Genetically Monsanto-fied

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and cause me to tremble for safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic destroyed.  – Abraham Lincoln

What Mr. Lincoln didn’t know then, is that the economy would become a world economy, and the wealth could very well be aggregated over the world, into the few hands.  Monsanto is a FOOD giant, and a leader in the biotech industry.  They have lived their corporate career spinning their media coverage in their favor, and by so doing they have come out looking like missionaries.  Forging new paths into lands unexplored, bringing food and water, and seed to soil. 

The only problem is that every culture that is gifted with the presence of Monsanto, becomes enslaved to them, and eventually loses their health to them.  Paraguay and Argentina are two such countries that have found their waters polluted, and their economic markets puppet-ed by Monsanto via their pesticide manufacturing and their dominance of the land market.  They have moved into such countries and bought massive amounts of farmland, and turned that land into the home for many Genetically Modified Soy Plants.  Genetic modification is really a baby to this company, nurtured and loved.

“Swapping genes between organisms can produce unknown toxic effects and allergies that are most likely to affect children.”

–Vyvyan Howard, expert in infant toxico-pathology at Liverpool University Hospital, United Kingdom

Mercola.com has a recent article that goes into details regarding the concerns over GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) food, and it’s risks with children.  These risks appear to be much higher with children.  AND every product that you buy with soy in it, UNLESS it specifically says NON-GMO FOODS, contains GMO Soy!

Back to the third world country that have been literally taken over by Monsanto; disease and morbidity rates have risen since the introduction of this biotech giant into the local farming communities of these countries.  Biotech. I am sure you have heard the term.  If not in a local paper or periodical, you have likely heard it mentioned by wall street analysts.  Biotech companies are utilizing technology, to integrate with biology, to find ways to grow “better” foods, or manufacture “better” drugs.

One thing that is for sure, is that these products are typically engineered from their original natural state, into a genetically modified plant, or plant/animal based product.  I have a lot against these companies, but the simplest explanation will do.

These companies will constantly hide behind the ideal of helping billions of needy people on the planet, yet when they pollute the water supply of those people, or destroy their economics by controlling their farmland.  They don’t care about the damage that they have left.

So why would they care about feeding them, if they don’t care about displacing them?  Money, it is all about the money.  And when it is ALL about the money, it is always insincere and bad.  I dislike Monsanto with all my heart, please watch out for the next step that will only introduce more garbage food into the American diet!

The Healing Diet!

My kids go nuts for sweets! Not very often, so definitely nuts!

 

My Kids are Ecstatic and Wide Eyed when they see this much SUGAR!

There is still time to change your life.  How are you going to do it… well The Total Food Makeover will do it if you let it.

Monday night was a great first step into the 40 day challenge, but the real meat starts in the next five days, step in and take charge of your life.  I wanted to give you the simple rules, which help you know what you are potentially in for.  The details will help you get the whole picture, which are coming this Monday night. 

First, the point is to FIX your hormones.  I cannot tell you how many people will say “I tried this diet, that diet and the other diet.  I know people think I just don’t stick to it, but I do!  And I still don’t succeed; the more I try diet’s the more discouraged I get, and the more people think I just have no will power”.  That is so ridiculously common, that I find myself telling people their story for them.

The problem with every other diet, is that they don’t address hormones.  The only one that gets close to doing that is the Paleo diet… but the problem there, is that there is a loop hole available.  Let me explain, again… the simple explanation here.

You eat sugar, grains, fruit; and in so doing your blood sugar rises rapidly.  Insulin is produced, and it drives your blood sugar down by driving the glucose into the cells.  You eat a lot of those foods, so insulin stays high all the time.  Insulin at elevation causes you to downgrade your insulin receptor sites, so you become insulin resistant (doesn’t matter how much insulin is in the blood stream, you won’t respond to it).  With this insulin rise, your Leptin (the hormone that tells your body to utilize FAT for energy) will rise as well.  It is a mechanism for burning up those fat cells that you are making by driving so much glucose into the body.

Now the real problem starts, you downgrade Leptin receptors too, so you are left with a body that does not know that it is fat burning time.  Once this happens, you might be able to starve yourself down a few pounds, but you WILL NOT be able to effectively burn fat ever again, until you HEAL your Leptin receptors (a quick aside: Leptin aids in the regulation of a TON of other hormones, so once this is bad, off you are to the estrogen imbalance… testosterone imbalance… and a host of others).

So the Healing Diet fixes that stuff.  Yep, stuff!  No Grains, No Sugar (natural forms are no good either, such as honey or maple syrup), No Fruit (well, berries in moderation, or some apples like Granny Smith; but limited to one small serving per day), Control Protein consumption so it does not get too high, and increase good fats until you are eating a LOT of fat.

That is it in a nutshell.  It might take six weeks to heal, it might take six months.  Depends on the damage you have done to yourself.  Cheat days are OK weekly once you get past the four week hump, but don’t go crazy on a cheat day, you could ruin a lot of “well fought for” gains in a few minutes.

I hope to see everyone next Monday at our continuation workshop.  It is not too late, and Boot Camp has room too!  God Bless!

CNN tells of 9th baby dying in California

CNN recently reported that the 9th baby has died in California this year from Whooping Cough ( article).   What I found to be of more interest were the barrage of comments after the article, than the article itself.  The majority of people who posted were pro-vaccine, and they simply threw out comments like “that’s what you get for not vaccinating”, and “good job Jenny McCarthy and your autism fear mongering”.

Basically, the responses were pointing fingers at the group of people who are choosing not to vaccinate.  I can understand… it makes sense.  The article discussed the fact that there have been 4017 cases of whooping cough this year, which is more than any year since 1955.  It sure seems obvious that this is because of a lack of vaccination, and I agree that it probably is partially to blame, and I want to go in depth to help understand why that does or does not matter.

First off, for any individual, it is a 100% if it is your child who dies from a disease, or your child who dies from a vaccine reaction, or who develops autism.  Sometimes we get mired in the stats, and forget that if it is your child, grandchild, niece, neighbor… then the stats don’t matter anymore.  That being said, what stat is more favorable?

It is easy to say that it is more valuable to never get whooping cough in light of the article we are reading.  But how many infants got whooping cough and got over it just fine?  How many of those 9 infants that died were already vaccinated (you are scheduled to receive the Pertussis vaccine at two months)?  We rarely will see a report on whether the child is vaccinated or not.  So what do you think that means?  Yep, you guessed it, vaccinated!  If the child was unvaccinated, the article would say it, actually the article HEADLINE would say it.  So a vaccinated child, shortly after the vaccine, and immunity did not show up.

When I chose to not vaccinate my children, I thought about everything.  I considered what it meant to them to be and to not be vaccinated.  I considered what I thought God’s plan was when creating them, I considered what fears or concerns my wife and I would have with raising them.  In the end, I decided that the research pointed towards not vaccinating.  And primarily it was because the vaccine did not provide enough proof of immunity.

So here is the problem.  An immune system is something that can be strengthened or weakened based on choices. 

I AM NOT SIMPLY ANTI-VACCINE FOR EVERYONE.

Yes that statement is very true, though reading what I have written in the past would make you think I am 100% against vaccine.  The reason I am not anti vaccine for everyone, is that there needs to be a choice for health along with that decision to not vaccinate.  I don’t believe vaccines are anywhere in God’s plan, btu I also don’t believe any food from McDonald’s is anywhere in God’s plan either.  If you choose not to vaccinate, but then you choose to pollute the body in other ways… then why didn’t you just vaccinate too?!?!  It makes no sense.

So the variable that you will never be able to get from an article about a child dying from Pertussis, is what was the health of that child like?  And even more important than the obvious, “he didn’t get sick often, had no known diseases”, is to understnad “he was put to bed at the exact same times four times a day, and was fed breast milk from his mother who was eating all natural organic foods, and he was nurtured and comforted throughout the day”, building his immune system in EVERY way.  We don’t get to know these details, and these are the details that matter.

Public Health policy is based on the least common denominator; so if there is some hope that vaccines will help, then give them, because people are weak, they make poor decisions, and they have no health on their own.  This is the mantality that rules public health policy.  The biggest problem with this, is that a policy like this is going to attempt to artificially induce health and strength.  Resulting in more secondary diseases, such as asthma, arthritis, and allergies; which are currently destroying our nations health.  I don’t have the room to go into details about why vaccines cause these types of conditions, but the rise of these and the relationship to vaccines has been well established by many different articles.

Coming back to the decision to or not to vaccinate, and the impact that it might have on your child or a child around you.  In the end, it is the wrong argument.  The most important argument is how do you treat health decisions every single day?  Charts of disease prevalence in the United States show that every infectious disease that we had faced in this country prior to the national vaccine plan was on the decline, a steay and rapid decline, before the vaccine program was ever introduced.

Health choice, not artificial immunity is the answer.  The current rise in Pertussis/Whooping Cough cases, is more related to poor health choice than lack of vaccine.  And it will continue to head that direction in a country who primarily get’s its dietary decisions from a Saturday morning commercial.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month…

Breast cancer “Awareness” is really important, as long as you are actually becoming aware of something valuable.  So I want to tell you what you need to know.

First – you don’t need to spend another dime on researching more radiation and chemo therapy treatments.  That research is well funded, and it is funded by the fact that pharmaceutical companies charge more for their treatments for cancer, than any other medication.  So be aware, perhaps the best place for dollars to go, is to support the lives of those fighting cancer, not to the rich companies who are getting rich over charging those people with cancer.

Second – There are some very importan risk factors that need to be understood… if awareness can exist at all, it surely needs to include the elevation of risk that comes from these few areas; and that will be the topic of discussion for the rest of this post.

Estrogen specific cancer.  Breast cancer is a very hormonally active cancer, women with higher estrogen have been shown to have a higher risk of breast cancer.  This risk has also been shown to be increased when you add estrogen to the body beyond what normally occurs.  The most notable is HRT or Hormone Replacement Therapy, which is done for women in their pre-menopausal, and post menopausal stages of life.  These days almost everyone knows about the increased risk of breast cancer, yet many women still continue to receive supplementation to reduce hot flashes.

Another VERY common place where women increase their estrogen intake, and start this increased risk of breast cancer along at an early age, is birth control.  Birth control pills increase the estrogen in the blood stream, and thus increase the growth of any cancerous cells in the breast, thus can be a HUGE increased risk over many years. 

I recommend a great diet as the solution to HRT needs.  Our Healing Diet, or eating a Paleo diet will both aid significantly in reducing the risk of estrogen imbalance at menopause.  I also recommend birth control methods that invovle no drugs.  There are plenty of these options out there.  If you are 16 years old, and a doc puts you on birth control to balance your hormones because of menstrual headaches or cramping… then again, you need to change your diet.  What, the plan is to take a drug your entire life?  Ridiculous.

And the other major risk factor that has recently come under more fire in Dr. Mercola’s website, are antibiotics.  According to the Journal of The American Medical Association ARTICLE in 2004, antibiotic use is directly correlated to increased risk of breast cancer.  If breast cancer awareness is supposed to really impact lives, and save people.  Then this is the information that needs to be made AWARE! 

It infuriates me to consider that 90% of the people that will read this, have no idea that their routine use of antibiotics is going to INCREASE their own risk of cancer.  And not just breast cancer, but all cancer.  This is infuriating for one reason, control of news.  This hit the media, and actually made a front page USA Today mention, then its gone in an instant.  No investigations, no call to action, nobody with control of media stepping up to make a stand against our country’s routine and obnoxious use of antibiotics.

Be aware, pass this on, post a link to this article on facebook, and help save a life in October!  God Bless.

Pharmacy Times

I have been on vacation with my father for the last few days, and as some of you know, he is a pharmacist.  It would seem that we would be at odds, but the truth is, you will rarely find a pharmacist who believes that medication is a good option.  They see the reality of the situation… individuals who are not taking steps towards health freedom, who stop in to do their GROCERY shopping in the drug store.  Obviously making poor decisions.

Anyways, he brought me a Pharmacy Times magazine to look at this week.  Specifically he wanted me to read an article about the number of overdose deaths that are happening in Florida each year.  This article specifically discusses the deaths due to pain medications.

Florida’s medical examiner reports that 2488 people died from prescription drugs, in Florida, in 2009.  This is an average of 7 deaths every single day.  I want you to understand, that these are ONLY the deaths that are directly attributed to taking a drug, and dying.  These aren’t the drugs that have slowly worn away someones liver, or kidneys… or slowly thinned or hardened an artery, like so many do!

Oxycodone was responsible for 1185 of these reported deaths, benzodiazapines follow closely behind with 1099 overdose deaths (overdose does not mean that overuse was intentional, nor that these were suicides, but rather that there was an unknown line being crossed).  The interesting thing about benzodiazapine deaths are that when you look them up on Wikipedia, the information that you find says that death from these drugs is very rare!  Tell that to the FL medical examiner! 

This class of drugs is primarily used to treat anxiety, a growing population in our current culture, and it is KNOWN to have increased effect when combined with any other depressant drug, such as alcohol.  Yet we continue to let these drugs be the primary method to treat anxiety, when ABC News reports studies have shown that exercise stops depression and anxiety.

The most well known drugs in this benzodiazepine grouping are Xanax and Valium, though they have been replaced by others for leading the way in total drug sales.  It is a scary proposition when you consider that the fastest growing area of adult medication, is for the lifestyle prescription of antidepressants.  If we continue to move in the direction that we are, then the number of deaths will only continue to grow, how could it do anything different?

We are constantly doing whatever we can to lead you into a place free from anxiety and depression, I believe the best way to live that life is to get adjusted, eat right, exercise, and know your God.  Anxiety and Depression effect many health conscious people who don’t know God, and many Christians whom I know, who don’t follow the chiropractic lifestyle have depression and anxiety issues.  The two together however, I do not see these disorders if you are on both tracts!

Join the path to mental health freedom, and invite your friends.  The world is a better place without mental health issues!!

I Am a MAN on FIRE.

I am on a mission, it is why God put me here, and it is the thing that burns inside of me.  The mission is to pull people from a burning building, and to carry them to safety.  The biggest problem with my mission, is that most people do not have any idea that they are in the burning building.

YOU are in the building.  If you subscribe to any of what culture has to offer you in the way of diet, exercise, health PHILOSOPHY, spirituality… then you are there.  I could rant and rave for days on each of these topics individually, but it would get boring along the way.  But if you will simply trust the basis of this argument, then you will be pulled from the building, and will have amazing life change because of it!

Scratching the surface: Diet – Low Fat is still “in”, according to culture.  Does anyone out there believe that the “Low Fat” idea hasn’t been around long enough to have an impact?  How about “Diet” drinks and foods that are low sugar (high artificial sugar)?  The answer doesn’t lie in the low fat low sugar food, it lies in the lifestyle decisions for every food that you eat. 

Exercise… do we really believe that another exercise video is the answer to our problems?  That we somehow are in need of one more infomercial piece of equipment?  Duh!  It is the decision that fails us, we fail to decide to be different, from this point forward.  We get back to the gym, then we are done, then back, then done, then back, then done… see-saw, see-saw, forever.  Lifestyle.

In the end, it really comes down to health philosophy, and the way you look at those decisions and how they impact your life.  Cultural phiolosophy says that you can make it through your life without making wise decisions, that there is SO MUCH technology in our healthcare, that we can SAVE you from your bad decisions with a pill and/or a surgery.  This is such a flawed opinion, and is so far from reality, that it is almost easier to believe the lie, than to do something about it.  Just consider the deaths in our country, 2/3 are lifestyle disease that are highly preventable… yet this cultural representation that the medical profession can save us with a chemical, IS NOT SAVING THEM!!!

Chiropractic is an answer in itself, adjusting the spine to allow for the best possible flow of information from your brain to your body, and to maintain that flow for your lifetime, with no other wise decision, will eliminate a HIGH percentage of risk.  Add other positive lifestyle decisions and you will live a life free from so many afflictions and ailments. 

So here it is.  I am on a mission, I put a lot of time into making sure that I can lead you the way you need to be led, and in the direction that will allow you the best possible life.  So, SHOW UP.  That is it, just make it to our office, read my blog DrEricRichards.com read our Daily Sprout’s on the web site healthsprout.com, and make it to our workshops.  That is all you need to do.

If you are willing to take the steps to follow, then the lifestyle choices will become easier and easier.  That is all there is to it!  Do IT!  I want to see everyone tonight, and you should make every step you can to make it.  There is no easier time, life NEVER gets easier.  I am ready to act, follow me, let’s act together and change the community!!  Health for everyone!!

God Bless!!!!!!

Fat Burning Zone… old news.

Me jumping rope. Not the fittest, not the lowest body fat, but very functional and burning a TON of fat in my downtime.

Recently my wife ran into a neighbor who had started using a personal trainer.  She commented to my wife, “I guess I have been doing it all wrong!  So now I am walking on the treadmill more, and less running.  Need to keep my heart-rate down, and not let it get too high.”  My wife didn’t want to discourage her in any way, so she just said “oh” and changed the conversation.

Personally, I am all about changing the way people do things, and if there is a little pain in knowing that you are about to make a big mistake, I OPEN my mouth!  What our neighbor was referring to, was the fat burning zone.  Her personal trainer was telling her, “Your heart rate is too high, and you are burning muscle and not fat.”

Now this statement is TOTALLY true.  When your heart rate is high, you are burning carbohydrate and protein for fuel, not fat.  Fat is kind of like wet wood, if you can picture yourself in a “I need FIRE or I am going to die” situation, and you have a pile of wet wood, dry kindling, and gasoline to burn.  Which will you choose?  Obviously the gasoline is a really good choice.  Your body acts similarly.

As heart rate goes up, the brain says “I need to keep up with this activity” which means that it needs to burn the EASIEST fuel possible.  So it will burn the carbohydrate in the blood stream (sugar = GASOLINE) first, as those stores are exhausted; you then move to burning protein by breaking down protein in muscle tissue to create sugar in the blood stream (protein = dry kindling).

As your heart rate goes down, your brain says “aaahhh, I can relax, not much need for energy, why don’t I see if I can get that wet wood going?” So you start burning fat.  This would then have someone conclude, that the best way to GET THIN, and get rid of excessive body fat, would be to train at very low intensity, over very high time, and thus you would burn the greatest body fat.  However, this theory is WRONG!

Real quick before I go on, I am a Doctor of Chiropractic, which means I have studied physiology quite extensively.  I have a Masters Degree in Exercise Physiology, which means I have studied physiology quite extensively.  I have two peronal training certifications, one being the more recent CrossFit Level 1 certification, and I am a partner in a CrossFit gym… these last three mean that I have experience of application.  So when I say WRONG, I mean dead WRONG!

This is why, and follow this closely… If the percentage of FAT burned is 100%, and you are walking 2 miles over 45 minutes, burning 200 calories, then you burned 200 FAT calories during the active phase of exercise; and at that pace, the individual is “recovered” immediately following exercise.   If the percentage of FAT burned is 25%, and you do 30 – 135# clean and jerks in under 3 minutes, then you recover, then you run 400M, do 21 kettlebell swings at 55#, and 12 pull-ups, three times through in 7 and a half minutes.  You have just burned over 400 calories in the active phase of exercise (100 from fat), and around 900 calories will be burned in the recovery phase of exercise (we’ll say an average of 50% fat for this example), which equals 450 calories of FAT in recovery.

So in 10 minutes of exercise, followed by about 45 minutes of recovery, you burn 1300 calories total, and though the percentage of fat burned is way less, you burned a whole lot more still!  Better yet, who do you think burns more fat in a typical day of rest?

  1. A thin man who at 6’0″ weighs 160lbs.  He is in decent shape, and his body fat is 18%.
  2. A fit and lean man who at 6’0″ weighs 195lbs.  He is in great shape, and his body fat is 10%.

It might seem like the first person would burn more fat.  He has more to burn, so why not?  When the truth is the second individual, who obviously has MORE MUSCLE mass.  The reason is because the thing that burns fat at rest is MUSCLE.

I point this out, because in the two examples of exercise above, the walking produces very little muscle growth, where the intense exercise produced a TON of it.   So producing muscle will make you thin, moreso than trying to trick thin into happening.

OK, I’m done beating the point in.  The conclusion is clear, intense exercise is better for everything including fat burning, so stop walking as slow as you can go, and throw some running into the middle of it.  My 66 year old mother does, and she is better off because of it.

Repeated antibiotics alter beneficial gut germs

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/14/AR2010091402132.html

WASHINGTON — Antibiotics can temporarily upset your stomach, but now it turns out that repeatedly taking them can trigger long-lasting changes in all those good germs that live in your gut, raising questions about lingering ill effects.

Nobody yet knows if that leads to later health problems. But the finding is the latest in a flurry of research raising questions about how the customized bacterial zoo that thrives in our intestines forms – and whether the wrong type or amount plays a role in ailments from obesity to inflammatory bowel disease to asthma.

Don’t be grossed out: This is a story in part about, well, poop. Three healthy adults collected weeks of stool samples so that scientists could count exactly how two separate rounds of a fairly mild antibiotic caused a surprising population shift in their microbial netherworld – as some original families of germs plummeted and other types moved in to fill the gap.

It’s also a story of how we coexist with trillions of bacteria, fungi and other microbes in the skin, the nose, the digestive tract, what scientists call the human microbiome. Many are beneficial, even indispensable, especially the gut bacteria that play an underappreciated role in overall health.

“Gut communities are fundamentally important in the development of our immune system,” explains Dr. David Relman of Stanford University, who led the antibiotic study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Let’s not take them for granted.”

Next, Relman plans to track whether antibiotics used during the first year or two of life, when youngsters form what will become their unique set of gut bacteria, seem to predispose children later to immune-related diseases.

Antibiotics already should be used cautiously because they can spur infection-causing bacteria to become drug-resistant. The new research raises different questions about effects on beneficial bacteria – and if abnormalities in the microbiome really are linked to health problems, how those changes might begin.

“We should start paying attention to this,” says Dr. Martin Blaser, a microbiome specialist at New York University Langone Medical Center, who wasn’t involved with Relman’s work but also is planning to study the issue in children. “The main point is that antibiotic use is not free in a biological sense.”

Everyone is born with an essentially sterile digestive tract, but within days the gut is overrun with bacteria from mom and dad, the environment, first foods. Ultimately, a healthy person’s intestinal tract teems with hundreds of species of microbes, the body’s biggest concentration, with many involved in such things as digestion and immune reaction.

In the not-so-healthy, scientists have discovered that overweight people harbor different types and amounts of gut bacteria than lean people, and that losing weight can change that bacterial makeup. They’ve also found links to other digestive diseases, precancerous colon polyps – and even are pursuing a theory that early use of antibiotics disrupts the developing microbiome in ways that spur autoimmune disorders like asthma or allergies.

Antibiotics aren’t choosey and can kill off good germs as well as bad ones. But Relman and fellow research scientist Les Dethlesfsen wondered how hardy gut bacteria are, how well they bounce back. So they recruited healthy volunteers who hadn’t used antibiotics in at least the past year to take two five-day courses of the antibiotic Cipro, six months apart.

The volunteers reported no diarrhea or upset stomach, yet their fecal samples showed a lot going on beneath the surface. Bacterial diversity plummeted as a third to half of the volunteers’ original germ species were nearly wiped out, although some other species moved in. Yet about a week after stopping the drug, two of the three volunteers had their bacterial levels largely return to normal. The third still had altered gut bacteria six months later.

The surprise: Another die-off and shift happened with the second round of Cipro, but this time no one’s gut bacteria had returned to the pre-antibiotic state by the time the study ended two months later.

“History matters,” concludes Relman, who next is testing what jobs the most affected bacteria performed – such as helping to maintain intestinal barriers against infection – and whether the new bugs fully replaced them. “We may have to be more careful” about repetitive damage.

Of course, antibiotics aren’t the only means of disrupting our natural flora. Other research recently found that babies born by cesarean harbor quite different first bacteria than babies born vaginally, offering a possible explanation for why C-section babies are at higher risk for some infections. Likewise, the gut bacteria of premature infants contains more hospital-style germs than a full-term baby’s.

The big issue is when such differences will matter, something so far, “we’re not really smart enough to know,” Relman says.