For many years, Dr. Meira Fields and her coworkers at the US Department of Agriculture investigated the harmful effects of dietary sugar on rats. They discovered that when male rats are fed a diet deficient in copper, with sucrose as the carbohydrate, they develop severe pathologies of vital organs. Liver, heart and testes exhibit extreme swelling, while the pancreas atrophies, invariably leading to death of the rats before maturity.

Sucrose is a disaccharide composed of 50 percent glucose and 50 percent fructose. Dr. Fields repeated her experiments to determine whether it was the glucose or fructose moiety that caused the harmful effects. Starch breaks down into glucose when digested. On a copper-deficient diet, the male rats showed some signs of copper deficiency, but not the gross abnormalities of vital organs that occur in rats on the sucrose diet. When the rats were fed fructose, the fatal organ abnormalities occured.

Lysl oxidase is a copper-dependent enzyme that participates in the formation of collagen and elastin. Fructose seems to interfere with copper metabolism to such an extent that collagen and elastin cannot form in growing animals--hence the hypertrophy of the heart and liver in young males. The females did not develop these abnormalities, but they resorbed their litters.

These experiements should give us pause when we consider the great increase in the use of high fructose corn syrup during the past 30 years, particularly in soft drinks, fruit juices and other beverages aimed at growing children, children increasingly likely to be copper deficient as modern parents no longer serve liver to their families. (Liver is by far the best source of copper in human diets.)

"The bodies of the children I see today are mush," observed a concerned chiropractor recently. The culprit is the modern diet, high in fructose and low in copper-containing foods, resulting in inadequate formation of elastin and collagen--the sinews that hold the body together.

BINGEING ON FRUCTOSE
Until the 1970s most of the sugar we ate came from sucrose derived from sugar beets or sugar cane.  Then sugar from corn--corn syrup, fructose, dextrose, dextrine and especially high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)--began to gain popularity as a sweetener because it was much less expensive to produce. High fructose corn syrup can be manipulated to contain equal amounts of fructose and glucose, or up to 80 percent fructose and 20 percent glucose. Thus, with almost twice the fructose, HFCS delivers a double danger compared to sugar.

(With regards to fruit, the ratio is usually 50 percent glucose and 50 percent fructose, but most commercial fruit juices have HFCS added. Fruit contains fiber which slows down the metabolism of fructose and other sugars, but the fructose in HFCS is absorbed very quickly.)

In 1980 the average person ate 39 pounds of fructose and 84 pounds of sucrose. In 1994 the average person ate 66 pounds of sucrose and 83 pounds of fructose, providing 19 percent of total caloric energy. Today approximately 25 percent of our average caloric intake comes from sugars, with the larger fraction as fructose.

High fructose corn syrup is extremely soluble and mixes well in many foods. It is cheap to produce, sweet and easy to store. It’s used in everything from bread to pasta sauces to bacon to beer as well as in "health products" like protein bars and "natural" sodas.

FRUCTOSE FOR DIABETICS?
In the past, fructose was considered beneficial to diabetics because it is absorbed only 40 percent as quickly as glucose and causes only a modest rise in blood sugar. However, research on other hormonal factors suggests that fructose actually promotes disease more readily than glucose. Glucose is metabolized in every cell in the body but all fructose must be metabolized in the liver.6 The livers of test animals fed large amounts of fructose develop fatty deposits and cirrhosis, similar to problems that develop in the livers of alcoholics.

Pure fructose contains no enzymes, vitamins or minerals and robs the body of its micronutrient treasures in order to assimilate itself for physiological use.7 While naturally occurring sugars, as well as sucrose, contain fructose bound to other sugars, high fructose corn syrup contains a good deal of "free" or unbound fructose.  Research indicates that this free fructose interferes with the heart’s use of key minerals like magnesium, copper and chromium. Among other consequences, HFCS has been implicated in elevated blood cholesterol levels and the creation of blood clots.  It has been found to inhibit the action of white blood cells so that they are unable to defend the body against harmful foreign invaders.

Studies on the Maillard reaction indicate that fructose may contribute to diabetic complications more readily than glucose. The Maillard reaction is a browning reaction that occurs when compounds are exposed to various sugars. Fructose browns food seven times faster than glucose, resulting in a decrease in protein quality and a toxicity of protein in the body.9 This is due to the loss of amino acid residues and decreased protein digestibility. Maillard products can inhibit the uptake and metabolism of free amino acids and other nutrients such as zinc, and some advanced Maillard products have mutagenic and/or carcinogenic properties. The Maillard reactions between proteins and fructose, glucose, and other sugars may play a role in aging and in some clinical complications of diabetes.

Fructose reduces the affinity of insulin for its receptor, which is the hallmark of type-2 diabetes. This is the first step for glucose to enter a cell and be metabolized. As a result, the body needs to pump out more insulin to handle the same amount of glucose.

OTHER EFFECTS
Nancy Appleton, PhD, clinical nutritionist, has compiled a list of the harmful effects of fructose in her books Lick the Sugar Habit, Healthy Bones, Heal Yourself With Natural Foods, The Curse Of Louis Pasteur and Lick the Sugar Habit Sugar Counter. She points out that consumption of fructose causes a significant increase in the concentration of uric acid; after ingestion of glucose, no significant change occurs. An increase in uric acid can be an indicator of heart disease.  Furthermore, fructose ingestion in humans results in increases in blood lactic acid, especially in patients with preexisting acidotic conditions such as diabetes, postoperative stress or uremia. Extreme elevations cause metabolic acidosis and can result in death.

Fructose is absorbed primarily in the jejunum before metabolism in the liver. Fructose is converted to fatty acids by the liver at a greater rate than is glucose.14 When consumed in excess of dietary glucose, the liver cannot convert all of the excess fructose in the system and it may be malabsorbed. The portion that escapes conversion may be thrown out in the urine. Diarrhea can be a consequence.19 A study of 25 patients with functional bowel disease showed that pronounced gastrointestinal distress may be provoked by malabsorption of small amounts of fructose.

Fructose interacts with oral contraceptives and elevates insulin levels in women on "the pill."

In studies with rats, fructose consistently produces higher kidney calcium concentrations than glucose. Fructose generally induces greater urinary concentrations of phosphorus and magnesium and lowered urinary pH compared with glucose.

In humans, fructose feeding leads to mineral losses, especially higher fecal excretions of iron and magnesium, than did subjects fed sucrose. Iron, magnesium, calcium, and zinc balances tended to be more negative during the fructose-feeding period as compared to balances during the sucrose-feeding period.

There is significant evidence that high sucrose diets may alter intracellular metabolism, which in turn facilitates accelerated aging through oxidative damage. Scientists found that the rats given fructose had more undesirable cross-linking changes in the collagen of their skin than in the other groups. These changes are also thought to be markers for aging. The scientists say that it is the fructose molecule in the sucrose, not the glucose, that plays the larger part.

Because it is metabolized by the liver, fructose does not cause the pancreas to release insulin the way it normally does. Fructose converts to fat more than any other sugar. This may be one of the reasons Americans continue to get fatter. Fructose raises serum triglycerides significantly. As a left-handed sugar, fructose digestion is very low. For complete internal conversion of fructose into glucose and acetates, it must rob ATP energy stores from the liver.

Not only does fructose have more damaging effects in the presence of copper deficiency, fructose also inhibits copper metabolism--another example of the sweeteners double-whammy effect. A deficiency in copper leads to bone fragility, anemia, defects of the connective tissue, arteries, and bone, infertility, heart arrhythmias, high cholesterol levels, heart attacks, and an inability to control blood sugar levels.

Although these studies were not designed to test the effects of fructose on weight gain, the observation of increased body weight associated with fructose ingestion is of interest. One explanation for this observation could be that fructose ingestion did not increase the production of two hormones, insulin and leptin, that have key roles in the long-term regulation of food intake and energy expenditure.

HYPERSENSIVITY
The magnitude of the deleterious effects of fructose varies depending on such factors as age, sex, baseline glucose, insulin, triglyceride concentrations, the presence of insulin resistance, and the amount of dietary fructose consumed.24 Some people are more sensitive to fructose. They include hypertensive, hyperinsulinemic, hypertriglyceridemic, non-insulin dependent diabetic people, people with functional bowel disease and postmenopausal women.

Everyone should avoid over-exposure to fructose, but especially those listed above. One or two pieces of fruit per day is fine, but commercial fruit juices and any products containing high fructose corn syrup are more dangerous than sugar and should be removed from the diet.

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SAN DIEGO 6 NEWS - Dr Scott Paton is interviewed on television and discusses how chiropractic saved his baby's life and how it can change you life too.

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The statin drug Zocor (simvastatin) has been shown to directly compromise the immune response  to an opportunistic infection.  This is not good news for any person taking any statin, as the type of impairment involved seriously compromises basic immune system function.

The production of cholesterol is much like an automobile assembly line, except with multiple branches that build other things at the same time (a novel system of efficiency).  The various molecules produced are vital to your survival.  Indeed, cholesterol synthesis is the backbone of survival.  The primary cholesterol production line is called the HMG-CoA reductase pathway.  Important branches include the production of selenoproteins that run your antioxidants and thyroid, as well as the production of coenzyme Q10 and vitamin D.  One of these branches involves the production of novel compounds called isoprenoids (geranylgeranyl pyrophosphate and farnesyl pyrophosphate).  Isoprenoids also occur in nature in fat-soluble nutrients like carotenes.  In fact, the power of tocotrienol vitamin E compared to regular vitamin E is due primarily to the fact that tocotrienols have a side chain molecule that is an isoprenoid.  These isoprenoids play a vital role in attaching fatty substances to proteins, a process called protein prenylation.  Proper protein prenylation is required for the healthy function of many cells in your body, including the prevention of cancer.  Taking any statin reduces the protein prenylation activities in your body via suppressing the production of the isporenoids needed to carry out this activity.  This is a highly undesirable side effect of statins.

The new research looked into the function of macrophages, important members of your front line immune troops.  Some macrophages were treated with Zocor at a relevant physiologic dose and others were not.  They were then exposed to a common bacterial infection.  The Zocor-treated macrophages experienced a double-negative whammy.  Their ability to engulf the bacteria was crippled.  Next, the macrophages generated excessive inappropriate inflammatory signals.  The researchers traced the molecular malfunction to the fact that the statin blocked proper protein prenylation within the macrophage, crippling its function.

While I have tried to make this rather complex issue as simple as possible to understand, the bottom line is that this is a highly adverse effect on human immunity that will cause more severe infections in humans or allow low-grade infections to gain a hold within the human body and wreak havoc to health.  In turn, these infections will increase the overall inflammatory burden that is now known to be a primary contributing factor to poor health and all “diseases of aging.”  On this point alone the use of statins should be banned for 95% of the people currently taking them as there is no way the benefits could possibly outweigh the risks.  The medical profession prescribing these drugs invariably ignores or doesn’t understand this type of study and hopes the general public doesn’t understand health well enough to be concerned.

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Doctors at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Atlanta on Sunday got some surprising news on their first day of sessions. Researchers presented three studies revealing that some of the most widely prescribed medications to reduce the risk of heart disease in Type 2 diabetes patients appeared not to provide much benefit at all.

People with diabetes are twice as likely as non-diabetics to suffer a heart attack — most diabetes patients die of heart disease — and for years, physicians have used aggressive drug treatments to lower that risk. To that end, the goal has commonly been to lower blood sugar or control blood-sugar spikes after eating, lower triglycerides and reduce blood pressure in diabetes patients to levels closer to those of healthy, non-diabetic individuals. By using medication to treat these factors, which are linked to a higher risk of heart attack and stroke in other patients, doctors assumed they would also be reducing the risk in people with diabetes.

Now, in the aftermath of reports concluding that these targets do not cut the risk of heart disease in diabetes patients, and in some cases may even do harm, researchers are struggling to make sense of the seemingly counterintuitive data, and physicians are trying to figure out how to incorporate the findings into their practice.

Already, researchers anticipate that more careful analyses of the trial data over the coming months and years may lead to more nuanced conclusions; it may turn out, for instance, that certain subgroups of patients like younger, newly diagnosed diabetics actually benefit from the medications, even while the larger population of diabetes patients do not. (Comment on this story.)

The data come from the Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (ACCORD) trial, a three-part federal study launched a decade ago to investigate whether the aggressive lowering of those key risk factors — blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure — would reduce heart risks in diabetes and prediabetes patients. Two years ago, the blood-sugar arm of the study was terminated, when people who drastically reduced glucose levels ended up having a higher overall mortality rate than those not receiving such intensive therapy.
See how to prevent illness at any age.

Now, results of the remaining two arms of the trial — one in which patients were treated with blood-pressure-lowering drugs and another in which they received statins to reduce cholesterol and fibrate medications to slice their trigylceride levels — showed the same trend, finding that aggressive drug treatment did little to reduce the volunteers' risk of developing heart problems.

In the blood-pressure study, involving about 4,700 diabetes patients, researchers lowered the participants' systolic blood pressure to either below 120 or 140 using a combination of drugs. But lower blood pressure did not lead to fewer heart attacks or heart-related deaths, and patients taking more drugs to keep their blood pressure under the lower target were more likely to suffer severe side effects.

In the statin and fibrate study, about 5,500 patients with diabetes and at least one other health problem were given cholesterol-lowering statins; half were also given a triglyceride-lowering fibrate. There was no difference in heart attack and stroke rates between the groups. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2009.)

The findings were published online in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The results of two other related studies were also published online: one large trial also looked at the effect of reducing blood pressure in diabetes patients; another trial, involving 9,300 patients who had high blood sugar and were at high risk of developing diabetes, measured the benefit of drugs that blunt the sharp peaks and valleys in blood glucose levels that occur after eating. Neither study showed benefits of these treatments in reducing risk of heart disease.

Although each of these studies included several thousand diabetes patients, which bolsters the reliability of their results, it doesn't mean they are the final word on the tested treatments. In the blood-fats arm of the ACCORD study, for instance, about 40% of the volunteers had already had a previous heart event and the remainder had risk factors, other than diabetes, that put them at high risk for heart disease, notes Dr. Om Ganda, director of the lipid clinic at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. That means the trial was not truly a primary-prevention study designed to test whether aggressive drug treatment could prevent a first heart attack in newly diagnosed diabetes patients.

The researchers had hoped that treated patients would lower their risk of heart events because they were given both statin drugs, which curb the liver's production of cholesterol, and a fibrate, which mops up harmful triglycerides in the blood and boosts levels of "good" cholesterol. But all of the volunteers either already suffered from heart disease, or had two or more major risk factors for heart problems — including cigarette smoking, family history and high cholesterol — in addition to diabetes. That may have pushed their diabetes too far along to allow them to see any benefit from the drugs. "This may be too late a state to expect major benefits from the medications," says Ganda.

Another reason these patients showed no significant heart benefits, he says, may be that most of them never needed the fibrate to begin with. About two-thirds of the patients in the trial already had triglyceride levels below those at which doctors would normally prescribe the drug, which skewed the study results toward the negative side.

In fact, when the trial's investigators looked specifically at diabetics with the highest triglyceride levels, they did see a benefit, with those patients enjoying a lower risk of heart disease than the volunteers with lower triglyceride levels. "Maybe one can say that, at a later stage of the disease, adding a fibrate is not spectacularly beneficial except for this subgroup," says Ganda.

That's a pattern that many diabetes experts expect to emerge more robustly as researchers dig deeper into the data. It's possible, for instance, that younger, newly diagnosed patients with diabetes may actually benefit from aggressively lowering their blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels — a trend that may have been lost in the noise of the current studies, which included patients who were up to 79 years old. "I tend to be far more tuned in to getting normal targets in my younger patients," says Dr. Daniel Einhorn, medical director of the Scripps Whittier Diabetes Institute, who is a co-author on one of the NEJM studies. "Without question, now I am more conservative in my treatment of older, sicker patients, because they don't benefit, and these studies just confirm that."

But the primary lesson that clinicians can take away from the new findings is that the blind push to lower all risk factors such as blood pressure or cholesterol isn't necessarily healthy, says Dr. Christopher Saudek, director of the diabetes center at Johns Hopkins University. That may even mean resisting the commonsense urge to reduce these measures to recommended or normal range in diabetics patients. "To me, it's a matter of having reasonable and patient-oriented individual targets," he says, "rather than trying to push and push and push just to get lower and lower glucose or blood pressure or lipid levels."

Given that such aggressive drug treatment does not seem to afford significant benefits to diabetics on the whole, Saudek and his colleagues anticipate that going forward physicians and patients will increasingly reintroduce the importance of lifestyle changes, such as improving diet and getting more physically active, for slowing the progression of diabetes and reducing the risk of heart disease. These are therapies that are, after all, proven to work. "These discussions obviously should be going on the whole time, but these studies are one more reminder that medication therapy has its downsides," says Einhorn.

Time article

One of the side effects of Fosamax is that it produces brittle bones and leads to fractures. The original intent of Fosamax was to help strengthen bones. We know that weight bearing exercise, good dietary habits, and visits to your chiropractor can prevent and reverse the onset of osteoporosis. So why is the first ...option for so many people a drug that actually ends up causing the very thing it is supposed to prevent?

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The chiropractic fundamentals are based on removing interference to the nervous system so that the body’s Innate Intelligence can operate at full capacity.

Interference comes by way of vertebral subluxations.
Sometimes a misalignment can be mistaken for a vertebral subluxation. For a example, sometimes it is thought that a vertebral subluxation can be seen on an x-ray.

That is incorrect. Only a misalignment can be seen on x-ray, whereas a vertebral subluxation has a far-reaching effect greater than that of a simple bone out of place.

B.J. Palmer cleared up this confusion in the early 1930s when he found that vertebral subluxations have five components to them. They are:

1.) Malposition – This simply means misalignment of a vertebra
2.) Occlusion – This refers to the closing off of an opening that a nerve passes through. In our case, we are referring to the neural canal where the spinal cord travels down.
3.) Pressure – When C1 is misaligned, this can occlude the neural canal near the brain stem. This can cause pressure or tension on the cord at this level.
4.) Interference to flow of nervous system transmission – With a misalignment, an occlusion, and pressure, there is zero chance for the nervous system to properly communicate to the rest of the body.
5.) Three-directional torqued vertebra – To achieve these four components of vertebral subluxation, the C1 vertebrae has to shift up or down, left or right, and rotated front or back.

What causes a vertebral subluxation?
Stress. Pure and simple. Various forms of stress bombard our bodies on a daily basis. If not dealt with properly, they can and will manifest themselves in the form of a vertebral subluxation.

For intensive purposes, I will discuss three forms of stress: physical, emotional, and chemical.

Trauma aka Physical Stress
Today we will talk about physical stress. Physical stress always begins at birth. The newborn baby has to wiggle and slither, torque and twist his/her way out of the vaginal canal to enter this world. That’s if it happens naturally.

Many times during a hospital birth, a doctor (or in our case with our third, a nurse midwife) will grab the baby’s head and tug and twist until that baby is yanked free. And we haven’t even mentioned forceps, vacuum extraction, or c-section yet.

The C1 vertebrae is the most unstable vertebrae in our spine, connected only by muscles, tendons, and ligaments. With any kind of extreme twisting, turning, or yanking, that vertebrae WILL misalign in three directions, which will result in occlusion, pressure, and interference.

Beyond birth, once the baby begins crawling, standing, walking, running, and climbing, he/she will fall literally thousands of times by the age of four. My eight month old falls every few minutes. I know because of her lovely shrieking each time it happens.

As we get older, and get into sports, or exercising, or just plain old every day life, injuries occur. For example, getting tackled in football, smacking into the fence while trying to catch a pop fly, slipping and falling on an icy sidewalk, getting T-boned by a semi in a busy intersection, etc. Even natural everyday motion such as walking can have a negative long term effect. Years and years of gravity pulling down on your body will take its toll.

The point is, we can’t afford to go through life without at least getting checked for interference to our nervous system. We haven’t even addressed emotional or chemical stress yet, but physical stress beginning at birth and continuing on into adulthood can and will have long-term devastating effects on your overall well-being.

Next week, we will cover the effects of emotional stress on the body and how that can result in a vertebral subluxation.

For more read here

Aspartame producer Ajinomoto is launching a new initiative that will rebrand the sweetener as “AminoSweet”.

Aspartame is used in many foods and beverages marketed as low calorie or sugar-free. However, its reputation has been clouded somewhat by studies that have investigated reports of ill effects.

Just to remind you, the side effects of aspartame can include:

    * Headache
    * Change in vision
    * Convulsions and seizures
    * Hallucination
    * Nausea and vomiting
    * Joint pain

It can cause many, many other problems as well.

Aspartame is the most controversial food additive in history, and its approval for use in food was the most contested in FDA history. In the end, the artificial sweetener was approved, not on scientific grounds, but rather because of strong political and financial pressure. After all, aspartame was previously listed by the Pentagon as a biochemical warfare agent!

It’s hard to believe such a chemical would be allowed into the food supply, but it was, and it has been wreaking silent havoc with people’s health for the past 30 years.

The truth is, it should never have been released onto the market, and allowing it to remain in the food chain is seriously hurting people – no matter how many times you rebrand it under fancy new names.

The Deceptive Marketing of Aspartame

Sold commercially under names like NutraSweet, Canderel, and now AminoSweet, aspartame can be found in more than 6,000 foods, including soft drinks, chewing gum, table-top sweeteners, diet and diabetic foods, breakfast cereals, jams, sweets, vitamins, prescription and over-the-counter drugs.

Aspartame producer Ajinomoto chose to rebrand it under the name AminoSweet, to “remind the industry that aspartame tastes just like sugar, and that it’s made from amino acids – the building blocks of protein that are abundant in our diet.”

This is deception at its finest: Begin with a shred of truth, and then spin it to fit your own agenda.

In this case, the agenda is to make you believe that aspartame is somehow a harmless, natural sweetener made with two amino acids that are essential for health and present in your diet already.

They want you to believe aspartame delivers all the benefits of sugar and none of its drawbacks. But nothing could be further from the truth.

How Aspartame Wreaks Havoc on Your Health

Did you know there have been more reports to the FDA for aspartame reactions than for all other food additives combined?

In fact, there are over 10,000 official complaints, but by the FDA’s own admission, less than 1 percent of those who experience a reaction to a product ever report it. So in all likelihood, the toxic effects of aspartame may have affected roughly a million people already.

While a variety of symptoms have been reported, almost two-thirds of them fall into the neurological and behavioral category consisting mostly of headaches, mood alterations, and hallucinations. The remaining third is mostly gastrointestinal symptoms.

This video will familiarize you with some of the terrifying side-effects and health problems you could encounter if you consume products containing this chemical.

Unfortunately, aspartame toxicity is not well-known by doctors, despite its frequency. Diagnosis is also hampered by the fact that it mimics several other common health conditions, such as:

Multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Fibromyalgia, Arthritis,     Multiple chemical sensitivity, Chronic fatigue syndrome, Attention deficit disorder, anic disorder, Depression and other psychological disorders, Lupus, Diabetes and diabetic complications, Birth defects, Lymphoma, Lyme disease, Hypothyroidism

How Diet Foods and Drinks CAUSE Weight Problems

In recent years, food manufacturers have increasingly focused on developing low-calorie foods and drinks to help you maintain a healthy weight and avoid obesity. Unfortunately, the science behind these products is so flawed, most of these products can actually lead to increased weight gain!

For example, researchers have discovered that drinking diet soda increases your risk of metabolic syndrome, and may double your risk of obesity – the complete opposite of the stated intention behind these “zero calorie” drinks.

The sad truth is that diet foods and drinks ruin your body's ability to count calories, and in fact stimulate your appetite, thus boosting your inclination to overindulge.

Unfortunately, most public health agencies and nutritionists in the United States recommend these toxic artificial sweeteners as an acceptable alternative to sugar, which is at best confusing and at worst harming the health of those who take their misguided advice.

Even More Toxic Dangers of Aspartame

Truly, there is enough evidence showing the dangers of consuming artificial sweeteners to fill an entire book -- which is exactly why I wrote Sweet Deception. If you or your loved ones drink diet beverages or eat diet foods, this book will explain how you've been deceived about the truth behind artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose -- for greed, for profits, and at the expense of your health.

As mentioned earlier, almost two-thirds of all documented side effects of aspartame consumption are neurological.

One of the reasons for this side effect, researchers have discovered, is because the phenylalanine in aspartame dissociates from the ester bond. While these amino acids are indeed completely natural and safe, they were never designed to be ingested as isolated amino acids in massive quantities, which in and of itself will cause complications.

Additionally this will also increase dopamine levels in your brain. This can lead to symptoms of depression because it distorts your serotonin/dopamine balance. It can also lead to migraine headaches and brain tumors through a similar mechanism.

The aspartic acid in aspartame is a well-documented excitotoxin. Excitotoxins are usually amino acids, such as glutamate and aspartate. These special amino acids cause particular brain cells to become excessively excited, to the point that they die.

    Excitotoxins can also cause a loss of brain synapses and connecting fibers. A review conducted in 2008 by scientists from the University of Pretoria and the University of Limpopo found that consuming a lot of aspartame may inhibit the ability of enzymes in your brain to function normally, and may lead to neurodegeneration.

According to the researchers, consuming a lot of aspartame can disturb:

        * The metabolism of amino acids
        *  Protein structure and metabolism
        *  The integrity of nucleic acids
        *  Neuronal function
        *  Endocrine balances

Furthermore, the ester bond in aspartame breaks down to formaldehyde and methanol, which are also toxic in their own right. So it is not surprising that this popular artificial sweetener has also been found to cause cancer.

One truly compelling case study that shows this all too well was done by a private citizen named Victoria Inness-Brown. She decided to perform her own aspartame experiment on 108 rats over a period of 2 years and 8 months.

Daily, she fed some of the rats the equivalent (for their body weight) of two-thirds the aspartame contained in 8-oz of diet soda. Thirty-seven percent of the females fed aspartame developed tumors, some of massive size.

How to Ditch Artificial Sweeteners, and Satiate Your Sweet Tooth

If you suffer from sweet cravings, it’s easy to convince yourself you’re doing the right thing by opting for a zero-calorie sweetener like aspartame. Please understand that you will do more harm than good to your body this way.

First, it’s important to realize that your body craves sweets when you’re not giving it the proper fuel it needs.

Finding out your nutritional type will tell you exactly which foods you need to eat to feel full and satisfied. It may sound hard to believe right now, but once you start eating right for your nutritional type, your sweet cravings will significantly lessen and may even disappear.

Meanwhile, be sure you address the emotional component to your food cravings using a tool such as the Meridian Tapping Technique (MTT). More than any traditional or alternative method I have used or researched, MTT works to overcome food cravings and helps you reach dietary success.

And, if diet soda is the culprit for you, be sure to check out Turbo Tapping, which is an extremely effective and simple tool to get rid of your soda addiction in a short period of time.

Non-Acceptable Alternative Sweeteners

I have written a few articles on fructose earlier this year, and I will be writing many more, so please be aware that I am absolutely convinced that fructose ingestion is at the core of our obesity epidemic.

And I’m not only talking about high fructose corn syrup, which is virtually identical to table sugar. The only major difference between the two is HFCS is much cheaper so it has contributed to massive increase in fructose ingestion, far beyond safe or healthy.

Please understand you need to keep your fructose levels BELOW 25 grams per day. The best way to do that is to avoid these “natural” sweeteners as they are loaded with a much higher percentage of fructose than HFCS.

        *  Fruit Juice
        *  Agave
        *  Honey

Please note that avoiding these beyond 25 grams per day is crucial, even if the source is fresh, raw, and organic. It just doesn’t matter, fructose is fructose is fructose…

Acceptable Alternative Sweeteners

For those times when you just want a taste of something sweet, your healthiest alternative is Stevia. It’s a natural plant and, unlike aspartame and other artificial sweeteners that have been cited for dangerous toxicities, it is a safe, natural alternative that's ideal if you’re watching your weight, or if you’re maintaining your health by avoiding sugar.

It is hundreds of times sweeter than sugar and truly has virtually no calories.

I must tell you that I am biased; I prefer Stevia as my sweetener of choice, and I frequently use it. However, like most choices, especially sweeteners, I recommend using Stevia in moderation, just like sugar. In excess it is still far less likely to cause metabolic problems than sugar or any of the artificial sweeteners.

I want to emphasize, that if you have insulin issues, I suggest that you avoid sweeteners altogether, including Stevia, as they all can decrease your sensitivity to insulin.

Lo han is another sweetener like Stevia. It’s an African sweet herb that can also be used, but it’s a bit more expensive and harder to find.

So if you struggle with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes or extra weight, then you have insulin sensitivity issues and would benefit from avoiding ALL sweeteners.

But for everyone else, if you are going to sweeten your foods and beverages anyway, I strongly encourage you to consider using regular Stevia or Lo han, and toss out all artificial sweeteners and any products that contain them.

If you have experienced an adverse reaction to any aspartame product, call the FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinator in your area.

To see more from Dr. Mercola

"If you believe that the destiny of your health is predetermined by your genes, then there is no such thing as wellness or prevention." ~ James Chestnut, D.C.

See the video about changing your beliefs about health and illness

Children diagnosed with ADHD who use prescription drugs to manage their condition are 10 times more likely to perform poorly at school than ADHD kids who avoid medication, a new report reveals.

The report also finds stimulant drugs such as Ritalin and dexamphetamine make no significant difference to the level of depression, self-perception and social functioning of a 14-year-old with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Those consistently using medication had significantly higher blood pressure at age 14 than children who had never taken drugs, a side-effect that could increase the risk of heart attack and stroke even into adulthood.

The report's co-author, Lou Landau, said the world-first study into the long-term effects of stimulant medication on children with ADHD, to be published today, showed "drugs over the long term don't have an impact on improving performance".

"They don't improve outcomes for those with ADHD, they make no difference to levels of depression, social functioning and self-perception, and for those on medication it is 10 times as likely that classroom performance will be below average," he said.

Professor Landau, principal medical adviser to the West Australian Department of Health, which funded the research, said that was not to say drugs should never be used to treat ADHD. "There may be some children for whom the need to manage the condition in the short term will outweigh the long-term effects."

The report is groundbreaking because it uses data from the Raine Study, which has been tracking the progress of more than 2800 families for two decades. Parents of the 131 children diagnosed with ADHD under the study have been providing information since the children were born. The outcomes were measured when the children were 14 years old.

West Australian Mental Health Minister Graham Jacobs said he was cautious about the study because of its relatively small sample size, but it "did call into question the anecdotal evidence from when I was a country GP that medication improved a child's concentration so they learned better".

"I think parents are starting to look at the issue more closely," he said. "In WA, we were one of the higher ADHD medication prescribers, but it started to change in the last 12 to 18 months."

West Australian Labor MP Martin Whitely, a longtime campaigner against ADHD medication, welcomed the report. "The ADHD industry's claim that without medication ADHD children risk academic failure has been shown to be complete bull," he said. "It's not just that ADHD drugs don't improve long-term school performance, they drag kids down. Parents will be furious they've been conned into giving their children taxpayer-subsidized amphetamines. No responsible parent would knowingly increase their child's chances of academic failure."

Many parents find relief from ADHD symptoms though safe, gentle, effective chiropractic care.

This recent news report documents one family's success with chiropractic care:

For more at yourspine.com

My sister-in-law Vicki took her daughter Mackenzie to the pediatrician for her required kindergarten physical. Mackenzie is a very healthy five-year-old. She had a natural birth, was breast-fed, she eats well, lives a happy life, has never received any vaccines and I check her often. The doctor did all of the standard tests and told Mackenzie and her mom that she was one of the healthiest kids she has ever seen. She praised Vicki for her obvious attention to their good health, and said that she wished more kids were as healthy as Mackenzie. Then she added, “Let’s see her in six months to check her height and weight again, because she is below where the charts say she should be. If she isn’t on the charts by then, we will need to take some definite actions to get her there.”

Vicki was very confused and said, “Wait a minute, didn’t you just tell me that you wish more kids could be as healthy as Mackenzie?” “Yes I did,” the doctor replied, “But she is not quite as tall as the charts say she should be and her weight is lower than normal too. We like everyone to be on the charts.” Vicki asked, “Aren’t those charts based upon the AVERAGE American child?” The doctor verified that they are. “And isn’t it true that most American kids are OVERWEIGHT?” Vicki continued. “Well, that’s true,” the doctor said, “but she should still be on the charts.” “Are you telling me that you are concerned because she isn’t in the average of overweight kids?” Vicki exclaimed. The doctor didn’t know how to answer Vicki except to say, “Well, that’s what we recommend. We want everyone to be on the charts so that we know they are normal.”

The problem here is that most people (doctors included) don’t differentiate between what is “NORMAL” and what is “AVERAGE.” Regrettably, these terms are very often used in place of one another incorrectly. Science has established what it calls NORMAL figures for all of our bodily functions including heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, height, weight and everything else you can think of. However, what we are really looking at is not what is NORMAL, but what is AVERAGE, and average is rarely a number that is actualized by many individuals in a group. In fact, forcing a person’s body to conform to the average can actually be harmful to an individual. NORMAL on the other hand is something that is not as easy to figure out. In chiropractic, we say that we are ever changing, constantly adapting, self-regulating and self-healing organisms, and that NORMAL is whatever your INNATE INTELLIGENCE needs to do to return to or maintain your natural state of harmony, balance, ease and health.

This is an important distinction to understand. Even though the average heart rate of an adult is 72 beats per minute, it may not be what is necessary for an individual at any given time. In other words, if a person’s body needs to increase its heart rate for some reason, it may not be AVERAGE, but it can most certainly be NORMAL! Consider these things:

1. A healthy baby who is cutting teeth can have a runny nose, fluid in its ears and a fever. These are all normal parts of the process of cutting teeth.

2. A healthy woman will normally gain 1 – 2 pounds per week for nine months – when pregnant.

3. A healthy person who eats a bad piece of fish will vomit and get diarrhea as a way of healthfully expelling toxins.

4. A person who has injured his neck will have muscle spasms to protect the area from further damage while it heals. He will also have inflammation to begin what is called the healing cascade. And, his body will produce pain so that he knows to be careful until all is well.

Chiropractic recognizes that NORMAL is a state that can only be determined by your Innate Intelligence. We do not try to make you conform to a standard or AVERAGE level of function. Rather, we accept you for the unique INDIVIDUAL that you are, and we trust and rejoice in the knowledge that when you have a clear neurological CONNECTION, a healthy lifestyle and a deliberate focus upon creating what you want, your body will do whatever is necessary to keep you growing toward the full expression of your purpose and potential in life. Here’s wishing you a normal day – one that is OFF THE CHARTS!

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