is connected with the technocratic hub that is the Trilateral Commission, where Starmer is a serving member.11
The group can also be linked to other technocratic centers within the globalist network through its board chairman Simon Clark and board member Kirsty McNeill.12
Clark is a senior fellow for the policy think-tank Center for American Progress and chairman of Foreign Policy for America, other members of which include Stephen Grand, a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, and Avril Haines, former deputy director of the CIA and a participant in Event 201.13
Simon also served as the first director of web services for Reuters, one of the three global news agencies responsible for curating a vast majority of the world’s news. You can learn more about the structure of global news in “Reuters and BBC Caught Taking Money for Propaganda Campaign.”
McNeill, meanwhile, is a member of the European Council of Foreign Relations — another key player behind the Great Reset — and director of policy for Save the Children Fund, which is funded by the Gates Foundation and a partner of Gates’ GAVI Vaccine Alliance.
Another board member is Damian Collins, a member of the British Parliament and former chair of the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. Collins also founded Infotagion, which “seeks to fight the disinformation contagion about COVID-19.”14
What Real Extremism Looks Like
The CCDH works with an equally obscure group called Anti-Vax Watch, which recently put on a demonstration outside the halls of Congress. Ironically, while the CCDH claims to be anti-extremism, you’d be hard-pressed to find a clearer example of actual extremism than this Anti-Vax Watch demonstration, illustrated in this Tweet.15

Illegal for Government Officials to Threaten Free Speech
The fact is, the government officials calling for censorship are committing an illegal act. Twelve state attorneys general, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — which recently warned me to stop writing about vitamin D for COVID-19 prevention — and elected officials in Congress are all breaking the law.
Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press … ~ First Amendment, U.S. Constitution
They’re trying to wield the power of monopolistic Big Tech platforms to further their own personal interests, which is illegal. As noted in the First Amendment, which governs our freedom of speech:16

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Our speech is the expression of our thoughts. To end free speech is to end the individual, which is the totalitarian end-game. Our top priority must therefore be to defend ALL speech. You simply cannot single out certain speech for elimination. It’s a slippery slope that can only end in one way, and that is in totalitarianism where all freedoms and rights of the individual are taken away.
You may think that some views are “wrong,” but the correct way to address “wrong-think” is to present the counter-arguments and the data to support those arguments. When it comes to vaccines, simply saying “everyone has to get vaccinated in order to reach herd immunity” is not a universally valid argument that cannot be countered.
Many counter-arguments can be made, and they must be allowed to be made, if we want to preserve public health. Public officials should be listening to both sides, in order to find the best middle-ground. Instead, they are using their political power to influence tech monopolies to shut down all counter-views, and that’s some really dangerous territory.
Defending Freedom of Speech from Medical Fascists
In a recent article17 posted on The Unz Review, Mike Whitney ties together the strands of the COVID-19 pandemic response and the subsequent censorship. I would encourage you to read the entire article as it succinctly summarizes the reasons behind the censorship. I actually reached out to Mike to interview him.
He points out that behavioral psychologists have been employed by the government to promote the COVID-19 vaccination campaign and maximize vaccine uptake. And, if behavioral psychologists were used to coerce vaccine compliance, were they also relied upon to devise other pandemic restrictions?

“Were the masks, the social distancing and the lockdowns all promoted … as a way to undermine normal human relations and inflict the maximum psychological pain on the American people?

Was the intention to create a weak and submissive population that would willingly accept the dismantling of democratic institutions, the dramatic restructuring of the economy, and the imposition of a new political order? These questions need to be answered,” Whitney says.18

Moreover, why does the government feel it needs a rapid response team to attack the opinions of those who question the “official narrative”? Why don’t facts and data provide sufficient enough validation to line up for the COVID-19 vaccine? Whitney writes:19

“You might have also heard the term ‘vaccine hesitancy’ … The moniker is clearly intended to denigrate vaccine skeptics by suggesting that they have a mental condition, like paranoid schizophrenia. This is an effective way to discredit one’s enemies, but it also shows the glaring weakness of the pro-vaccine position.

If the proponents of vaccination had something of substance to offer, they would rely on facts and data rather than ad hominin attacks. As it happens, the facts do not support their position.

Besides, ‘vaccine hesitancy’ is not a character flaw or a mental condition, it’s the sign of someone who has taken responsibility for his own health and welfare. Ask yourself this: Why would a normal, rational person be eager to have an experimental cocktail injected into his bloodstream potentially triggering all manner of long-term ailments or death? Is that the choice a normal person would make?”

Even more disturbing, a report by the National Institutes of Health not only focuses on countering objections to the vaccine rather than presenting facts that support vaccination, but it also appears intent on turning anyone who refuses the vaccine into a social outcast.
This is a radical step that harkens back to the Nazi’s four-step process for dehumanizing the Jews,20 — prejudice, scapegoating, discrimination and persecution — a process necessary to get the German people to, by and large, agree with or at least go along with the plan to commit genocide.

“This is very scary stuff,” Whitney writes.21 “Agents of the state now identify critics of the COVID vaccine as their mortal enemies. How did we get here? And how did we get to the point where the government is targeting people who don’t agree with them? This is way beyond Orwell. We have entered some creepy alternate universe.”

Defending First Amendment Rights Is Part of the Answer

While there are no easy answers to the situation we now find ourselves in, defending the freedom of speech is part of it, and that includes defending the First Amendment rights of those with whom we disagree. We all need to call on our political representatives to take a firm stand against all censorship.
Freedom of speech would undoubtedly be more easily secured were it not for tech monopolies having the power to eliminate anyone they don’t want to hear from. The good news here is that a decentralized web is in the works.
I am currently working with some of the brightest minds in the tech space, all of whom are committed to preserving your personal freedoms and liberties. In this Web 2.0, tech monopolies will no longer have the ability to censor or profit from surveillance.22
In the meantime, consider ditching social media networks that erode your civil liberties, and to join those that promote freedom of speech instead. For example, free-speech alternatives to Facebook and Twitter include Gab, MeWe, Minds and Parler. Uncensored alternatives to YouTube include Bitchute, Rumble, Brighteon, Banned.video and Thinkspot.
For content creators and alternative news sources that no longer have a social media presence due to censoring, subscribe to their newsletter if available, and/or mark their website in your favorites and check back on a regular basis.
As for the growing pressure to vaccinate or become a second-class citizen, I believe the answer is to stand firm in your belief, resist coercion and expose propaganda. There is strength in numbers, and we’re now dealing with a global, rather than national, phenomenon.
Everyone, all around the world, face this rapidly approaching dilemma, but if large-enough numbers everywhere stand up for freedom, we can still win. And, in the long term, that will protect and benefit everyone, everywhere.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/04/05/freedom-of-speech-threatened-by-censorship-extremists.aspx

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What You Can Learn From the African Hadza Tribe

Dr. Mercola Interviews the Experts
This article is part of a weekly series in which Dr. Mercola interviews various experts on a variety of health issues. To see more expert interviews, click here.

In this interview, Dr. Paul Saladino, author of “The Carnivore Code” — a book on nose-to-tail animal-based eating — reviews what it means to be healthy at the most foundational level and shares his findings from a recent trip to Africa where he visited the Hadza tribe, who are among the best still-living representations of the way humans have lived for tens of thousands of years.
Like the !Kung tribe in Botswana, the Hadza live a hunter-gatherer life amidst the encroachment of modernized society.

“I see the Hadza as a time machine. They’re like a time capsule,” Saladino says. “They do not suffer chronic disease like we do in Western society, and that alone makes them infinitely fascinating. They do not suffer cancers like we suffer cancers.

They do not suffer autoimmune disease, which is a huge spectrum of disease, and they do not suffer depression, mental illness, skin issues. They do not suffer dementia anywhere near the rates that we do. They age with grace. This is called squaring of the morbidity curve.

If you look at a graph of their vitality across the lifespan, it is essentially flat and then drops off very quickly at the end. It’s like a square. They lose their vitality within the last few weeks of life, but until they’re 70 or 80 years old, they are vital individuals.”

If we look at Western society, the morbidity curve has a very different look. It’s like a ramp that steadily declines. In the Western world, people lose vitality consistently throughout life. This doesn’t happen in native hunter-gatherer societies, primarily because they do not suffer from the debilitation of chronic disease.
The Hadza Diet

Saladino primarily wanted to find out how the Hadza eat, what foods they prioritize and how it affects their health. Other investigators have analyzed the Hadza diet, but he wanted to confirm it for himself. For example, one 2009 study1 found the Hadza ate a lot of meat, tubers, berries, and fruit and honey from the baobab tree. According to this paper, the Hadza don’t eat vegetables.

“That supports a hypothesis that I had advanced previously in my work, which was that maybe vegetables, meaning roots, stems, leaves and seeds, are not that good for humans in the first place,” Saladino says. “I wanted to see this firsthand.”

The study in question also asked the Hadza to rank how much they liked each food. Honey was ranked the highest, followed by meat (primarily the eland, a very large type of antelope, baboon and bush pig), baobab fruit and berries. Tubers were their least favorite food. Saladino’s investigation supported these basic preferences as well.
Did a Meat-Based Diet Make Man Smarter?

Essentially, the Hadza favor meat and animal organs, while tubers are looked upon more as survival foods that don’t make up the majority of the diet. Saladino reviews how during the Pleistocene, going back some 2 million years, the human brain suddenly got a lot larger, and evidence suggests the reason for this was an increasing presence of meat in the diet.

“We really became human in the last 2 million years,” he says. “Before that, there was Australopithecus and a divergence, a sort of a schism of the evolutionary tree with a species called Paranthropus boisei, and then Homo habilis and Homo erectus.

That branch point was super fascinating because that was a branch point between meat and plant. This is about 4 million years ago in human evolution, and Paranthropus boisei ate more plants. We can tell this based on stable isotopes, looking at the teeth.

Homo habilis and homo erectus ate more and more meat … The unique nutrients found in that meat and those organs allowed our brains to grow — nutrients like choline, carnitine, taurine, B12, K2, essential fatty acids [and carnosine] …

I think the prevailing thinking now, which is quite compelling in my opinion, is that eating meat and organs made us human, and the species that chose to eat more plants went extinct … Many anthropologists believe the Hadza are some of the direct descendants of the original Homo sapiens who remained in the Rift Valley in Africa.”

The Hadza Lifestyle

When asked why they choose to maintain their hunter-gatherer lifestyle, being well aware of modern civilization all around them and other tribes that have chosen to farm and keep herds of cattle and goats, the Hadzi replied, “We want to be free. We like to eat meat. We want to be able to hunt and we like this lifestyle.” Another question that arose was what makes the Hadza happy? Interestingly, this is more or less a non-issue. “Happiness” is their default state of mind.

“That is their default mode when they are in nature doing what humans have always done,” Saladino says. “This is so interesting to me. Here’s this group of hunter-gatherers. They live in the bush. They do not sleep on beds. They sleep on the ground in these thatched huts that they build in a day. They’re nomadic.

They have little camps … The camp that we went to was about 40 to 50 men and women with children, and they moved the camp three or four times a year. They have three or four camps that they’ve established, and they know spots in the Lake Eyasi region. Some of them are better for the rainy season, some of them are better for the dry season, and so the whole camp will move throughout the year at different times …

They have fires for men and fires for the women. They live under rock shelters. They sleep in the auspices of rocks and they are profoundly healthy individuals. They love their life because every day they get to go play. For them, play and fun is hunting. The next day, we got to see this because we went on a hunt with them. It was incredible. It was so joyous and so simple.”

The Importance of Organ Meats
Saladino recounts the hunt, noting how the organ meats were consumed in the field. After hunting down a baboon, the men created a fire to burn off the hair, after which the animal was gutted. Intestines were given to the hunting dogs, while all the other organs — heart, liver, lungs, spleen, kidneys and pancreas — were cooked on the open fire and shared among the hunting party. Nothing is wasted, not even the bones, which are broken to extract the marrow.
They also eat the connective tissue, which is high in collagen, and the skin. The internal organs, which are the most highly prized, are called epeme, and according to the local lore, the epeme must be shared among all the men of the tribe. If a hunter chooses not to, bad things will happen to them. The hunter responsible for the kill is rewarded with the most valuable organs, however, such as the brain, which Saladino says was “delicious.”
While they might not understand individual nutrients, they clearly know that if you eat these organs, you will be more vital. “That’s why I think it’s so important for humans to get back to eating nose to tail, to eating those organs,” Saladino says. Interestingly, while the Hadza diet has been described as high in fiber, Saladino disagrees.
The tubers they collect are extremely fibrous. So much so, you cannot actually swallow it. You have to chew it and spit out the fibers, so in reality, their diet is low to moderate (at best) in fiber.

“The other thing I want to mention about eating the tubers was that there was no bathroom to wash my hands in. Nor did I want to because I’m very interested in soil-based organisms and the interaction of our microbiome with our environment. Everyone believes that the Hadza have a healthy, diverse microbiome because they eat a high-fiber diet.

Well, No. 1, they don’t eat a high-fiber diet. No. 2, they probably have a healthy, diverse microbiome because they live in nature and they are inevitably taking inputs, information from nature, in the form of dirt and soil-based organisms.

This is something that I’ve always expected and it’s a complete paradigm shift. And, as we know, adding fiber to the diet does not increase alpha diversity, and removing fiber does not decrease alpha diversity.

What does increase alpha diversity? Well, living in nature increases alpha diversity probably because you’re eating dirt, and there was definitely dirt on my hands and my fingers, and dirt on this tuber as I’m holding it in my mouth. The Hadza are not a dirty people though.

They do not smell. They don’t use deodorant. They don’t have bad breath. I was really close to them a lot of the time in the bush hunting. They don’t have body odor. Yet they don’t bathe that regularly. We were there for a week and they didn’t bathe.”

Their microbiome is most likely the reason for their lack of body odor, as malodorous armpits are due to specific axillary bacteria. The Hadza microbiome has previously been studied in some detail, showing they have higher levels of microbial richness and biodiversity than Western urban controls.
The Hadza are also unique in that they have an absence of Bifidobacterium. Differences in microbial composition between the sexes have also been found, which is probably a reflection of the division of labor between the sexes.

“I think that when humans are exposed to soil-based organisms and live in a natural environment like this, that is what creates high alpha diversity,” Saladino says. “I think that’s what creates the microbial richness that we really should seek if we’re looking to be healthy, or we want a healthy gut microbiome, rather than trying to just put a whole bunch of fiber in our guts, which causes problems for some people.”

Fiber Isn’t a Cure-All
Saladino cites two recent research papers, one of which compared Tanzanian urbanites with more rural dwellers, finding that urbanites had higher rates of inflammation. In the second, companion paper, the authors blamed the higher inflammation in urbanites to a fiber-poor Western diet. Saladino disagrees with these conclusions, saying:

“What they’re trying to say is that the urban people in Tanzania are eating more saturated fat and less fiber and that is what fuels their inflammatory phenotype. What I observed was completely different than that. In fact, when you go into a grocery store in urban Tanzania, there are two aisles, there’s two sort of shelves of oil.

One of them is a huge shelf of vegetable oil. They call it flower oil and safflower oil, and many of the vegetable oils that we saw were actually expired and they’re in plastic. Right next to that is a whole shelf of beef fat, beef tallow.

The beef tallow is actually cheaper than the vegetable oil, but what do people buy in the cities? They buy seed oils. So, my observation is that in the urban cities, people are probably eating more seed oils and less saturated fat than the rural settings.

In speaking to our guide in Tanzania, he told us he went to his doctor in Tanzania and his doctor told him that he needed to stop eating red meat because red meat causes diabetes, and encouraged him to eat seed oils. We said, ‘Gasper, that’s completely wrong. Do the Hadza eat animal meat and fat?’ He said, ‘Yes.’

I said, ‘Do the Hadza look like they have diabetes?’ He said, ‘No.’ [I said] ‘Your doctor is completely wrong. His thinking is outdated. His thinking is antique, based on sort of the epidemiology that has been promulgated in the Western world.’

It’s incredible that in this Nature Immunology paper, their editorializing and trying to claim that it’s a fiber-poor Western diet that contributes to inflammation. I think it’s the seed oils and processed refined sugars that are clearly doing that and I would posit that it has nothing to do with how much fiber you eat.

Some people can tolerate fiber, but for a lot of people, it makes them much worse. As I have shown, and as I’ve talked about in my podcast, which is called Fundamental Health, adding more fiber into your diet doesn’t improve the alpha diversity of your microbiome. I’ve even tested my microbiome on zero-fiber diets consisting of meat, organs and honey, in some ways trying to make a Hadza diet, and my alpha diversity was very high.”

Surprising Health Benefits of Raw Honey
Saladino also recounts how the Hadza collect honey made by stingless bees that burrow into the baobab tree. It’s a common belief that honey is no different than sugar, but Saladino is starting to reconsider this notion.

“I went down this rabbit hole recently, and I did a recent Controversial Thoughts podcast about honey,” Saladino says. “In some of my research, what I found was that raw honey contains nitric oxide metabolites. How cool is that? And honey actually improves endothelial function.”

The assumption is that the nitric oxide metabolites are converted back to nitric oxide when you eat the honey. Saladino cites a 2003 paper,2 “The Identification of Nitric Oxide Metabolites in Various Honeys,” in which they did an intravenous injection of diluted honey into sheep, showing it increased plasma and urinary nitric oxide metabolite concentrations.
Honey has also been shown to increase nitric oxide and total nitrite concentrations in humans, Saladino says. Heating decreases the nitric oxide metabolites in the honey, though, so for this benefit, you wouldn’t want to add it to boiling liquids.

“Then, there’s interventional studies that show honey performs differently in both humans and animal models relative to sucrose, which we would sort of expect, but within ketogenic circles, where people get very dogmatic about carbohydrates, honey is often thought to be the same as sucrose because honey does contain glucose and fructose, which is the disaccharide of sucrose.

It’s fascinating to me that these whole foods are an informational package that our body perceives differently than a processed sucrose/high fructose corn syrup. Actually, in these studies honey performed differently than sucrose. Honey performed different than dextrose, which is not surprising because dextrose is a glucose polymer.

Sucrose is a disaccharide of glucose and fructose, and fructose and glucose are handled differently by the liver and our physiology. How interesting that honey appears to be good for humans potentially because of these nitric oxide metabolites and other things.

I had Malcolm Kendrick on my podcast. We talked about the way that nitric oxide is made by endothelial nitric oxide synthase and how critical that is for endothelial health. These are the cells that line all of the blood vessels of our body, and if those endothelial cells don’t have nitric oxide, they can’t expand properly.

How interesting that honey contains these foundational things for humans and it’s probably very valuable for us. That first paper I showed suggested that the darker honey had more nitric oxide, and I can tell you the honey I ate in Tanzania was some of the most iridescent, dark, richly colored honey I’ve ever had in my life.

I just want to make this point that reductionist thinking in nutrition doesn’t serve us, and I would posit that honey is nothing like sucrose.”

The take-home message here is that, provided you’re metabolically healthy, you can safely include honey in your diet. It’s important to realize, though, that if you are insulin resistant or have diabetes, all forms of sugar need to be cut back until you’ve successfully reversed these conditions.
Health and Happiness Are Within Your Reach

In closing, there’s a lot we can learn from the Hadza. As noted by Saladino:

“I spent a week with the Hadza. I got to hunt for berries with them and dig tubers with the women and we drank the water out of the baobab tree. I got to see all of these parts of their life. They are always in nature, they’re always in the sun. They’re always having low-level activity with spurts of sprinting.

They follow the circadian rhythms of the sun, which was one of the most joyous things. One of the reasons I came to Costa Rica was because I thought, ‘I want to do an experiment. How can I live a little bit more like the Hadza? How can I be more in nature?’

Here in Costa Rica, I basically live in the jungle. I’m in Santa Teresa, by the beach. I’m in the ocean every morning. I get to watch all of the sunsets and sunrises and this has been a real gift. I think this is another takeaway for people to realize, and it’s been self-evident. This is what humans need. As I said, the Hadza’s default state is happiness.”

So, not only do we need to identify an appropriate human diet, but also the most appropriate human lifestyle. Done right, your default state will also be that of happiness and physical vitality.
You can get more sunlight. You can avoid blue light devices. You can avoid EMFs. You can eat the diet your ancestors ate and walk out of the zoo and find a richer life. ~ Dr. Paul Saladino
The key message is that there’s an intrinsic happiness that results spontaneously from engaging in certain types of behaviors, and topping that list is the regular immersion in the natural world.

“I fear that in Western society, humans have been placed into a little bit of a zoo,” Saladino says. “We’ve been given these hamster wheels to run on, which essentially are treadmills at gyms and we’ve been given this processed, synthetic food, these rat pellets that are dropped into our cage every once in a while. It’s no wonder that we’re just not happy.

You know, I’m not a zoologist, but I have heard that when animals are placed in cages in the zoo, they become fat and unhealthy and they develop chronic diseases that they don’t get in the wild. I’ve always found that to be a fascinating parallel with humans because I think we’re exactly the same.

The difference for us is that the door to the cage is open. We have only to open the latch and walk through. We can get back to these things. You can get more sunlight. You can avoid blue light devices. You can avoid EMFs. You can eat the diet your ancestors ate and walk out of the zoo and find a richer life. Remember, the door is open. You’ve just got to walk through it.”

More Information
To learn more about Saladino and his work, check out his website, heartandsoil.co (not .com). There, you will find his blog, podcast, social media links and much more.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/04/04/african-hadza-tribe.aspx

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Weekly Health Quiz: Vaccines, Doughnuts and Fauci

1 According to a U.S. State Department task force and the Defense Intelligence Agency, the COVID-19 pandemic is likely the result of:

An unintentional leak from a biosafety laboratory
According to David Asher, former lead investigator for the U.S. State Department’s task force that looked into the origins of COVID-19, the data “made us feel the Wuhan Institute was highly probably the source of the COVID pandemic.” An assessment report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency also states SARS-CoV-2 was likely an accidental release from an infectious diseases laboratory. Learn more.
An intentionally released bioweapon
Natural evolution of a bat coronavirus that jumped species

The intentional release of a naturally-evolved virus

2 According to Norwegian and German investigators, the deadly blood clots suffered by some recipients of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine appears to be due to which of the following?

A genetic defect that predisposes you to blood clots at a young age

An immune response similar to that of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia type 2, which triggers blood clots by activating platelets

Norwegian and German investigators believe the blood clots are caused by an immune response that triggers thrombosis (blood clots) by activating platelets. The effects are similar to heparin-induced thrombocytopenia type 2, in which antibodies against a protein complex are formed in connection with heparin, which in turn respond to a receptor on the platelets. Learn more.
Pure coincidence

Use of birth control pills and other hormone treatments

3 If vaccine mRNA were to alter your DNA, how would it do that?
Vaccine mRNA could enter the cell’s nucleus where the DNA is stored

mRNA and DNA are copies of each other, so any mRNA in the cell is automatically copied into the genome

Vaccine mRNA could potentially reverse-transcribe into your genes and alter your DNA

mRNA technology has, since the start, been recognized as a form of gene therapy, but one that doesn’t permanently alter your DNA. However, some experts worry that mRNA injections might be able to reverse-transcribe into your genome and in fact alter your DNA on a more permanent basis. Recent research has demonstrated that segments of RNA from SARS-CoV-2 are reverse-transcribing into the human genome, likely becoming a permanent fixture in human DNA, and this has been thought impossible for the same reasons used to assure us that vaccine RNA cannot alter DNA. Learn more.

There is no possible way for mRNA to affect DNA

4 Which of the following companies will give out free doughnuts to vaccinated patrons for the remainder of 2021?

Dunkin Donuts

Axum Coffee House

Starbucks

Krispy Kreme

As of March 22, 2021, Krispy Kreme shops around the U.S. will dole out free doughnuts to patrons who can prove they’ve received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine. The offer will last to the end of 2021. Learn more.

5 Which of the following senators recently confronted Dr. Anthony Fauci during a senate hearing, calling him out on the “theatre” of wearing a mask after being vaccinated?

Rand Paul

In a recent Senate hearing, Sen. Rand Paul confronted Dr. Anthony Fauci, calling him out for the “theatre” of wearing a mask after being vaccinated. Learn more.
Cory Booker

Tammy Baldwin

Richard Blumenthal

6 The Green Revolution promised rural farmers more food and prosperity, but instead introduced industrialized, chemical agriculture, which led to:

Greater profits for farmers

Soils and rivers dying, and desertification

When she turned her research efforts toward the Green Revolution, she found that, as a result, soils and rivers were dying and desertification was taking place, while 25% of small farmers were dispossessed. Learn more.
Improvements in farming methods

Farmers turning to other professions

7 To prevent COVID-19 long-haul syndrome, which of the following appears to be the most important?
Vaccination

In-hospital antiviral treatment

Early treatment (within first five days)
Being able to treat yourself at home at the first signs of COVID-19 symptoms will virtually eliminate your risk of long-haul syndrome. So far, medical doctors who have treated COVID-19 patients agree that if treatment begins early enough, patients almost always fully recover and have no longstanding side effects from the infection. Learn more.
Mechanical respiration

 
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/04/05/week-176-health-quiz.aspx

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Astragalus Root Found to Work Against Sepsis

Astragalus (Astragalus membranaceus) is a flowering herb that was popularized in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) before being introduced to the Western world. Recent evidence suggests it may help protect kidney function in sepsis.1

According to the Sepsis Alliance,2 sepsis can trigger kidney damage and kidney damage can trigger the onset of sepsis. Kidney damage is among the first organs to be affected during sepsis. Up to 48% of all acute kidney injury is triggered by sepsis.3

During treatment for sepsis, doctors may use dialysis to help filter the blood if the kidneys are not working efficiently. How long a person may require dialysis will depend on the damage to the kidneys and the extent of the infection. In some cases, sepsis survivors will continue to need dialysis to treat lasting damage.

Sepsis is an extreme response to an infection that is present in the body.4 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,5 1 in every 3 people who die in the hospital has sepsis. The symptoms of sepsis may look like something else. It is vital that you recognize the potential symptoms and seek immediate medical attention as sepsis is life-threatening.

Conditions that raise your risk include diabetes, advanced age, chronic illness, cancer and chemotherapy and HIV infections.6,7 New evidence from animal studies suggests astragalus may play a role in preventing kidney damage from sepsis.8

Astragalus May Help Protect Kidney Function in Sepsis

The astragalus plant is native to China and has different names depending on the region where it’s harvested. A direct translation of the Chinese names is “yellow leader,” which the plant earned because of the distinctive yellow color of the roots, the most important part harvested for medicinal purposes.9

Astragalus is a popular herbal medication in Chinese medicine. However, there are several species of astragalus, some of which have a toxin that is linked to livestock poisoning.10 These species are not commonly used in human supplements, but it is wise to have your astragalus plant expertly identified before using the root at home.

Astragalus polysaccharide (APS) is a bioactive water-soluble compound extracted from the dried roots.11 Recently, researchers used APS in an animal model12 to test whether it was protective on induced acute renal injury like that seen with sepsis.

In lab studies, lipopolysaccharide-induced cell injury was used to establish a baseline model for sepsis-induced acute renal injury. Subsequently, experiments in mice found APS was able to reverse the induced kidney damage, which the researchers demonstrated by improvements in serum BUN and measurements of inflammatory and immune function mediators, such as tumor necrosis alpha and IL-1beta.

The results of the study supported past research evaluating APS after polymicrobial sepsis in an animal study.13 Herbal preparations have also been used for the treatment of chronic kidney disease. One study published in the Hong Kong Journal of Nephrology14 evaluated the use of astragalus in 35 patients with Stage 4 and 5 chronic kidney disease (CKD).

The researchers estimated the glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) before starting treatment and again after treatment with astragalus. Three months of supplementation benefited those who were at Stage 4. The researchers found that it was able to “maintain stable levels of eGFR and delay the initiation of renal replacement therapy in patients with progressive CKD Stage 4.”15

Astragalus Supports Kidney Function

A unique medical complication of diabetes is diabetic nephropathy. This microvascular damage of the kidneys is characterized by high blood pressure, protein in the urine and edema.16 TCM practitioners have used astragalus membranaceus (AM) for the treatment of diabetic nephropathy (DN).

One study in the Journal of Diabetes Research17 sought to understand the pharmacological mechanisms involved. The analysis of the active ingredients found potential therapeutic targets including quercetin, calycosin, formononetin and 7-O-methylisomucronulatol.

The researchers concluded the multiple components and characteristics of astragalus may provide “a novel approach for further research of the mechanism of AM in the treatment of DN.”18

Scientists have been reporting19 and studying20 the positive effect astragalus has on diabetic kidney function to understand the mechanism of action, including improvement in glucose levels and renal function in diabetic animal studies.21

In a study22 of individuals undergoing continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD), physicians had prescribed AM initially to support their general well-being and vitality. In a retrospective look at the data, it was discovered that those taking astragalus improve their residual renal function, which is important to the survival of those undergoing CAPD.

Patients undergoing chemotherapy may experience acute kidney injury from the chemotherapeutic drugs. Cisplatin is a commonly used chemotherapeutic agent for solid tumors, which can induce acute kidney injury. One study23 published in Biomed Research International found astragalus polysaccharide had a protective effect against the cisplatin-induced injury in the lab and in an animal study.

Astragalus Reduces Inflammation and May Help Shrink Tumors

In TCM, astragalus is prescribed for general weakness and to improve overall vitality. In addition, the root compound has demonstrated antidiabetic activity, antiviral actions, immune modulation and anti-inflammatory properties.24

One study25 sought to understand the anti-inflammatory mechanisms of APS on intestinal health, using lab based cellular studies and an animal study. Lipopolysaccharides (LPS) were used to stimulate intestinal epithelial cells. They found APS inhibited inflammatory markers and chemokines by activating an inflammatory pathway that was induced by LPS stimulation.

Prefeeding the experimental animals with APS alleviated inflammatory factors and improved the intestinal morphology. Astragalus has been actively investigated for clinical applications in the treatment of inflammatory diseases and cancers. Another of the major constituents of AM are saponins extracted from the herb.26

They have a protective effect against gastrointestinal inflammation without major systemic side effects that experts suggest may help “in the battle against inflammatory diseases and cancers of the gut.”27 Traditional cancer therapies may be accompanied by immune suppression, which in turn raises the risk of metastasis.

The active ingredients in AM may help enhance shrinking or stabilization of solid tumors through a pro apoptosis effect, while avoiding side effects induced by chemotherapy. It also ameliorates immunosuppression and improves systemic immunity, which may make it a strong candidate for adjunctive therapy in cancer treatment.28

Health and Beauty Benefits of Astragalus

Yet, there are more benefits from this unassuming herb belonging to the legume family. Because it is rich in antioxidants, there are several studies that have suggested astragalus has cardiovascular benefits. One study29 found the flavonoid concentration in astragalus had a positive impact on the formation of atherosclerotic plaques.

Intravenous injections demonstrated the ability to improve heart function and reduce the symptoms of congestive heart failure.30,31 In one study32 of 92 people with ischemic heart disease, astragalus reduced symptoms of angina and improved heart rate. In an animal study,33 evidence suggested astragalus could improve the function of the heart and blood vessels.

In addition to reducing the inflammatory response, astragalus has a direct impact on the immune system. When astragalus extract was given to healthy adults it increased blood levels of IGM, IGE and cAMP.34

An herbal tincture demonstrated the ability to stimulate CD4 and CD8 T-cells35 and patients with viral myocarditis36 showed enhanced T3 and T4, suggesting to the researchers there was an improved immune response.

Each of the mechanisms affecting anti-inflammatory response may contribute to the antiaging properties attributed to astragalus.37 The herb is also known as an adaptogen,38 which means it helps reduce physical, mental and emotional stress. This may help contribute to improving your sleep quality.39

Contraindications for Use

Astragalus reduces inflammation and has a direct impact on your immune system. While this is beneficial for most people, those taking corticosteroids or medications to minimize organ transplant rejection should refrain from taking astragalus, since it interferes with the way these medications work.40

Since the herb makes the immune system more active, it is best to avoid it if you have an autoimmune disease, like multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and other immune system conditions. The same is true for people taking immunosuppressant drugs since astragalus may decrease the effectiveness of the medication.

Astragalus has a diuretic effect, increasing the excretion of urine. This can have an impact on how the body excretes lithium, increasing the amount of the drug in the body with serious side effects. Not enough is known about the mechanism of action, although some animal studies have suggested it could be toxic to pregnant women and their baby. It is wise to avoid using while pregnant or breastfeeding.

Astragalus may increase the risk of bleeding in people taking blood thinners, like warfarin.41 It may also lower blood pressure. Taken with high blood pressure medication, your blood pressure may get too low.

Although not an entirely popular choice in modern medicine, mounting scientific evidence suggests a lab generated variation may soon have a place within the pharmaceutical industry in the treatment of sepsis, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Astragalus has been used for decades in traditional medicine. If you don’t have any contraindications, it may be worth considering incorporating astragalus to help maintain or improve your overall health.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/04/05/astragalus-root-found-to-work-against-sepsis.aspx

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Is This the Most Effective Weapon Against Viral Infections?

In this interview, Dr. Thomas Levy, a board-certified cardiologist perhaps best known for his work with vitamin C, discusses nebulized hydrogen peroxide, which has become my favorite intervention for viral illnesses, including COVID-19. In his latest book, “Rapid Virus Recovery,” Levy details this treatment. Best of all, he’s giving the e-book away for free. The 321-page physical book will be available soon online. It’s also available in Spanish.
Levy has suffered with lifelong sinus problems and about a year and a half ago, while doing research for his book on magnesium, he came across nebulization with magnesium chloride, which sparked his interest.
As a result of his research, he began nebulizing with hydrogen peroxide and noticed “incredible changes in my health” almost immediately, including the reversal of his chronic sinus problems. So, after finishing his magnesium book, he took a deep dive into nebulization. “Rapid Virus Recovery” is the result of that journey.

“Just about the time the pandemic hit was when I really had my most compelling compilation of evidence for what nebulization with hydrogen peroxide can do,” he says. “And as I point out in the book, this is not just for common cold. It is for any respiratory virus.

I make the assertion — and I don’t generally make assertions that I can’t back up — that nobody needs to suffer with a cold or the flu again, unless you wait too long before nebulizing. Nevertheless, you’ll still recover much quicker after you do this.”

Levy also points out that if you can easily prevent or cure a viral infection, then vaccination becomes irrelevant. “Why vaccinate for a disease that you can prevent or easily cure after you have it?” he asks.
As for why he’s giving the book away for free, the answer is simple. “I want to stop this pandemic,” he says, “and nebulized hydrogen peroxide is not only simple to administer by yourself and universally effective, but it’s also inexpensive and readily available around the entire world, including in areas where other remedies such as vitamin C or ozone can be hard to come by.”
Early Treatment Virtually Eliminates Complications
Being able to treat yourself at home at the first signs of COVID-19 symptoms will also virtually eliminate your risk of long-haul syndrome. So far, medical doctors who have treated COVID-19 patients agree that if treatment begins early enough, patients almost always fully recover and have no longstanding side effects from the infection.
The reason for this is because the virus replicates wildly during the first few days of infection, and this is the time during which it can cause longstanding damage. So, it’s important to be prepared.
Buy the required supplies before you need them, so you have everything and can treat yourself at the first signs of symptoms. Most of the time, after two or three treatments, the infection will be stopped in its tracks. As noted by Levy, you get same-day resolution, which is almost unheard of in clinical medicine.
My personal experience with friends and family also mirrors these type of dramatic results. In all my years of practicing medicine, I have never seen such an effective intervention for the nearly immediate resolution of viral illnesses, so long as it’s implemented shortly after the symptoms start.
If you miss that early window and start developing more pronounced symptoms of influenza or COVID-19, nebulized peroxide is still an excellent adjunct to any other treatment you may be doing.

“I want to emphasize that because to the best of my knowledge, and I’ve done quite a bit of research on this, I see no circumstance in which hydrogen peroxide nebulization interferes with or lessens the impact of any other positive intervention,” Levy says.

One such intervention is vitamin C, which Levy describes as “the perfect physiological partner” with hydrogen peroxide, as they have powerful synergistic effects that facilitate rapid resolution of the infection.
Hydrogen Peroxide Is Part of Your Body’s Natural Defenses

Hydrogen peroxide is part of your body’s natural defense against pathogens and is found in virtually all cells. Your body requires it. It’s a powerful signaling molecule, and there are organelles in your cells that use it to kill pathogens directly. So, when you nebulize hydrogen peroxide, you’re really just augmenting your body’s natural defense system.
Hydrogen peroxide serves as an incredible storage form for oxygen to your body. That’s actually what sort of happens once you activate hydrogen peroxide, and there’s nothing in your body, pathological speaking, that oxygen is not good for. ~ Dr. Thomas Levy
Levy explains:

“One of the interesting things I found in the course of this research is that up to 5% of the oxygen you inhale gets incorporated into producing new hydrogen peroxide inside your body. Also, contrary to much scientific thought, except in the wrong microenvironment, hydrogen peroxide is very stable. It doesn’t do a lot of spontaneous breaking down or spontaneous oxidation.

So, it serves as an incredible storage form for oxygen to your body. That’s actually what sort of happens once you activate hydrogen peroxide, and there’s nothing in your body, pathological speaking, that oxygen is not good for.

This is what makes peroxide a perfect therapeutic agent. It not only kills pathogens extremely efficiently — virus, fungus, protozoa, bacteria, you name it — but it also leaves behind, as metabolic byproducts, water and oxygen.”

Once the infection is resolved, the water and oxygen will both help heal any tissue damage caused by the pathogen. The water will also help dilute the acidity introduced by the infection. “So, it’s very clear, at least to me, that the best way to refer to hydrogen peroxide is as nature’s naturally designed antibiotic,” Levy says.
How Hydrogen Peroxide Works

Hydrogen peroxide can impact a variety of beneficial pathways in your body, but in terms of pathogens, one of the most prominent ones appear to be through the Fenton reaction inside the pathogens and the infected host cells. As explained by Levy:

“The Fenton reaction1 is a way of getting hydrogen peroxide to break down into a hydroxyl radical, which is the most potent oxidizing agent known to science … In a nutshell, oxidation is disease, and limiting and reducing oxidation brings you back to health.

That might sound like an oversimplification, but not so much … When you want to kill a pathogen or kill an infected cell, you want to continue the influx and the power of that oxidative action until there’s so much oxidative stress that the cell ruptures and dies, or the pathogen ruptures.

So, you need unlimited supplies of vitamin C, unlimited supplies of iron, and unlimited supplies of peroxide. That’s the only way to keep the Fenton reaction going indefinitely until it does the task … This is why high-dose vitamin C given intravenously is so powerful …

It powerfully promotes the production of new hydrogen peroxide, which because of its small ionic nature is able to diffuse into the cell. At the same time, the vitamin C goes into the cell. It produces more peroxide that goes into the cell with it.

The third part of the equation [is that] the hydrogen peroxide works to mobilize iron from the storage forms inside the cell … Furthermore, the pathogens self-target themselves by actively accumulating iron in order to proliferate and make themselves iron-rich.

So, there you have all three components: electron donor, electron transfer, electron receiver … and this proceeds until you get complete resolution of the infection.”

Your primary pathogen-killing immune cells, macrophages, polymorphonuclear leukocytes and monocytes, also bring vitamin C and hydrogen peroxide in massive amounts to the site of inflammation or infection.
How to Prepare Your Nebulizing Solution

One of the most important parts of the treatment, however, is to make sure you have the equipment BEFORE you need it. So, if you haven’t already purchased your nebulizer supplies, please put that on your to-do list now. To be prepared for any eventuality, you’ll want to buy the following items so that you have them on hand:

An electric, plug-in tabletop jet nebulizer (small battery-driven hand-held devices tend to be ineffective due to their reduced power)
Food-grade hydrogen peroxide (which does not contain any harmful stabilizers)
Normal saline (0.9%) solution (alternatively, you can easily make your own at home)
Optional — 5% Lugol’s iodine (Dr. David Brownstein’s nebulized peroxide protocol includes one drop of iodine to the final peroxide solution)

The peroxide needs to be diluted with saline, not tap water or distilled water, as this could potentially inflame the mucosal cells. You need the salt in there. As noted by Levy, “The literature shows that water by itself does aggravate, or can cause, an irritating cough if you nebulize it by itself.”
I recommend diluting the peroxide down to 0.1%. Brownstein recommends using an ultralow dilution of 0.04% while Levy recommends 3% or less, depending on individual patient tolerance and how sick the patient already is.
If you don’t have access to saline, you could make your own by mixing one teaspoon of unprocessed salt (such as Himalayan salt, Celtic salt or Redmond’s real salt) into a pint of distilled water. This will give you a 0.9% saline solution, which is about the concentration found in body fluids. Using that saline, you will then dilute the hydrogen peroxide as described in this chart.

With regard to the dilution, Levy offers the following commentary:

“I don’t think there’s any evidence really that 0.04% nebulization as a monotherapy is going to get the job done. I want something that anybody on the planet can use to resolve [their infection] without having to add vitamin C, without having to add iodine, without having availability of ozone.

And when you start taking the concentration down, you’re going to get less antipathogenic impact by definition. That, combined with the fact that for a year now, I’ve been getting an incredible amount of positive feedback. I’ve had no negative feedback. Most people use 3%. Some get too much tingling in the nose and they’ll go down to 1.5% or even 1%.

I think it’s a whole different thing as to what concentration you might want to use for the maintenance therapy that we’re talking about. But I think there’s no good reason at all not to take your first shot at 3% when you’re already having symptoms, or if you have a COVID-positive test.

I see no reason to dance lightly, especially in the fact that we have no negative feedback. Also, a recent article showed that people who routinely gargle with 3% peroxide show zero microscopic abnormalities in the tissue after a six-month period …

I never advise somebody to tolerate symptoms that they find uncomfortable. I always say, find a concentration of whatever you’re nebulizing that’s comfortable. But that said, I still think when you clearly have an infection, hit it hard the first few times, I don’t think you’re going to do any damage.”

Other Health Benefits of Nebulized Peroxide

Aside from fighting infections, nebulized peroxide also has other health benefits, including treating chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is a common side effect of smoking, and emphysema. As noted by Levy, while it doesn’t necessarily repair the anatomy of your air sacs, it does address the chronic infections and mucus production caused by these conditions.

“I’ve had a lot of feedback from chronic lung patients that are pretty much ecstatic that they were able to incorporate this into their long-term medical treatment protocols,” Levy says.

Another interesting benefit of this therapy is its ability to improve your gut microbiome. Levy appears to have been the first one to discover and discuss this benefit:

“The first time I nebulized with, at that time, regular over-the-counter 3% peroxide, the next morning I had the most incredibly normal, well-formed bowel movement of my life. I said, ‘Good grief. What is going on here?’ The only thing I did different was the peroxide nebulization the day before, and that got me to thinking about how all disease is oxidation versus reduction.”

As noted by Levy, chronic infection is a primary source of toxins in the body for most people, be it from infected tonsils, teeth, gums or anything else, and this also affects your microbiome.
Nebulized hydrogen peroxide, by addressing these chronic infections, may therefore also help reestablish a healthier bacterial balance in your gut. Levy recounts how patients with chronic irritable bowel syndrome were able to reverse their condition in as little as one week of nebulization.

“I don’t want to oversimplify what’s going on in the gut,” he says. “I know it’s a very complex process, but bottom line is that what keeps any tissue in a state of ‘disease’ is increased pro-oxidant factors coming in and the degree to which you can stop those pro-oxidant factors.

With my bowel habits changing in less than 12 hours, that really tells me, intuitively, how readily a leaky gut can heal if you stop the 24/7 onslaught of new toxins and pathogens getting dumped into the gut …

I don’t think nebulization is directly putting a clinically significant amount of peroxide in and around the gut. Its primary role is killing the pathogens that chronically grow there in the nose and throat, preventing a continual swallowing of pro-oxidant pathogens and their associated toxins.

There’s a concept in my book called chronic pathogen colonization, where those bugs are covered with biofilms, and … peroxide destroys the biofilm quickly and then kills the pathogens underneath …

I think peroxide nebulization should be a routine part of any treatment protocol for any medical condition because of the positive impact it has on the microbiome and leaky gut, which makes any chronic disease you have worse.”

Hydrogen Peroxide for Periodontitis
A third benefit is its ability to address gum disease (periodontitis) and all the various health conditions associated with or worsened by it. As just one example, if you have severe asthma and advanced periodontitis, when your periodontitis flares, so will your asthma. Once you start to resolve the periodontitis, your asthma will typically improve as well.

“What’s unique about periodontitis is the nature of the pathogens,” Levy explains. “Often it’s caused by a bug called Porphyromonas gingivalis. They’re now finding this pathogen by advanced PCR testing to be present in many different tissues in the body, and to be present in tissues that are diseased.

They’ve identified it in Alzheimer’s tissue, in different neurological tissues. It’s been identified in the coronary artery linings of patients that have coronary artery disease …

That’s all coronary artery disease is — a chronic immune response that’s never extinguished because the seeding of bugs from the mouth is never extinguished … The reason smokers have such a high incidence of heart disease is because all of them have induced periodontitis that has the type of pathogen that metastasizes to the coronary artery lining.”

On a personal note, last year during a health checkup at SanoViv in Mexico, I learned I had periodontitis, which surprised me considering I don’t smoke and have a very healthy lifestyle. It goes to show how easily it can happen and, according to Levy, one of the reasons for this is depleted vitamin C stores. I was able to completely reverse it using ozone therapy, but as noted by Levy, the depleted vitamin C also needs to be addressed. He says:

“One main deficiency of things like ozone and other bio-oxidative therapies is they’re highly effective at killing the pathogen, but they’ve got nothing to do with restoring the antioxidant vitamin C status that resulted from the pathogen being present. All these viruses that we get acutely rapidly destroy our vitamin C stores.

Things like Ebola, where people die of hemorrhage, that’s really acute scurvy. In fact, it’s my opinion that long-haul COVID-19 is simply because of the fact that you so effectively nuked a large amount of your nutrients, especially vitamin C, that unless you undergo an accelerated plan of restitution, not a maintenance plan, but an accelerated plan of restitution, you’re never going to get back to baseline.

Same thing with periodontitis. Any dentist will tell you, they’ve never seen a smoker with normal gums. It just doesn’t occur. But the point is that smoke is metabolizing the vitamin C rapidly in the gums themselves.”

While you would get some benefit by nebulizing hydrogen peroxide through your mouth (i.e., breathing through your mouth rather than your nose), Levy recommends using a water irrigation (Waterpik:tm:) device for this. Use warm water or warmed saline and add one-half to 1 or even 2 tablespoons of 3% food-grade hydrogen peroxide to the water tank.

“Those pathogens get knocked out quick. When you have advanced periodontitis, you no longer have the little peaks of gum tissue between the teeth. They’ve just resorbed completely.

But even in that type of gum, I’ve seen new gum grow in quite nicely in a couple of weeks. So basically, when you take the ongoing infective presence out of there, they will regenerate rapidly, especially if you’re not smoking while maintaining a good vitamin C intake.”

More Information
If you don’t have any chronic medical condition, Levy suggests nebulizing hydrogen peroxide two to three times a week for one to three minutes. If you have a chronic health condition, you’ll want to do it more frequently. For acute symptoms, you’ll typically want to nebulize for 10 to 15 minutes at a time.
For more details, be sure to download Levy’s book, “Rapid Virus Recovery.” It’s a free download. Also be sure to share it with your friends, family and social networks. Nebulized hydrogen peroxide is a simple, inexpensive way to improve your health and safeguard against viral infections of all kinds, and anyone can use it.

“Send the link to as many people as possible,” Levy says. “That’s the whole reason for this book. I can’t imagine anybody being offended by the offer of a free book.”

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/04/04/nebulized-hydrogen-peroxide.aspx

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Free Doughnuts Given for Vaccine and Mask Compliance

Evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic was being used to herd us into a new paradigm where personal freedom is obliterated was presented in a March 2020 Newspunch article,1 which noted that “The world as we know it will change forever in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Bill Gates, who declared that we will soon have ‘digital certificates’ to display our health and vaccination status.”
At the time, Gates also announced the “need” for a national health tracking system, and that positive tests for infectious disease must be publicly identifiable so that people will know to maintain social distance from infectious individuals.
As Newspunch noted,2 “If history repeats, it will go from being technology adopted for its ‘convenience and safety’ and then overnight will become mandatory for you and your family — or else.”
Now, 12 months later, we’re seeing warnings of the “or else” everywhere we look. In February 2021, Israel paved the way by restricting access to gyms, pools, hotels and sporting venues to vaccinated-only,3 thereby effectively segregating unvaccinated individuals from portions of society. Most countries are openly discussing the very real possibility of following suit.
Free Doughnuts Given for Vaccine Compliance
Many private companies are also considering limiting their services to vaccinated-only patrons, although most have realized you catch more bees with honey than vinegar. Case in point: As of March 22, 2021, Krispy Kreme shops around the U.S. will dole out free doughnuts to patrons who can prove they’ve received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.4
Proving they’re not stingy when it comes to handing out special privileges, the offer will last to the end of the year. In other words, if you got the shot, you can enjoy a free doughnut every day for the remainder of 2021. If you’ve got your vaccination card and wear a mask too, you get a free medium-sized gourmet coffee of your choice as well.
To make sure the unvaccinated dregs won’t feel discriminated against, those who choose to not get the shot will be given a free consolation doughnut on Mondays between March 29 and May 24 “to help kick start a good week,” to quote NBC News, which isn’t even being the least sarcastic in its reporting.5
Unvaccinated patrons who comply with proper mask wearing will receive their choice of a Krispy Kreme-branded “I’m a Life Saver” sticker or “Wear It With Pride” pin on their way out, any day of the week during that same time period.The next phase of collaboration will allow direct injections at Krispy Kreme and other fast food participating retail establishments.  You will soon be able to drive-thru and get an injection in one arm while eating your free doughnut or free French fries with the other.
Enticing Health Trap
From a health professional’s standpoint, it must be noted that the free doughnut offer is as devious as a sheep in wolf’s clothing, seeing how indulging in sugar and linoleic acid is a recipe for maximizing any ill effects from the virus and vaccine alike by ruining mitochondrial health. Doughnuts are probably the absolute most harmful “food” there is, and a surefire way to make sure your week starts off in the worst possible way.
It didn’t take long for us to realize that COVID-19 claims the lives of the old, frail and already sick, a vast majority of deaths occurring in those with two or more comorbidities, including obesity and diabetes. So, a doughnut-a-day diet for all is unlikely to drive the virus into oblivion.
As reported in “The Type of Fat You Eat Affects Your COVID Risk,” the amount of unsaturated fat you eat may have a direct impact on your risk of COVID-19 complications as well. This matters, seeing how COVID-19 vaccines are not designed to prevent infection or spread of the virus. Whether you’re vaccinated or not, you can still get COVID-19. The only difference is that the vaccine may lessen your symptoms.
Obeying Repeat Liars — Your Public Duty?
If you’re wondering why people are getting vaccinated against a virus that has an average survival rate of 99.74%,6 or why mask-wearing continues to be “a thing” despite being proven ineffective for viruses in virtually every published study, you clearly have not understood your public duty, which is to trust the experts — even if they’re repeatedly proven wrong or caught lying on a regular basis.
They’re experts for a reason; they’ve been properly trained to dispense advice. And, while erring is human, their expertise will still trump anything you might come up with on your own. Or so the reasoning goes.
The idea of billions of people thinking and making decisions for themselves, going in every-which direction, is a recipe for irreversible chaos — societal breakdown, even.
As reported by political scientist Tom Nichols in his Atlantic article,7 “Following Your Gut Isn’t the Right Way to Go,” experts have had “a rough year” in terms of teasing out the facts, so despite all their faults, “We still have to trust them.” The idea of billions of people thinking and making decisions for themselves, going in every-which direction, is a recipe for irreversible chaos — societal breakdown, even. He writes:

“My gut instincts are much like those of any other American. When my wife and I became eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations in our state, we plowed through different locations and times trying to capture an appointment.

When we finally nailed down a date, I blurted out, as if it mattered: ‘Which vaccine is it?’ I immediately ran through questions in my head. Do I trust the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine? Do I prefer one shot to two? Are Moderna’s data more reliable than Pfizer’s? Perhaps most important: Do I have any idea what I am talking about? …

The answer is no. I do not have any idea what I’m talking about when it comes to vaccines … but my knowledge doesn’t really matter. My wife’s doctor cut right to the chase when she told us (using those palpitation-inducing words ‘Given your age and risk factors’) to take whatever’s available, and that’s what we’re going to do …

When the pandemic recedes … we’ll need to recover some perspective and learn once again when to put aside gut instincts and listen to the people who know what they’re doing … I have confidence in the educational and scientific infrastructure that created them.

This belief is the crux of the matter. Sometimes, experts and their institutions fail. But people who believe that medical schools, research institutions, peer review, and lab trials — in other words, the entire structure of modern science — have all failed or become corrupted are beyond the reach of reason …”

Medical Compliance = Freedom from Persecution
You’ve undoubtedly heard the term “the new normal” being tossed about. Part of that new normal is the concept that medical compliance guarantees you freedom from persecution. It’s simple, really. If you want no trouble, follow the rules and stop arguing about right and wrong.
As reported in “’Papers, Please’: Vaccine Passports Have Officially Arrived,” it’s only a matter of time before you’ll be asked to prove your vaccination status in order to carry on with your daily life, and you should be thankful there are big tech geniuses out there who can ensure maximum efficiency and ease of use of such a system.
In all likelihood, it won’t take long before you won’t even need to carry such proof. It’ll be securely embedded somewhere in your body, so forgetfulness won’t ever cause a problem.
The alternative is a life spent within the four walls of your private abode, and who wants that? Besides, it’ll only be a decade or less before private ownership rights are abolished and you’ll be relegated to a portable cot in public sleeping quarters. Who knows where you’ll end up if you don’t have your health verification papers?
This direction was dictated by the World Economic Forum8 years ago, so you’d best start thinking about the benefits of behavioral modification now. Again, ownership requires good sense, which the average person doesn’t have, so all ownership must, and shall, be transferred to experts who best know how to distribute goods and services in an equitable fashion.
Twisted Predictions Come True
If you sense a heightened level of sarcasm in this article, you’d be correct. After all, today is April 1, and this is my annual April Fool’s Day installment where I’ve used this day as a warning about where we are have been headed over the years. I’ve upset many people, who were scared by reading the articles and felt deceived by the April Fool’s prank.  The sad reality, though, is that these have been warnings to be taken seriously and make you think.
Just read our April Fool’s predictions from 2014, “US to Ban Raw Meat Sales”, the 2015, “US Government Rolls Out Mandatory Adult Vaccination and Tracking Program,” the 2017 “FixBit Promises to Revolutionize Medicine by Detecting Deficiencies and Delivering Drugs by Drone,” the 2019 “Federal Government Mandates Vaccine Reeducation Camps — The Dystopian Future Has Arrived,” or last year’s “New App Requires Reporting of People Sneezing or Coughing,” and see how they’ve held up.
If you go back and read the comments on these articles, there were many that objected to the articles as being too farfetched. As it turns out, most of these satirical predictions have actually manifested:

• In 2014, I predicted that raw meat would be banned.   Bill Gates just recently announced his plans to push for regulations to force rich countries to eat fake meat.• In 2015, I joked about the rollout of a mandatory adult vaccination and electronic tracking program; that Twitter and Facebook posts would be monitored for anti-vaccine chatter; and that Americans would be urged to relinquish responsibility for personal health and well-being to appointed health officials — Check, check and check!
• In 2017, I imagined an automated medical monitoring and drug delivery system called “FixBit.” Today, we’re not far off. Embeddable monitoring devices and drug delivery systems exist. They just haven’t become ubiquitous.
• In 2019, I joked about mandated vaccine reeducation camps for vaccine deniers and refusers, and while most public talks of such facilities in recent months have centered around the reeducation of political wrong-thinkers, vaccine reeducation really doesn’t feel very far off at this point.
Even at the time of publication, the sheer number of people reporting weeping and having anxiety attacks reading it forced me to add a big, red satire notice right at the top; that’s how believable it was.

Of course, we have a level of censorship that is unprecedented, and this too is a clear “reeducation” attempt. At present, there’s a coordinated effort underway to eliminate a dozen vaccine safety advocates off various platforms.

Even political leaders are openly calling for private tech companies to deny us our right to free speech. Among them, Congressman Mike Doyle, D-Penn., who asked Facebook and Twitter to remove a dozen accounts, including mine, from their platforms during a House hearing on disinformation and extremism.9

A primary instigator of this antidemocratic bullying is the ironically misnamed Center for Countering Digital Hate.10 If you want to know what extremists look like, look no further than this Tweet:11

• Last year’s April Fool’s article about COVID-19 testing, contact tracing and digital snitching on suspected disease carriers came even closer to the truth, containing just a single fabrication (as is the case this year too).

In short, it’s hard to come up with truly outlandish satire anymore that won’t transform into mainstream fact in short order. That’s where we are, and there’s nothing funny about it. So far, the only falsehood in this article is the claim that Krispy Kreme is giving out free coffee, stickers or pins to mask-wearers. They’re not. Doughnuts for vaccine papers, however, is entirely true.
My sarcastic insinuation to comply with inevitable loss of medical rights, privacy and human liberty, should be chalked up as just that: sarcasm. No, on the contrary, we need to fight like never before against the rapid encroachment of dystopia, where the outlandish is accepted as “the new normal” — not through physical violence, but through calm, stoic, well-reasoned civil disobedience.
Authoritarians Must Be Stopped
Sadly, many fail to realize the slippery slope that is mindless obedience. It started with masks. “It’s just a mask. It’s not worth getting harassed over.” A year later, dutiful mask-wearing has resulted in the threat of vaccine passports and mandatory vaccinations.
Now, the persecution you risk is not just verbal harassment (or in some extreme cases getting arrested or fined). No, now you risk being relegated into second-class citizen status, unable to engage in common social activities or to have the freedom to travel.
As vaccination compliance grows, you can bet your last dollar, yen or drachmae that the call for additional obedience will emerge. Who knows what it might be? I fear even making a suggestion, as no matter how far-fetched, it may turn out to be prophetic. I do foresee vaccination requirements becoming ever more restrictive, though, until they eventually encompass all public areas and venues, including grocery stores. As noted in a December 2020 Daily Beast article:12

“The government can’t force people to get vaccinated, but businesses can bar people who are not … Too much is at stake to wait for people who refuse to get vaccinated. We need a plan to move forward without them …

Just as I may have a right not to wear a mask or get a shot, you have a right to be able to walk down the street without me giving you a lethal disease. Choosing not to get vaccinated isn’t ‘freedom’ any more than driving drunk is … It, too, is coercive; the anti-vaxxer is forcing me to swim in their viral discharge, anytime we share space in public.”

This is how it’s being presented. Unvaccinated people are lethal germ carriers, veritable biological weapons in their own right. Their very presence in a public area is an act of biological terrorism. Never mind the fact that a healthy person exerts no health threat to anyone, anywhere, and never has.
The myth that SARS-CoV-2 spreads asymptomatically has empowered tyrannical authoritarians to demonize every single person on the planet. If you’re alive, you can now be labeled an unacceptable health threat without any evidence whatsoever. It’s inhumane and, quite frankly, insane.
As discussed in “Will You Obey the Criminal Authoritarians?” experiments have shown that people can be easily manipulated into acting against their own better judgment, and harm others in extreme ways simply because they were told to do so.
With societal norms rapidly changing and an increasingly totalitarian environment emerging, it raises the question whether the public will continue to blindly obey criminal authoritarians, no matter what the consequences. My hope is that people will realize the true, long-term cost of blind obedience, and make more life-affirming choices, if not for themselves, then for their children, who will be forced to live in the world we allow to be created.

NOTICE
This piece is our annual April Fool’s article. Unfortunately, nearly everything in it is true. Krispy Kreme is NOT giving out free coffee, stickers or pins for mask compliance. They are, however, giving out free doughnuts to those who can prove their COVID-19 vaccination status. Sarcastic commentary should not be misread or construed as actual recommendations.
All other details in this article are true, and describe a rapidly-approaching reality in which personal freedoms are decimated to “protect” us all from an infectious disease. To avoid this dystopian future, it is imperative that we fight to protect and preserve our right to privacy — be it medically related or not — both online and offline.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/04/01/doughnuts-given-for-vaccine-mask-compliance.aspx

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Study Shows How NAC Can Help Prevent Strokes

N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a form of the amino acid cysteine and a common dietary supplement, may prevent strokes in people with hereditary cystatin C amyloid angiopathy (HCCAA), a rare genetic disorder.1 People with HCCAA have an average life expectancy of just 30 years, and most die within five years of their first stroke,2 so reducing their incidence could prove to be essential to increasing survival.

The finding is even more significant because it was conducted by researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), which is notoriously against supplements.3 NAC appears to work by preventing the formation of amyloid-producing proteins, which promote amyloid deposits linked to strokes.4

Preventing Strokes Could Save the Lives of Those With HCCAA

HCCAA belongs to a group of diseases known as cerebral amyloid angiopathies (CAAs), in which amyloid deposits form in the blood vessels of the central nervous system.

Amyloid deposits are also involved in a number of other neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Creutzfeldt-Jacob’s and Huntington´s diseases.5 HCCAA is an inherited disease, caused by a leucine 68 to glutamine variant of human cystatin C known as L68Q-hCC.

Young people with the mutation suffer from microinfarcts, which are microscopic lesions, or areas of cellular death or tissue necrosis,6 that are associated with cognitive impairment in older adults.7 Cerebral microinfarcts are clinical markers for stroke and dementia.8

In people with HCCAA, the microinfarcts begin in their 20s along with brain hemorrhages, leading to paralysis, dementia and — as the strokes become more frequent — death.9 hCC deposits are found primarily in the brain in those with HCCAA, though they may also be found in other internal organs.

The study by CHOP researchers suggests NAC may block the precipitation of amyloid plaque deposits, as well as help break up their formation, which could make a dramatic difference for those living with HCCAA. The study’s lead author, Dr. Hakon Hakonarson, director of CHOP’s Center for Applied Genomics, said in a news release:10

“Amyloids cannot precipitate without aggregating, so if we can prevent that aggregation with a drug [NAC] that is already available, then we could make an incredible difference in the lives of these patients.

Additionally, since we already have genetic testing available to identify these patients, we could conceivably give this treatment early in life and potentially prevent that first stroke from ever occurring.”

NAC May Help Prevent Strokes

NAC is most well-known to help increase glutathione and reduce the acetaldehyde toxicity11 that causes many hangover symptoms. Anyone who overdoses on acetaminophen (Tylenol) also receives large doses of NAC in the emergency room, as it helps prevent liver damage by increasing glutathione.

NAC is also sometimes prescribed to break up mucus in the lungs,12 and the CHOP researchers used NAC to treat cell lines expressing wild type and L68Q-mutant hCC, to determine its effects on toxic oligomers that occur in multiple types of amyloidosis.

NAC broke the oligomers into monomers (oligomers are composed of a few monomer units13), which helps prevent the formation of amyloid deposits linked to strokes.14 “Given the results from the described cellular work, it became evident that NAC could potentially be useful to treat this devastating disease,” the researchers wrote in Nature Communications.15

NAC was also evaluated in six patients with the L68Q-hCC variant who were taking NAC. The variant is thought to stem from a mutation in the Icelandic population that occurred during the 16th century. The proband — the person who was the starting point for the family genetic study — from one HCCAA family in Iceland had suffered from three serious strokes over a nine-month period at the age of 22.

The person was put on a respirator after the third stroke and was suffering from mucus plugging, but was treated with NAC, which gradually resolved the mucus plugging. Due to the positive results from the cellular models, the person continued to take NAC, as did five family members who were also carriers of the mutation.

Because the impacts of NAC on hCC deposition in the brain cannot be directly monitored, the researchers conducted skin biopsies on the six individuals. Research suggests that amyloid deposits in the skin correlate with symptom status in HCCAA patients, with those experiencing symptoms having higher deposition in the skin.16

Up to 90% Reduction in L68Q-hCC After NAC

The skin biopsies showed that five of the six patients had a 50% to 90% reduction of hCC protein complex deposition following NAC supplementation — a dramatic result. The researchers wrote:17

“[T]he proband had very high levels of hCC protein complex deposition in the first skin biopsy. Subsequent biopsies reveal the proband had not progressed in terms of deposition; rather, the deposition had decreased by about 40%.

… The reduction in hCC deposition in the proband from first biopsy to third (approximately 15 months at two different doses) was estimated at ~70% … The parent demonstrated an ~50% reduction in staining on biopsy #3 … and the sibling ~30% after 6 months of NAC.

In the second cohort, carriers 1 and 2 showed a visible reduction in the hCC deposition with carrier 1 having near-complete clearance following 600?mg of NAC 3× per day for 24 months.

… Treatment with NAC in human patients not only prevents ongoing deposition of cystatin C protein complex in the skin, but also reduces prior deposits in a significant way.”

An NAC clinical trial was launched in 2019 to investigate whether the results will be confirmed in a larger number of subjects, with results expected in the second quarter of 2021.

The Many Benefits of NAC

In the case of HCCAA, the average lifespan of those affected has dropped significantly, from approximately 65 years in 1825 to about 30 years in 2021. Lifestyle, economic and industrial changes have all been suggested as contributing factors to this decline, including increased consumption of carbohydrates in the diet. This theory fits with NAC showing a benefit, as the researchers noted:18

“Hyperglycemia has been linked to oxidative stress in diabetes, and it is possible that increased carbohydrates in Icelandic diets in the 19th century created enough oxidative stress in L68Q-hCC carriers to make presentation of the disease more severe.

This hypothesis is compatible with our results; increased oxidative stress would increase multimerization of L68Q-hCC, and dietary reducing agents like NAC would reverse that effect and prevent deposition of new aggregates. Therapeutic benefits would be derived mainly from the lack of new occlusions causing new strokes.”

While the most common use of NAC is for liver support, it’s also showing increasing promise as a neuroprotectant. In addition to HCCAA, scientists are investigating NAC as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease, which has been linked to glutathione deficiency in the substantia nigra, a region that houses dopamine neurons.19

NAC is a precursor to and rate-limiting nutrient for the formation of glutathione;20 because glutathione is poorly absorbed, in many cases it’s easier to raise your glutathione by taking NAC instead.

It could also have potential for Alzheimer’s as, according to the CHOP researchers, the process of protein deposition that occurs in HCCAA is similar to what occurs in Alzheimer’s, although at an accelerated pace in HCCAA compared to Alzheimer’s, which is why dementia occurs later in life with the latter.

“If the underlying mechanisms of protein deposition and pathogenesis are sufficiently similar, similar or identical treatments may be effective,” they said.21 Another area where NAC shows particular promise is in the treatment of mental health disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder,22 depression23 and substance use disorders.24

NAC even shows promise for COVID-19. According to one literature analysis,25 glutathione deficiency may be associated with COVID-19 severity, leading the author to conclude that NAC may be useful both for its prevention and treatment.

NAC may also combat the abnormal blood clotting seen in many cases, and helps loosen thick mucus in the lungs. Interestingly, with COVID-19 treatment as a new indication, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration suddenly cracked down on NAC, claiming it is excluded from the definition of a dietary supplement, as it was approved as a new drug in 1985.26

As such, NAC cannot technically be marketed as a supplement, even though there are no fewer than 1,170 NAC-containing products in the National Institutes of Health’s Dietary Supplement Label Database.27

Why the CHOP Study Has Additional Significance

The fact that CHOP researchers are recommending NAC for the treatment of HCCAA is of particular significance because of their historical opposition to the use of dietary supplements. In October 2013, it announced that its list of medications approved for use would no longer include most dietary supplements, making it the first U.S. hospital to discourage its patients from using dietary supplements as a matter of policy.28

Their reasoning was that dietary supplements are “essentially unregulated” with “no sound information” about side effects, drug interactions or standard dosing, which they said made giving them to sick children “unethical when the risks are unknown.” But considering the results of the recent study, it would be unethical to withhold such a potentially lifesaving treatment.

The policy is so stringent that parents are asked upon their child’s admission whether they’re taking any supplements. The use of the supplements is then discouraged, including parents being informed of the hospital’s anti-supplement policy and supplement risks, and if “after receiving this information, a parent or guardian insists on continuing to give their child a dietary supplement,” they must sign a waiver to that effect.

Only a limited list of “acceptable products” are allowed in CHOP’s supplement formulary, and it’s unclear if NAC is one of them. If not, it certainly deserves to be added, and perhaps the study will open CHOP’s eyes to the life-saving potential of natural products and dietary supplements.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/04/01/n-acetylcysteine-prevents-strokes.aspx

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Sanitizer for Your Nose?

Viral infections begin when the virus is implanted at a portal of entry and begins replicating. The most common portals are the nose, throat and upper airways,1 which led to a recent initiative to educate people on the importance of nasal hygiene.2

A virus is either DNA or RNA and requires another living cell to replicate, which ultimately leads to symptoms. There are several factors that determine viral transmission, which include the size of the virus and the size of the respiratory aerosol.3 The largest viruses are 500 nanometers (nm) in diameter, just visible “under a light microscope on the highest resolution,” according to Britannica.4

The COVID-19 virus is 100 nm in diameter,5 far smaller than the holes in a standard cloth mask can filter,6 which is just one of the reasons mask mandates are not effective.

Viruses don’t move on their own, but depend on people, the environment and other pieces of equipment to gain access to a host.7 Once a virus like the influenza virus is inhaled, if it’s not neutralized it can invade the respiratory tract and airway cells.8

Viruses that cause the common cold are spread through the air and close personal contact with respiratory secretions or stool of a person who is infected.9 Shaking hands or touching a contaminated surface, and then touching your eyes, nose or mouth, can inoculate your membranes with the virus.

SARS-CoV-2 is known to enter the body through the nasal epithelial cells.10 The “Sanitize Your Nose”11 campaign was launched by Global Life Technologies, maker of Nozin Nasal Sanitizer.12

Nasal Decontamination Is Not New

The Sanitize Your Nose campaign was launched in mid-2020 to raise public awareness that together with routine hand washing, the practice of reducing viral load in the nasal cavity may help to reduce the spread of viruses.

According to their press release,13 9 out of 10 Americans understand handwashing helps reduce the risk of infection, but only 3 out of 10 understand that reducing the viral and bacterial load in the nasal cavity may also help reduce the risk.

The active ingredient in Nozin Nasal Sanitizer is 62% ethyl alcohol in combination with natural oils, including coconut oil, jojoba, lauric acid and vitamin E.14 The company’s website states:15

“… the formula combines the safe, proven, antiseptic power of ethyl alcohol with the emollient, antioxidant benefits of natural oils. [and] … does not promote antibiotic resistance as it utilizes the non-selective antiseptic action of ethanol.”

The nasal spray has been in use to reduce the spread of Staphylococcus aureus16 but is now being advertised by the company to help reduce SARS-CoV-2 viral load and thus impact the potential for an active infection.

Each ampule is approved for one-time use for adults and children over 12 years. Once opened, the sleeve is squeezed to wet the swab tip and then swabbed around the outside of the nostril six times in each direction.17

Application of the ethanol alcohol and natural oils mixture has demonstrated a broad-spectrum efficacy against pathogenic organisms for up to eight hours. Specifically, it was shown to reduce colonization of S. aureus and other nasal bacteria.18

New Antiviral Nose Spray Promises 99.9% of Viruses Killed

The Health Ministry in Israel recently approved the production19 of an at-home antiviral the inventors claim is effective within two minutes to reduce 99.9% of viruses in the nasal cavity. Biochemist Gilly Regev, Ph.D., invented the product and cofounded the company SaNOtize, which is based in Canada. 

Israel will be the first country where the product will be sold and has been given approval for sale in people aged 12 and up.20 It has also been approved in New Zealand and the company is seeking approval in other countries, including the U.K. The product delivers a physical barrier in a combination with nitric oxide, known to kill viruses.21,22

The product will be sold under the brand name Enovid,23 for which clinical trials were recently completed demonstrating the antiviral treatment was effective in preventing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, shortening the course of the disease and reducing the severity of symptoms in people who were infected. Chief science officer and co-founder Chris Miller, Ph.D., said in a press release:24

“Our novel formulation of Nitric Oxide for use in humans is designed to kill viruses in the upper airways, preventing them from incubating and spreading to the lungs. The pharmacology, toxicity, and safety data for use in humans has been well-established for decades. Our innovative product design also allows the treatment to be self-administered effectively and affordably.”

In a separate press release announcing the results of the clinical trials,25 the company said it was applying for emergency use authorization in the U.K. and Canada, which would facilitate a nearly immediate return to work, school and society, well ahead of the anticipated return following full vaccinations.

In addition to reducing infection in those who have not been vaccinated, the nitric oxide nasal spray (NONS) also reduced infectivity or the transmission of the virus. Regev said:26

“Now that NONS has been demonstrated to be safe and effective in clinical trials, we must move with urgency to get it into the hands of the public where it can help bring an end to the pandemic, accelerate a return to normality, and prevent future outbreaks of COVID-19 and its variants.

The human toll of this disease cannot be expressed simply in numbers, and each day compounds the frustration, fear and loss suffered by millions around the world. Combined with the roll-out of vaccines, NONS can help get the world back on its feet.”

In a video27 describing Enovid, Regev stressed that one day COVID-19 would no longer be a threat, but the product would continue to be an effective deterrent for any type of viral infection, including flu or the next pandemic.

History of Sanitizing Your Nose to Lower Infection

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention28 currently recommends hospitals use strategies to reduce the colonization of S. aureus before major surgeries to reduce the risk of post-surgical infection. Sue Barnes, infection control specialist, is a member of the Sanitize Your Nose advisory board. In a press release, she said:29

“Health care professionals have long recommended that patients have their noses sanitized before surgeries and other periods of heightened vulnerability to help prevent infections. Now is the perfect time to look beyond the health care setting and encourage everyone to incorporate sanitizing the nose into their regular routines, especially when they are heading into higher risk environments, such as crowded public places.”

However, most of the research has been done on reducing bacterial nasal contamination prior to surgical procedures and not the reduction of viral transmission. A study published in Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews30 in 2017 looked at surgical site infection rates and the potential for nasal decontamination to reduce post-surgical infections, specifically from S. aureus colonizing the nasal cavity.

A literature search located two studies that were included in the review. The authors concluded there was limited evidence from randomized controlled trials that nasal decontamination could prevent surgical infections.

Another study31 evaluated the use of the antibiotic mupirocin to eliminate S. aureus before open-heart surgery. The intervention group received the medication four times a day for 48 hours before the surgery. The evidence suggested mupirocin lowered the incidence of sternal wound infection but did not change the frequency of skin infections or pneumonia after open-heart surgery.

A third study32 found preoperative nasal decontamination for S. aureus significantly decreased postoperative infections following surgery for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis.

A literature review33 assessing the relationship between S aureus colonization in the nose and the development of post-surgical infection again found a positive trend, but the researchers acknowledged the samples were too small to demonstrate the efficacy of pretreatment to eradicate post-surgical infection.

In a letter to the editor,34 anesthesiologist Dr. Duncan McGuire proposed that decolonization of the nasal cavity in the hospital may not be effective. He pointed out past research demonstrated reducing S. aureus may help prevent surgical site infections, but research has not presented “substantive evidence that nasal/oral decontamination would actually reduce viral transmission.”35

The letter followed the release of a study36 demonstrating the application of povidone-iodine may contribute to infection control and operating room management strategies. The data also showed 42% of the participants experienced short term thyroid dysfunction with the intervention that resolved after treatment was discontinued.

McGuire’s concern was the application of povidone-iodine can induce sneezing and thus increase the spread of viral particles. The use of chlorhexidine mouth rinse can induce coughing, which can also raise the risk of viral spread before the virus was inactivated by the povidone-iodine.

Routine Nasal and Sinus Irrigation May Lower Viral Load

It’s possible that regularly rinsing your nasal cavity and sinuses, where the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 tends to reside, would help clear the pathogen and prevent it from gaining a strong foothold. Past research has shown that nasal irrigation can reduce the symptoms and duration of other viral conditions such as seasonal flu and the common cold.

In one randomized controlled trial,37 participants who used nasal irrigation and gargling with hypertonic saline reduced duration of the common cold by 1.9 days and transmission within the household by 35% when the intervention was started within 48 hours of the onset of symptoms.

Dr. Amy Baxter, a pediatric emergency medicine physician in Atlanta, Georgia, suggests38 irrigating your sinuses any time you’ve been exposed to an infected individual or test positive for COVID-19. She recommends flushing your sinuses using a mixture of boiled lukewarm water (8 ounces) and povidone-iodine (half a teaspoon).

Povidone-iodine has been shown to effectively kill not only Klebsiella pneumoniae and Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria, but also rapidly inactivates SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, H1N1 influenza virus A and rotavirus after 15 seconds of exposure.39

The mixture used in this study — 7% povidone-iodine diluted 1-to-30, bringing the total concentration to 0.23% povidone-iodine — inactivated over 99% of the coronaviruses causing SARS and MERS.40

Either a neti pot or sinus rinse bottle can be used. The water pressure you get from a sinus rinse bottle can provide a more effective flush. However, if higher pressure is uncomfortable, a neti pot, which relies on gravity, may be a more comfortable choice.

Nasal and sinus irrigation using a neti pot is another way of physically removing allergens that trigger seasonal allergic reactions. The water is administered through one nostril, flows through the nasal passages and sinuses and out the other nostril.

It is crucial you do not use tap water in your neti pot as it burns and could trigger a deadly brain infection from an amoeba that’s commonly found in the lakes, rivers and hot springs that feed the tap water supply.41 Instead, use a saline solution of distilled water and salt.

Preventive Strategy Using Nebulized Hydrogen Peroxide

One of my favorite preventive strategies you can use at home is nebulized hydrogen peroxide. The treatment was first conceived and championed by Dr. Charles Farr42 in the early 1990s. Since then, thousands of doctors have used the treatment for upper respiratory infections.

In March 2021, I interviewed Dr. David Brownstein, who has a clinic just outside Detroit, Michigan, where he has successfully treated over 200 patients with nebulized hydrogen peroxide. When the treatment is initiated within the first couple days of infection, Brownstein has found it significantly reduces the number of patients who will experience long-haul syndrome from COVID-19.

In the article linked above, he shared that in his initial 107 patients, just 2% develop long-haul syndrome, which is in stark contrast to the 20% to 40% reported elsewhere. In my interview with Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, in which we discussed hydroxychloroquine treatment, he also found that none of the patients treated within the first five days of symptoms went on to develop long-haul syndrome.

In March 2020, Dr. Thomas Levy published guidance43 on how to use nebulized hydrogen peroxide for the prevention and treatment of all viral respiratory infections, including COVID-19.

To use the protocol, you’ll want to use food-grade peroxide, which comes in concentrations of 12% and must be diluted to 1% or less before use. This is administered with a nebulizer that emits a fine mist and a face mask that covers your mouth and nose. The mist can be comfortably inhaled deep into your nostrils, sinuses and lungs where it inactivates viral pathogens.

For more information about how it works, and a video demonstrating how to mix the solution and use a nebulizer, see “How Nebulized Peroxide Helps Against Respiratory Infections.”
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/04/03/nasal-sanitizer.aspx

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The Future of Farming According to Bill Gates

Tech billionaire Bill Gates, co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft, may seem a strange fit for the role of America’s top farmer. But he’s been quietly amassing massive tracts of U.S. land under the cover of investment firm Cascade Investment LLC, and now owns a minimum of 242,000 acres of U.S. farmland.1

The finding was outed by Eric O’Keefe’s magazine, The Land Report, which puts out a list of the 100 biggest landowners in the U.S. each year. It was a 2020 purchase of 14,500 “prime” acres in Washington state that first caught O’Keefe’s attention, as he calls any sale of more than 1,000 acres “blue moon events.”

When he dug deeper, the purchaser of the 14,500 acres — in the heart of some of the most expensive acreage in America — was recorded as a small Louisiana company. “That immediately set off alarm bells,” O’Keefe told the New York Post.2 It turned out the company was acting on behalf of Cascade Investment for Bill Gates, and he owns land not only in Washington but also in Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, California and multiple other states.

“Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, has an alter ego,” O’Keefe wrote. “Farmer Bill, the guy who owns more farmland than anyone else in America.”3 Clearly Gates has a big vision for all that land, but unfortunately it doesn’t involve organic, biodynamic or regenerative farming methods, which are needed to heal ecosystems and produce truly sustainable, nourishing food for future generations.

Instead, the acreage seems earmarked for even more genetically engineered (GE) corn and soy crops — the base foods for what will become an increasingly synthetic, ultraprocessed food supply.

Gates and Fake Meat Bigwigs Aim for Industrialized Farming

Imitation meat company Impossible Foods was co-funded by Google, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates,4 and Gates has made it clear that he believes switching to synthetic beef is the solution to reducing methane emissions that come from animals raised on concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).5

The strong recommendation to replace beef with fake meat is made in Gates’ book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need,” which was released in February 2021.6 In an interview with MIT Technology Review, he goes so far as to say that people’s behaviors should be changed to learn to like fake meat and, if that doesn’t work, regulations could do the trick.7

In the U.S., consumers are increasingly seeking out wholesome, real, minimally processed food. Fake meat like the Impossible Burger is the opposite — a highly processed fake food, but one that’s disguised as something good for you and the environment.

Where in nature can you find ingredients like genetically engineered yeast, soy protein concentrate, modified food starch and soy protein isolate? The answer is nowhere, and therein lies a key part of the problem.

However, Gates, along with Pat Brown, founder of Impossible Foods, believes that the “winning strategy” for the future of farming involves “finding ways for farmers to produce more corn and soybeans on every acre … while substantially lowering carbon emissions.”8 According to Fortune:9

“Surprisingly, both Gates and Brown believe that genetically modified seeds and chemical herbicides, in the right doses — and not land-intensive organic farming — are crucial to curbing carbon emissions.”

Gates and Brown Support GMOs and Chemicals

When animals are raised according to regenerative agriculture, a complete ecosystem is created, one that is both healing for the land and productive for the farmers who keep it. Eating meat is not synonymous with harming the environment; it’s industrial farming practices that inflict the damage. Some also believe eating meat means ripping out more forests so animals can graze, but often it’s grasslands and prairies that have been plowed up to plant a surplus of corn for ethanol.

U.S. cropland is already dominated by a two-crop planting cycle of corn and soybeans, largely for industrial animal feed. Like concentrated animal feeding operations, these chemical-laden monocrops are devastating the environment, and even though they’re plant foods, are part of the problem, not the solution.

Rather than reverting to regenerative agriculture, in which livestock and crops are integrated into a symbiotic, complementary system that mimics the way nature works, agrochemical companies like Syngenta are using gene editing, genetic engineering, chemicals and biologics to create hybrid seed lines, crops resistant to winds, flooding and droughts and other lab-created agricultural elements.

It’s all based on technology to advance seed and crop protections, in what’s referred to as “the new paradigm of farming.” If Gates has his way, organic will be pushed out of the picture. Fortune reported:10

“Gates — America’s biggest owner of farmland — acknowledges that organic farming is more harmful to the environment than conventional farming. Asked by Rashida Jones on a December 2020 podcast, ‘Does eating organic help [reduce emissions]?’ Gates replied, ‘No, organic produce requires more land than typical farming techniques. I know that’s not a popular answer.’ Jones riposted, ‘Hard take, Bill!’”

Brown is also pro-GMOs and chemical herbicides. Fortune continued:11

“In an article from 2019, Brown wrote that Impossible was facing a shortage of soy because it relied on farms that didn’t use genetically modified seeds. The reason: Non-modified seed wasn’t nearly as resistant to disease, lowering output and forcing farmers to use far more herbicide.

Brown found that going with genetically modified crops provided both the extra supply he needed, and gave burgers the ‘beefy texture’ his fans craved. ‘The safest and most environmentally friendly option to allow us to scale up production and provide the Impossible Burger to consumers at the lowest possible cost is GM soy,’ he said.”

It’s an incredibly short-sighted statement, however, that completely ignores the many downsides of GM soy, which include devastating effects on insects like monarch butterflies as well as the promotion of herbicide-resistant superweeds.

Testing by Moms Across America also revealed the Impossible Burger contains glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide, which has been shown to alter the gene function of over 4,000 genes in the livers, kidneys and cause severe organ damage in rats at levels of just 0.1 part per billion.12 The Impossible Burger contained 11.3 ppb (glyphosate and its break down AMPA).

Biotech PR Campaign to Convince You to Eat Synthetic Food

U.S. Right to Know reporter Stacy Malkan tweeted in March 2021 that Bill Gates’ plans to remake our food systems are a problem for both farmers and consumers who don’t want to eat GE corn and soy that’s turned into processed, synthetic food products.13

Whether or not it’s “unpopular” doesn’t matter, though, as Gates said he thinks rich countries should be eating all fake meat. When asked whether he thinks plant-based and lab-grown meats could “be the full solution to the protein problem globally,” he says that, in middle- to above-income countries, yes, and that people can “get used to it”:14

The plan to get consumers used to replacing their burgers with synthetic, fake food has been underway since at least 2014, when a group of powerful agribusiness executives met to organize a PR campaign that would put synthetic biology and GMOs in a more favorable light. Dana Perls, from Friends of the Earth, attended the meeting and later wrote:15

“The meeting was under Chatham House rules — which means I can’t disclose who said what. However, I can say that the meeting was an alarming insight into the synthetic biology industry’s process of creating a sugar-coated media narrative to confuse the public, ignore the risks, and claim the mantle of ‘sustainability’ for potentially profitable new synthetic biology products.

Over the course of the day, primarily CEOs, directors and PR people from powerful chemical and synthetic biology companies, bounced around tales of promise, discussed how to position synthetic biology as a ‘solution’ to world hunger, and made blithe claims of safety that were not backed up by any actual data.

… When I asked how biotech companies will protect small farmers who are producing the truly natural products, I was met with a hard cold stare, silence and a non-answer about needing to meet consumer demand.”

In a recap of the key take-away points from the meeting, Perls said the industry’s PR strategy included not using the terms “synthetic biology” and “genetically engineered,” which have negative connotations, and trying to change the public narrative by capturing emotions and flooding the media with feel-good stories about synthetic biology.

The group agreed that the industry should remain self-regulated as much as possible, and that the results of corporate studies should not be public knowledge. They even suggested that the industry should present the image that they’re looking out for food sustainability, transparency and food sovereignty. But, Perls noted, “When I pointed out that corporate-controlled synthetic biology is the antithesis of ‘food sovereignty,’ I was met again with stony silence.”16

UN Food Summit Boycotted Over Agribusiness Influence

Corporate interests are also dominating the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit, and hundreds of farmers and human rights groups are boycotting it as a result. They believe it favors agribusiness interests, elite foundations and the exploitation of African food systems.17

The Summit claims it is convening to “launch bold new actions to transform the way the world produces and consumes food,”18 but critics say it is biased toward industrial, corporate farming while leaving out those in regenerative agriculture and the knowledge of indigenous people.19

The controversy began right from the start, when U.N. secretary general António Guterres appointed Agnes Kalibata as the event’s head. Kalibata is the former Rwandan agriculture minister who is now the president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an organization funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.20

AGRA is essentially a Gates Foundation subsidiary, and while some of its projects appear to be beneficial, most of its goals are centered on promoting biotechnology and chemical fertilizers. AGRA was launched in 2006 with funding from Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

After more than a decade, AGRA’s influence has significantly worsened the situation in the 18 African nations targeted by this “philanthropic” endeavor. Hunger under AGRA’s direction increased by 30% and rural poverty rose dramatically.21

Concerns that the Summit was dominated by corporate industry heightened when its concept paper included precision agriculture, data collection and genetic engineering as pillars for addressing food security while leaving out regenerative agriculture.

As reported by The Guardian, Michael Fakhri, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, wrote to Kalibata stating that the Summit was focused on “science and technology, money and markets” while leaving fundamental questions about inequality, accountability and governance unaddressed.22

Corporate Ideology Is Pushing Out Real Regeneration

Unfortunately, the U.N. Food Summit is now poised to bow down to corporate ideology instead of embracing the small farmers and regenerative practices that have true potential to feed the world and heal the planet. As for Gates’ increasing monopoly on farmland, it’s worth noting that when you own the land, you also own the water that’s beneath it.

For those who control resources like food and water, power is limitless, and with his vast amounts of land, he can grow all the GE soy necessary to create the fake meat he’s so heavily pushing — or perhaps it’s even worse than that. As noted by The Defender about several of Gates’ more questionable endeavors:23

“Thomas Jefferson believed that the success of America’s exemplary struggle to supplant the yoke of European feudalism with a noble experiment in self-governance depended on the perpetual control of the nation’s land base by tens of thousands of independent farmers, each with a stake in our democracy.

So at best, Gates’ campaign to scarf up America’s agricultural real estate is a signal that feudalism may again be in vogue. At worst, his buying spree is a harbinger of something far more alarming — the control of global food supplies by a power-hungry megalomaniac with a Napoleon complex.”
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/04/02/future-farming-bill-gates.aspx

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The Seeds of Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., is a physicist and activist who works tirelessly to defend the environment and protect biodiversity from multinational corporations. Her life’s work has culminated in the creation of seed banks that may one day save future generations’ food sovereignty, but how she got there is a fascinating story, chronicled in the documentary “The Seeds of Vandana Shiva.”
Shiva, “a brilliant scientist” who became “Monsanto’s worst nightmare and a rock star of the international organic food movement,”1 grew up in a Himalayan forest, where her father, a forest conservator, carried out inspections. She would travel up to 45 miles a day with her father as a young girl, and as they traversed the forest he taught her everything about the trees, plants and herbs therein.
“We had a classroom out in the forest,” Shiva said, but her formal studies were done in a convent which, at that time, didn’t regard science as a subject fit for girls. Shiva wanted to study physics, though, and she was especially intrigued by Einstein and his connections of intuition with science. “Everyone has their favorite person that they want to be,” she said. “Einstein was the shaper of the dream of my life.”
A Search for Knowledge as a Whole

Shiva got a scholarship to attend Chandigarh University in Punjab, India, and from there she went on to the Bhabha National Atomic Research Center in Mumbai, India, for training in atomic energy. Later, her sister, a medical doctor, asked her about the health and environmental effects of nuclear technology and radiation.
As Shiva grasped the devastation nuclear energy had caused, she said, “I realized that a science that only teaches you how to modify nature without the understanding of what that modification does to the larger world is not a complete science.”
She gave up her idea of being a nuclear physicist and instead went looking for knowledge as a whole. She studied on her own, finding quantum theory, and while pursuing a Ph.D. in Canada, went to visit some of her favorite spots, including an oak forest she held close to her heart.
When she arrived, the forest had been cut down to make room for apple orchards, changing the entire microclimate in the area. The loss of something that she felt was a part of her impacted her deeply and set the stage for her environmental activism.
The Tree Hugging Movement Is Born

Shiva states that her involvement in the contemporary ecology movement began with the Chipko movement in 1973.2 The timber mafia were cutting down trees throughout the Indian Himalayas, taking away this precious resource from the rural villagers who depended on the forest for subsistence.
The government denied villagers access to the land and the lumber, while the logging companies cleared out forests, leading to problems with erosion, depleted water resources and flooding.
The villagers, primarily women, fought back in the best way they could, by physically embracing the trees to stop the loggers. Chipko is a Hindi word that means “to hug” or “to cling to,”3 and the movement spread, creating what became widely known as the tree hugging movement.
The women of Chipko taught Shiva how much women who hadn’t been to school knew about the interconnectedness of nature, but it took a major flood to make the government realize that what the women were saying was right. The revenue that came in from the forest logging was little compared to what they had to pay for flood relief.
In 1981, the government listened to the women and ordered a ban on logging in the high-altitude Himalayas, while tree hugging became a worldwide practice of ecological activism.
1982: The Water Wars

The Ministry of Environment invited Shiva to conduct a study on the impact of limestone mining in the Mussoorie hills. There were “scars all along the mountains,” and she went straight to the women in the community and asked what the key issue was. It was water. The rainfall in limestone creates giant caves and cavities, which act as nature’s aquifers.
Up in those mountains, Shiva said, the mining was robbing the valley of its water source — billions of dollars’ worth of water resources — while the miners’ wastes were destroying stream flows, villages were being washed away and workers were being exploited.
When word of Shiva’s study got out, both her father and infant son were threatened, but she continued on with her research, following her father’s advice that “as long as you follow your conscience you have nothing to fear.” Ultimately, Shiva’s calculations showed that the limestone left in the mountain contributed more to the economy than the extraction of limestone from the mountain.
Just as in the case of the forest in the Himalayas, in which the government was forced to recognize that the forest left standing contributed more than their conversion into timber. Shiva’s study was the basis of a Supreme Court ruling that led to the mining being discontinued.4
The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology

Shiva went on to found the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, which she called the Institute for “Counter Expertise.” The goal was to counter the “expertise” of the destroyers and “bring to the front the knowledge of those who were defending the Earth and their lives.”
Shiva was able to carry out independent research because she didn’t rely on funding from outside sources. “You can have a billion-dollar grant and hire researchers to do the work, who don’t know about the issue,” she said, or you can have just a few thousand dollars and work with communities, where the people become the researchers. This is important, Shiva noted, as “When money is your master, then your conscience is no more your guide.”
During this time, she also challenged the standing law in India, which stated that the father would automatically become the natural guardian of the children in cases of divorce. She went directly to the Supreme Court and became the first case in which the court decided the mother should get custody of the child, setting precedent for all of India.
In 1985, she was invited to Nairobi for a U.N. conference on women, where she spoke about women and the environment, including the Chipko movement, stating that it was the first time the link was made between environmental degradation and its impact on women. In 1988, her book “Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development” was published, marking the beginning of eco-feminism. Shiva went on to write more than 20 books.
The Violence of the Green Revolution

In 1984, Shiva was working for United Nations University on conflicts over resources when an eruption of extremist violence broke out in Punjab. Religion was blamed for the unrest, but it was more likely a battle over resources. That same year, a gas leak from a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, had devastating consequences, killing 3,000 people immediately and 30,000 more in the aftermath, with many still suffering health effects to this day.
“My head is in a spin,” Shiva said of her mindset at the time. “That’s when I realized Punjab is the home of the Green Revolution.” The Green Revolution is the name given to the introduction of chemical agriculture to the developing world, which was promised to bring more food, more prosperity and more peace.
The movement even earned a Nobel Peace Prize but, Shiva said, “death ensued.” It didn’t add up. “You’re supposed to give a Nobel Peace Prize for peace, but this is war,” she said. When she turned her research efforts toward the Green Revolution, she found that, as a result of this new chemical-based agriculture, soils and rivers were dying and desertification was taking place, while 25% of small farmers were dispossessed.
“This was an agrarian crisis,” Shiva said, “not a religious conflict.” She uncovered that many of the people being killed were those in positions of bureaucratic power, “controlling the architecture that allowed the Green Revolution to happen.”
This led Shiva to write another book, “The Violence of the Green Revolution.” Once she understood that the promises of the Green Revolution were a lie, she moved her focus to truly sustainable agriculture.
Putting Patents on Life

In 1987, Shiva was invited to a biotechnology meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, which was attended by some independent scientists along with U.N. officials and the agro-chemical lobby, which would soon turn into the biotech lobby.
The focus was on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that would allow them to patent seeds, securing the GMO seeds’ future growth and the ability to collect royalties from farmers.5 An international treaty was discussed to move GMOs and patented seeds globally. Shiva told IDR:6

“This is why the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), World Trade Organisation (WTO), General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), and others came into the picture. What was most horrifying was their ambition to limit this to a total of just five companies that would control food and health globally. Today, we have four — I call them the poison cartel.”

While the spin was to position GMOs as essential to feeding the world, Shiva said, “the reality was that they were the door to owning life on Earth.” The patented seeds also necessitated monocultures, so the same seeds could be sold everywhere, and people could be replaced with herbicides and machines. It ushered in industrialized farming while eliminating small farms.
On the flight home from Switzerland, she said, she began thinking about how to deal with this and by the time she got off the flight, “A seed was speaking to me … Farmers with their own seed, fighting for their seed freedom, are the biggest force in the world against seed monopoly.”
Navdanya: The Right to Save Seeds

In 1994, Shiva founded Navdanya, a nonprofit organization promoting biodiversity, organic farming and seed saving. She traveled to villages where women would give her seeds, and she started saving them and encouraging farmers to do the same. A training and research farm was created in order to have a seed bank where all the seeds were collected and to have research on how biodiversity and native seeds can feed the world.
But saving seeds and creating seed banks was only one aspect. The other was to create awareness, including translating the information into different languages to tell the world about the importance of saving seeds and protecting crops. There are now at least 127 seed banks in India, which will keep growing, along with a network of farmers and seed savers who have been trained in organic farming.
Shiva has also traveled the globe to warn other countries, including those in Africa, about plans to displace rural farmers so investors can turn the land into industrial farms to export the commodities. She said:

“A handful of multinational corporations … is driving species extinction. The poisons they have deployed are pushing the disappearance of bees, the disappearance of pollinators, the disappearance of insects, the disappearance of biodiversity.
Industrial agriculture is not only destroying biodiversity, it is destroying the soil and releasing large amounts of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere … This is not a food system. It is not an ecological system. It is a recipe for destruction of the planet’s health and the destruction of our health.”

Regenerative agriculture and animal husbandry are the next and higher stage of organic food and farming. They’re not only free from toxic pesticides, GMOs, chemical fertilizers and concentrated animal feeding operations, but are also regenerative in terms of the health of the soil, the environment, the animals and rural farmers. As Shiva put it, “Regenerative agriculture provides answers to the soil crisis, the food crisis, the climate crisis and the crisis of democracy.”7
In short, regenerative agriculture practices aim to rebuild soil health, restore ecosystems and promote human health through the growing of nutrient-dense food, while providing farmers with economic and financial stability. Shiva is confident this can be done, as long as humans embrace their interconnectedness while acting on an individual level to be agents of change:

“Food can be grown in abundant, ecologically sustainable and just ways. But to do this we need a shift in our perception. We need a change in paradigm. We are part of nature. We must participate in her processes. We have to understand our interconnectedness, our oneness on this Earth. But this is not how Big Food and Big Agriculture works.”

About the Directors

I believe in bringing quality to my readers, which is why I wanted to share some information about the Directors, Camilla Becket and Jim Becket, from “The Seeds of Vandana Shiva.”

Here is a little more about them and what went in to making this film. Thank you Camilla and Jim for sharing with us.
Camilla grew up in apartheid South Africa and was an activist in the anti-apartheid movement. She managed outreach for independent publishers who originated works by anti-apartheid thinkers and artists, including Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. She launched Becket Films with Jim in 2005 with a mission to focus on international environmental issues, social justice, and health.
Camilla has co-produced several Becket Films projects, including films for the Religion, Science, and Environment series about besieged water bodies around the world and what can be done to restore them.
Jim brings a varied career to his filmmaking: Human rights lawyer, journalist, and author. As Director of Public Information for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, Jim made several films about refugee problems around the world. Moving to Los Angeles, he worked as a screenwriter, producer and director of TV and narrative movies.
Since then he has co-produced several documentaries on contemporary environmental issues, including The Green Patriarch, The Amazon: The End of Infinity, The Arctic: The Consequences of Human Folly and El Misterio del Capital de los Indigenas Amazonicos. Jim’s awards include festival Best Film awards, two Humanities awards, and a George Foster Peabody award.

What was your inspiration for making this film?
We were first introduced to Vandana Shiva at a series of environmental conferences almost twenty years ago. And like most people on their first meeting with her, realized immediately that we were in the presence of an eco-activist rock star.
The more time we spent with her, and learned about her life experiences, the more we, as filmmakers, were inspired to tell her story.
Her life has embodied the notion that “one person can make a difference”, and so finally we asked if we could try to capture her journey on film. She agreed. The Seeds of Vandana Shiva is the result.
Why seeds? After learning that the real goal of developing GMOs were for patents to monopolize the world’s seed supply, Vandana began speaking out about the ecological and social costs of industrial agriculture and building the movement to save native seeds.
And through her evolution as an activist against the global Goliaths of food and farming, we also wanted to shine a light on where we are today — industrial food production accounts for up to 40% of carbon emissions, while pesticides destroy soils, water systems and biodiversity, and harm human health. Contrary to the spin that industrial food is essential to feeding the world, today more than two billion people face food insecurity across the globe.
The good news is that The Seeds of Vandana Shiva also shows how we can tip the scales, each in our own way: Vandana speaks for an ecologically regenerative vision for food and farming which we can all engage in — millions already do. But we need millions more for real change to occur.
In the end, our hope is that Vandana’s extraordinary story will act as a catalyst for more people to understand the issues at stake, and to deeply inspire them to be part of the change.

What was your favorite part of making the film?

There were many rewards to making The Seeds of Vandana Shiva, but the best part was making the trips to Dr. Shiva’s organic farm, Navdanya, in the foothills of the Himalayas.
Not only is Navdanya the center of Dr. Shiva’s research and seed saving work, but it is also an education center where people travel from all over India and elsewhere in the world to learn about seed saving and ecological food systems.
It is where we found Dr. Shiva at her most relaxed and willing to share her experiences with us. We also loved how many volunteers stepped up to offer time and expertise during production. It was so gratifying to realize how many people really wanted this film to be made!
Now we are enjoying the process of sharing The Seeds of Vandana Shiva with the world, in the hope that it will inspire more people to advocate for regenerative, organic, and fair-traded food.

Where do the proceeds to your film go?
We financed filming and production with foundation grants, crowd-funders and a lot of sweat equity. Now we’re fundraising for an outreach and impact campaign, for more people to be able to see this film.
There is no time to lose. Our climate, our environment, our health and our democracies are in crisis.
Sharing Dr. Shiva’s experience and wisdom more widely with the world could not be more timely or urgent. Why? Because the ecological and social crises intersect in agriculture and the way we grow food.
The good news is that no-one explains the issues more clearly or what we can do about it than Vandana Shiva.
Also, documentaries — that both inform and entertain — are proven to be a powerful means to introduce audiences to issues in a way that can move them to advocate for much needed change.
It’s happened before and it can happen again, but we can’t do it alone. We need everyone who cares about the climate, the environment, and the wellbeing of human communities to support our outreach, in whichever way that they can.
All income raised will be for translations, communications, education and strategy materials, and to facilitate community screenings around the world. Please support The Seeds of Vandana Shiva impact campaign here!

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http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/04/03/the-seeds-of-vandana-shiva.aspx