Top Five Secret Reasons You May Need More Vitamin C

Back in the late l950s and l960s, Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling turned his attention to studying and documenting how vitamin C could improve health status and help the human body resist and heal from disease. His reward? By the time of his death in l994, he had been branded a "quack" by a large part of the medical community.

Now, almost 25 years after his passing, not only is his research being taken more seriously but other scientists are documenting how vitamin C can be the key to preventing and treating a host of health problems.

In fact, most everyone knows vitamin C is now lauded for helping to reduce symptoms of a cold if taken in sufficient quantity when sniffles first appear. But what you may not know is that researchers have found evidence strongly suggesting vitamin C can be used to head off some serious diseases and disorders -- and may even help you lose weight!

In fact, some of these uses for the vitamin are just plain amazing. Yet you'll seldom find vitamin C "prescribed" and, instead, are more likely to get drugs to treat maladies after they develop. And the odds are, your family doctor may be clueless about these ways vitamin C can help you.

Here's the latest on the relatively secret but very real ways vitamin C can improve your health:

1. Burn more fat and keep pounds away.

Researchers in the Department of Nutrition at Arizona State University found that research subjects who had low blood concentrations of C burned a whopping 25 percent less fat than those who had plenty of the vitamin in their body. The scientists think this may be because vitamin C is a co-factor for the biosynthesis of carnitine, a molecule your body needs to oxidize fatty acids. They concluded inadequate vitamin C could explain why some people have such a hard time losing and keeping off excess pounds.

2. Stop wheezing!

British scientists at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the Institute of Public Health in Cambridge studied 515 adults with asthma and 515 matched controls. They found that adults with symptomatic asthma had the lowest intake of fruit, especially citrus fruit, and low plasma vitamin C levels. These findings, the scientists stated in their research paper, suggest diet may be a potentially modifiable risk factor for the development of asthma.

3. More reasons to smile.

In the l700s, sailors found that eating limes during low sea voyages kept their gums healthy. No doubt the vitamin C in the fruit was responsible. Research published in the Journal of Periodontology showed that people with too little vitamin C have higher rates of periodontal disease. Also, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) report inadequate C is associated with weakened tooth enamel as well as the painful inflammation of gums known as gingivitis.

4. Guard your looks.

The NIH also lists rough, dry and scaly skin as signs of too little C. So is dry hair and even split ends. What's more, research published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that people who ate a lot of vitamin C-rich foods had fewer wrinkles than those with inadequate amounts of the vitamin.

5. Protect your heart.

While we all are bombarded with ads about statins and other drugs that purport to reduce the risk of heart disease, you seldom hear about the mounting evidence a natural therapy -- vitamin C -- may protect your cardiovascular system. A case in point: Finnish researchers published a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggesting higher doses of supplemental vitamin C cause the incidence of major coronary heart disease events like heart attacks to plummet.

So how much vitamin C do you need? Most experts agree that you can take large amounts, usually up two grams, safely unless an excess causes diarrhea or other stomach upset (if that happens, simply cut back on your dose). Vitamin C is not stored in the body so toxicity is very rare.

To increase the C in your diet, eat more green peppers, citrus fruits and juices, strawberries, papayas, mangos, watermelons, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, winter squash, red peppers, raspberries, blueberries, cranberries, tomatoes, broccoli, turnip greens and other leafy greens, sweet and white potatoes, pineapples and cantaloupes.
(By: Sherry Baker)

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New Research Shows Cocoa Can Help Diabetics' Hearts

For people with diabetes, indulging in cocoa could be a way to improve their health naturally -- and deliciously. The reason? Flavanols, plant compounds found in cocoa (as well as in tea, red wine, and certain fruits and vegetables), help blood vessels to function better and could help prevent cardiovascular in disease, according to new research published in the June 3 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC).

An international team of scientists gave diabetic patients high-flavanol cocoa for one month and found blood vessel function went from severely impaired to normal in some people. Overall, the research subjects experienced a 30 percent improvement in measured vessel function at the completion of a 30-day trial. This is very significant, the researchers noted, because cardiovascular disease is the top cause of death in diabetic patients. In fact, the improvement in health noted with cocoa supplementation was about the same as that documented with exercise and even with many common drugs used to treat diabetics.

"Medical treatments alone often do not prevent complications of diabetes that are associated with atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease," researcher Malte Kelm, M.D., chairman of cardiology, pulmonology and vascular medicine at the University Hospital Aachen and the Technical University Aachen, in Aachen, Germany, stated in a press release. "Physicians should be increasingly looking to lifestyle changes and new approaches to help in addressing the cardiovascular risks associated with diabetes."

More than 20 million Americans have diabetes, according to the National Diabetes Association, and vascular impairments associated with the disease can eventually lead to heart disease and stroke, despite good diabetes control and medical treatment.

"We are still seeing the devastating complications of diabetes with the standard medical treatments available, so we are increasingly looking to lifestyle changes and new approaches to help address risks associated with diabetes," co-researcher Paul Zimmet, MD, PhD, Director of the International Diabetes Institute in Australia, said in a prepared statement for the press about the study. "While more research is needed, this study shows tremendous potential for future flavonol-based applications."

In an editorial discussing the evidence cocoa can significantly help the cardiovascular systems of diabetics, Umberto Campia, M.D., a research associate with MedStar Research Institute in Washington, D.C., writes: "We now have sizeable evidence that cocoa flavanols have a positive effect on the health of the arteries. This is the foundation we need for doing a much larger prospective study that looks at the effect of cocoa flavanols not just on endothelial function, but also on the risk of heart attack, stroke, and other serious forms of cardiovascular disease."

Earlier published research conducted by Harvard Medical School scientists and the Mars company has shown that flavanol-rich unprocessed cocoa reduces the risks of cancer as well as heart disease.
(By: Sherry Baker)

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How to Have a Heart Attack: Keep Eating the Western Diet

A multi-national study just published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association concludes about 30 percent of heart attack risk comes from one thing - diet.

Is it your family history? Your age? Just plain bad luck?

No. Instead, according to the research, the cause is something people in 52 countries are doing to themselves -- eating the so-called typical Western diet loaded with fried foods, meat and salty junk food snacks.

However, the scientists found that when people's diets included a high intake of fruits and vegetables -- he same eating strategy natural health advocates have been urging for decades -- heart attack risk plummeted.

"The objective of this study was to understand the modifiable risk factors of heart attacks at a global level," Salim Yusuf, D.Phil., the study's senior author, said in a statement to the media.

The study also looked at the unique dietary pattern the scientists dubbed "Oriental" that contains a lot of soy and salt laden sauces. They found the "Oriental" diet did not raise the risk of heart attack but didn't lower it, either. In fact, it was only the eating style the research team labeled the "Prudent" diet -- the one loaded with fruits and veggies -- that dramatically decreased heart attack risk.

Dr. Yusuf's team used data from the INTERHEART study and analyzed 5,761 heart attack cases and compared them to 10,646 controls who had no known heart disease. A dietary risk score questionnaire was used to interview and document the eating habits of the heart attack patients. "A simple dietary score, which included both good and bad foods with the higher score indicating a worse diet, showed that 30 percent of the risk of heart disease in a population could be related to poor diet," Romania Iqbal, Ph.D., Dr. Yusuf's co-researcher, explained in a press statement.

After adjusting for known cardiovascular risk factors, the scientists found:
• People who consumed more fruits and vegetables had a 30 percent lower risk of heart attack compared to people who ate few or no fruits and vegetables.
• People who ate a typical Western diet, no matter what part of the world they lived in, had a 35 percent greater risk of having a heart attack compared to people who consumed little or no fried foods and meat.

This shows an unhealthy dietary intake marked by meat, fried and salty foods and not enough fruits and vegetables accounts for nearly one-third of the world population's attributable risk for heart attack, Dr. Yusuf, Director of the Population Health Research Institute at Hamilton Health Sciences in Ontario, Canada,explained in a prepared statement.

Bottom line: Imagine the billions of dollars drug companies would make off of a medication that could slash the risk of heart attack by almost a third. Instead of waiting for such a "miracle drug", mindful eating of micronutrient, vitamin, mineral, fiber rich and delicious fruits and vegetables makes more sense – and following this style of healthy eating can help reduce the risk of a host of other diseases too, from diabetes to cancer.
(By: Sherry Baker)

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The Dying World: Healing Methods Increasingly Fail

What happened to the world? Where did we go wrong? Is it as hopeless as it is beginning to appear? This article will illuminate the increasing failure rate of all forms of medicine and healing and will isolate four possible reasons why this might be happening in spite of all we know and all we are learning. This article concludes with a discussion of the division occurring among people of the world today: those consumed by said failure and those motivated by it.

Only a few years ago, the tonality of those who engaged in healthy eating and living was one of certainty that they were avoiding the plagues of those who were on the SAD. They started abandoning clearly harmful behaviors and experienced a surge in health and very often spontaneous healing. That tonality has changed today. It has become plain that even the healthiest people, by such standards as are commonly known today, are not substantially healthier than the general population.

This factoid is known as an "elephant in the room." This means that it is something everyone can see, but no one wants to acknowledge for fear that it means they are not as smart as they thought they were. To avoid mentioning this point, however, is somewhere between irresponsible and plain dishonest. The reality is that without vigorous care to keep each system healthy as it gets out of balance, even the most healthy person in general terms, will be sick and struggling and may even get sicker than their un-conscientious counterparts. While this is good news…sort of…to naturopaths, chiropractors and other hands-on clinical natural healing practitioners who get paid by the visit, it is a sobering picture when viewed objectively. It means that we may not know nearly as much as we pompously propose to.

There are no standards quite clean enough to really make disease disappear and never return. This is not to say that standards are not effective, for example, the person on a basically healthy program will respond far better and faster to natural therapies. Still, many people are finding that they do not respond quite like they once did, which highlights the subject of this article.

Something is desperately wrong! It is creeping in rather subtly as we fight against it. We generally think that it is caused by this or that outrage from the corrupt drug company world or from governmental conspiracies, but if we look at the actual incline of strange diseases and the population which they are really affecting, we find a picture that looks far scarier than one where we know all the causes of everything and are happily pointing fingers and gossiping about the sins of the government and medical doctors! Indeed, the fearfulness of reality today is that we really have no clue where it is coming from and the explanations we have are grossly inadequate.

Most practitioners are forced to admit that it takes a good deal more effort and vigil today to keep even themselves healthy. Clients and patients who are not self-correcting are feeling it even more. Many who would once have just gone to their local naturopath, are now seeing five or more natural healing practitioners regularly and are not necessarily better than they were ten years ago. They are working harder for less.

This article offers no one solution to this problem, but does offer some possibilities that should be considered:

1.That the cumulative affect of heavy metals, processed food, toxicity, agriculture chemicals, environmental chemicals, EM radiation, etc. is far greater than 1+1
2.That the impact of increasing stress and discontent on individuals is leading to reduced digestion and therefore increased problems with food reactions, toxic residues and sensitivities to many, many foods that would otherwise be perfectly healthy. Even raw foodists might have to be vigilant, rotate foods and take enzyme supplements.
3.That unknown factors exist which impact the elements of the body in ways that disrupt health. This might be coming from a wide variety of intentional or unintentional sources. For a culture that understands how to use EM radiation vibrations that destroy pathogens, create homeopathic healing, do chiropractic adjustments and heal disease, we seem startlingly unconcerned about the vibration of negative thought and criticism and focus on the negative that is broadcast via EM waves over virtually the entire populated globe today.
4.That at no time in the history of the world as it is recorded in orthodox documents has there been less spiritual discipline, including moral anchors. It is at least conceivable, if not likely or certain, that moral anchors affect our health and decide our tendency toward healthier or sicker choices in all other aspects of life. Such a point is not immune from attack, but it simply appears that it is elemental to humans to worship a Higher Power who demands that they use their abilities, superior to animals as they are, for channeling "good" and resisting deviations from that "good." The interpretation of this is certain to invite debate, but perhaps the abandonment of it is equally certain to invite disease and eventual implosion.

There are two camps in the world:

First, there are those caught wholly in the wake of the ship described above. These are frustrated, confused and suffering, but unwilling to look at their real conditions and are therefore wholly taken with the trend. They sometimes want to be healthy, but they watch the news, read trash, do wantonly immoral acts, eat at fast food restaurants or eat processed food, live in traditional houses, drive traditional cars and waste in every corner of their lives. Some in the wake do nothing, and, ironically, are healthier than those who feign healthy practices, but are uncommitted to them. This may be because at least they are grateful for what they have and are living without fighting constantly.

Second, there are those who have recognized the pattern of a downward spiral and who have made the choice to swim away. These, if they totally sever their attachment to the drowning crowd, can sometimes break free and begin to triumph by altering every facet of life to be wholly incompatible with the agents of disease prominent today. These, if they neglect nothing, enjoy the peace of one who has made his or her decision and is unwilling to reconsider. They are not fighting against the world's disease agents, but are giving themselves totally to the cause of harmonious living. A Christian promise applies here, that the "meek shall inherit the earth." Meekness is most synonymous with harmonious living. Such will not be killed by the destructive forces for they are incompatible with them. They suffer only until they are clear of the wake and in the meanwhile they enjoy the peace of knowing their personal identity.

In conclusion, this article offers only an invitation to candid, open and honest readers, whether authors, practitioners or interested consumers, to look at what is really happening and judge if the above postulation is correct. If so, a change in thinking and trend must become more imminent than the crash we are partying toward so lustily.
(Autor: Kal Sellers, MH)

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