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Green and black tea are full of anti-oxidants and polyphenols which are good for us, but they also contain very high amounts of fluoride, which is highly toxic to the body.

Okay, enough is enough. Over the last few years, I've said that we shouldn't eat sugar, baked goods and pasta, omega 6 vegetable oils, boxed cereals and crackers, store-bought salad dressings, processed foods, soy, low-fat or no-fat milk, (pasteurized dairy or pasteurized anything including fruit juice for that matter), grain-fed factory-farmed meat, poultry and eggs, and well, I can handle that most of the time. But tea??? I love my cup of tea. Is NOTHING sacred? Heavy sigh.

Tea leaves seem to accumulate more fluoride from the soil and from the air than any other plant that we eat, and because pollution has increased over the last decades, fluoride in tea is increasing as well.

Green tea in particular is heavily promoted as being a very healthy beverage because of the anti-oxidants it contains. But it turns out that the fluoride levels in tea are higher than the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL)set for fluoride in drinking water, which is 1mg/L.

Double-blind studies exist proving the adverse health affects of fluoride at the level of 1ppm in water, and there are no studies documenting safety of ingesting fluoride at any level. No studies seem to exist investigating the effects of fluorides on the anti-oxidants in green tea, although other studies involving antioxidants show that they are adversely affected by fluoride.

A 6oz cup of green or black tea seems to contain between 1.3 and 7.8mg/L of fluoride, so possibly as much as 8 times the suggested safe dose, and I’m sure I’m not the only one that has more than one cup of tea per day.

Fluoride may be a big culprit in hypothyroid (sluggish thyroid), as fluoride has a bigger affinity to the iodine receptor than iodine does, and the thyroid needs iodine to function properly. Fluoride was in fact used in several countries to treat an overactive thyroid because it was so good at reducing thyroid function.

With so many people suffering from problems of hypothyroid, many being undiagnosed, one can wonder how much of the problem can be related to tea and fluoridated water consumption. Fluoride’s affect on the thyroid go way beyond blocking iodine, and are far too numerous to account for here. If dental fluorosis is present, hypothyroid is a given. Yikes! This is serious stuff!!

Dean Burk, who was Chief Chemist at the National Cancer Institute for several decades, said that “no chemical causes as much cancer, and faster, than fluorides”, and fluoride is particularly problematic in uterine and bone cancers.

Fluoride also tends to soften bones and make them brittle, playing a role in osteoporosis. Dental fluorosis or a mottling of the teeth is the first obvious sign of fluoride poisoning, and if there is dental fluorosis, there are hypothyroid problems, and probably skeletal fluorosis as well.

Tea also frequently contains aluminum, and fluoride and aluminum together are even more problematic, creating renal and neurological problems, including possibly Alzheimers (aluminum fluoride which turns into aluminum oxide).

Chinese teas seem to have more fluoride in them than Indian, oolong and Ceylon teas, decaf teas have much higher levels of fluoride than caffeinated teas, and instant teas are full of fluoride too.

Black teas have more fluoride than green, and longer brewing times increase the fluoride content.

The higher the grade of tea, the less the fluoride, so in other words the expensive stuff really is better. In fact one study suggested that measuring fluoride content would be a good way to evaluate the quality of the tea.

If you want more detailed information on this topic, I recommend the book by Christopher Bryson is also a good read.

Non-organic teas are frequently riddled with pesticides, and do read labels to check for soy lecithin or corn starch, which are most certainly genetically modified. Many herbal teas contain colourings and flavourings also, which are not healthy.

Furthermore, I strongly suggest buying organic or non-GMO-certified LOOSE tea instead of tea in bags, as the bags can be a problem too. Paper tea-bags frequently contain the chemical “epichlorohydrin”, which is a carcinogen, and plastic tea-bags can leach endocrine disrupting phthalates.

I want to thank Sue Bond, who helped me considerably with the research for this post.

Related tips
Fluoridated water – boon or bane?
Choosing a water filtration system
Our toxic body burden
Thyroid function and dysfunction
The three keys to preventing osteoporosis

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Perhaps you heard that in the middle of October 2007, two advisory committees recommended to the FDA that the active ingredients in over-the-counter cough and cold medications be withdrawn from use for children under the age of six. These medications are particularly problematic for children under the age of 2, as it is difficult to dose these medications correctly, and dosages that are too high have actually resulted in the deaths of some infants.

On Oct. 11th, 2007, the Consumer Healthcare Products Association in the States issued a voluntary withdrawal of cough and cold medications for infants, causing these products to be pulled from Canadian shelves as well. (Sorry, I don't know how health bodies in the rest of the world are dealing with this. I realize this newsletter is very North America focused, so to my readers in other parts of the world, I thank you for putting up with the bias.)

See the list of medications involved here, and check your cupboards and throw away any that you may have. I find it interesting how the article goes out of its way to say how safe these products are, and yet studies (see below) consistently show that not only are these medications dangerous, but they also do not work at all. Besides the active ingredients, which are the reason these medications have been pulled, children's medicine (and adult's) is usually full of other lovely stuff like high-fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners, colourings, and flavourings and other chemicals, forcing the body to waste energy detoxifying rather than trying to deal with the invading virus.

So, what is a parent with a sick child to do? First of all, it is important to remember that a cold will run its course, and your child will feel better probably within a week. The common cold is not life-threatening, even though it is certainly no fun. To deal with a cough, a recent study showed that buckwheat honey actually works better than over-the-counter cough medications and better than a placebo for relieving coughs due to upper respiratory-tract infections. Raw honey has known antiviral, mucus releasing (expectorant), immunity building and anti-inflammatory properties among others, which would help a cold, and it is thick and goopy, so it coats the throat which also probably helps. Grandma's honey and lemon tea is probably just the ticket, providing the water is not too hot, so as not to destroy those precious enzymes. Obviously, pasteurized honey has been cooked destroying the helpful ingredients leaving not much more than a pot of sugar, so look for raw. Because Clostridium botulinum bacteria may be present in both raw and pasteurized honey, it should not be given to children under the age of one, as children this young do not have an adequately developed immune system to handle it.

Lots of fluids (water) is a good idea, and a saline solution (1/4 teaspoon sea salt in a cup of water) can help keep the nasal membranes moist, as can using steam or a humidifier. Getting lots of rest and washing hands frequently will help. Remember that nose mucus is part of our immune system's response to the virus, so it should not be considered a bad thing even though it is uncomfortable. For this reason, overuse of decongestants may delay recovery. Babies however, can't blow their nose, so when they are congested they can't suck or sleep. Gravity can help, so put your baby in a car seat to sleep. Using a rubber-bulb syringe to gently suction the mucus out of the baby's nose a few seconds after using saline nose drops is another idea. Colds are caused by viruses, so antibiotics will not work. If your child is showing no improvement in a week, see your doctor to rule out anything more serious.

Related Tips
Coldfire
High Fructose Corn Syrup
Our toxic body burden
Artificial sweeteners
Artificial and natural flavours

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We are toxic soup! How much of a burden to our bodies are the chemical toxins that find their way inside of us?

A journalist for National Geographic decided to explore his own body chemical burden and was shocked to find out what and how many toxic chemicals were inside him, considering he lived a pretty "clean" life, in his opinion! And he was pretty surprised to find out that the chemical that was present in him in the greatest quantity was flame retardant.

After much thought, he figured it was from frequent air travel. According to the Fitzgerald Report, as of 1998, there were over 75,500 synthetic chemicals registered as appearing in processed food, consumer products, industry and agriculture. And since that time there have been about 2000 chemicals added to the list each year.

Chemicals are so much a part of our life these days, that we rarely give them a second thought.  We eat chemicals in the form of colourings, flavourings, preservatives, emulsifiers, thickeners, sweeteners, hydrogenated oils, transfats, inter-esterified fats, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides etc., and chemicals designed to make us want to eat more.  We apply chemicals on our skin, hair, underarms, teeth and nails to clean, moisturize and polish, protect from the sun’s rays, or to look and smell nice.

We bathe in water that frequently is contaminated with chlorine and fluoride.  (If you put it on your skin you are drinking it). We frequently store food in plastic, which usually have endocrine disruptors like phthalates and BPA in them – especially bad news if those foods are microwaved in that plastic!

We wash our dishes with toxic dishwashing detergent, and wash our clothes in toxic laundry detergent. Many of our household cleaners are very toxic and have toxic vapours that we breathe.

Many of us take over-the-counter medications or pharmaceutical drugs, which our livers then must detoxify. (Have you looked at the ingredient list on cough syrup??? Hydrogenated oils, colourings, artificial sweeteners – a virtual toxic soup!)  Even synthetic vitamins, especially those targeted to kids, are full of sweeteners and colourings. 

Many of us have mercury amalgam fillings, which leach mercury into our systems.  We cook with Teflon, which leaches PFOA into our food and into the air.  Then there is that new car and new carpet smell – not healthy!  And many of us have jobs involving chemicals on a daily basis. 

Walking down the street we are inhaling air filled with car exhaust and other chemicals.  And many of these chemicals stay in our bodies for a very long time.

Toxicologists will say that the amount of a particular chemical  in the food etc. is too low to cause any problems.  Maybe so if you look at each chemical individually.  But the fact is that they spray up to 19 different pesticides on a field of strawberries!  How exactly do they interact?  And how do those 19 pesticides react with the other chemicals in the food / drugs we consume, and the chemicals we inhale or absorb through our skin? 

It is really no wonder that we are a toxic mess, and why rates of cancer have climbed so dramatically over the last 100 years.  And no wonder our poor liver is having a heck of a time coping in its detox duties, and may not have much left to help our hormones function properly, leaving our bodies in a chronically stressed state!

Even today, with the crunch in health-care playing out all around us, our chemical-laden life is not even on the radar as reeking havoc with our health.  And Canada’s Food Guide is actively promoting toxic food by suggesting we choose oils like canola, corn, soybean, and sunflower, which are rancid on store shelves due to the heat used in the processing, or soft margarine, a manufactured, unnatural fat over butter or lard!  It makes me crazy.

I won’t get into the problems that our chemical mess is causing the other living creatures that share this planet with us – needless to say the news is downright scary, especially with respect to fish.

Although we can’t come close to controlling all the toxins we are exposed to, to me it makes sense to do all one can in this regard, not only for our own health but also for the health of the planet.  Choosing organic, unprocessed food, environmentally-friendly cleaners, using over-the-counter drugs sparingly, doing what is possible through lifestyle modifications to reduce the need for pharmaceuticals, and using quality non-toxic skincare products can help a lot.

I have been using organic virgin coconut oil as my moisturizer for the last two years – seems to work fine for me.  Coconut oil may be expensive as a food, but wow, is it cheap as a moisturizer!  And no one yet has commented that I smell like a coconut!

The National Geographic article is very interesting. Make sure you check out the photos too. And I found the Hundred Year Lie website to be very fascinating reading about how the economic interests of processed food industry, medical/pharmaceutical industry and chemical industry have successfully shaped the notion that synthetics are safer than their natural counterparts.  (No, margarine is NOT healthier than butter!)

Related Tips
Environmentally friendly kitchen clean-up
Teflon is hazardous to our health
Mercury, a strong nerve poison
Which plastic water bottles don’t leach chemicals?
Nanotechnology and you
Processed food is taking over our supermarkets
Water Fluoridation, boon or bane?
Fats, the good, the bad and the ugly
Coldfire

Rapp, D. MD Our Toxic World: A Wake Up Call Environmental Medical Research Foundation, Buffalo NY. 2004.

Dadd, Debra Lynn Home Safe Home Penguin Putnum Inc. New York, NY 1997

Steinman, D. and Epstein, S. The Safe Shopper’s Bible: A Consumer’s Guide to Nontoxic Household Products, Cosmetics, and Food Wiley Publishing, New York, NY 1995.

Blaylock R. MD Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills Health Press, Santa Fe NM, 1997

Farlow, C. Food Additives: A Shopper’s Guide to What’s Safe & What’s Not (2004 Revised Edition) USA, 2004.

Pawlick, T. The End of Food: How the Food Industry is Destroying Our Food Supply–And What We Can Do About It Barricade Books, Fort Lee NJ. 2006.
Fitzgerald, R. The Hundred-Year Lie: How Food and Medicine Are Destroying Your Health Penguin Group, New York NY. 2006.

Rogers, Sherry MD Chemical Sensitivity USA, 1995.

Rogers, Sherry MD Detoxify or Die USA, 2002

Cutler, A. PhD Amalgam Illness, Diagnosis and Treatment : What You Can Do to Get Better, How Your Doctor Can Help Sammamish WA. 1999.

Kirby, D. Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy St. Martin’s Press, New York, NY. 2005.

Copyright 2007 Vreni Gurd

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In a previous tip I suggested which water bottles do not leach chemicals into the water, and how to tell which bottles are safe to use. I suggested that those extremely popular hard plastic
colourful lexan water bottles with the recycling number 7 on them leach Bisphenol A, a xeno-estrogen and endocrine disruptor, into the water. You can’t taste it at all, so it is easy to think your water is not affected. Synthetic xenoestrogens are linked to breast cancer and uterine cancer in women, decreased testosterone levels in men, and are particularly devastating to babies and young children. BPA has even been linked to insulin resistance and Type 2 Diabetes. Nalgene, the company that manufactures the lexan water bottles also makes #2 HDPE bottles in the same sizes and shapes, so we have a viable alternative. Order one at Nalgene.

Unfortunately, most plastic baby bottles and drinking cups are made with plastics containing Bisphenol A. In 2006 Europe banned all products made for children under age 3 containing BPA, and as of Dec. 2006 the city of San Franscisco followed suit. In March 2007 a billion-dollar class action suit was commenced against Gerber, Playtex, Evenflo, Avent, and Dr. Brown’s in Los Angeles superior court for harm done to babies caused by drinking out of baby bottles and sippy cups containing BPA. We need to move away from storing food and water in plastics, and use glass or ceramic instead. If you still use a microwave, remember to NEVER microwave food in plastic containers or use plastic wrap to cover the food, as the plastic will infiltrate the food and you will then be eating it.

Plastics may be convenient, but they are not generally good for our health nor the health of the planet, as they don’t break down easily. Plastics frequently wind up polluting our oceans and waterways, and are very harmful to the sea birds and other marine life that get entangled in plastic bags, fish net remnants etc. Wildlife frequently ingest small plastic pellets thinking they are fish eggs which makes them sick.

And the onslaught of plastics into our oceans continues, year after year. For an insight into that topic read The Plastic Sea to learn what our consumption habits are doing to our home, and the home of our fellow species.

Related tips:
Plastic water bottles
Microwave ovens: convenience vs. health and nutrition

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Bacteria get a really bad rap. Most of us associate bacteria with sickness, and we often go out of our way to kill bacteria by using antibacterial soaps and cleaners. When we are sick, we often look to antibiotics which kill bacteria in order to become healthy again.

But only about 5% of bacteria are actually pathogenic, and the other 95% are beneficial. What do you think would happen if all the bacteria in the world died? It would not be long before all life on earth ceased to exist, as bacteria are fundamental to the birth, life and death of every living thing on this planet.

Bacteria are part of the planet’s garbage disposal system that breaks down dead plant and animal tissue returning it to soil in the form of humus, so life can begin again. Each gram of healthy soil has 600 million microorganisms containing thousands of species of bacteria and fungi, so healthy soil is fully alive. And the humus that the bacteria make is the nutritious food that plants require in order to grow healthy and robust.

So in summary, bacteria ensure the health of the plant by providing it with food and nitrogen, and bacteria break down the plant if it is sick or after it has died, so that only the healthiest plants survive, and cycle of life can continue.

According to the late Sir Albert Howard, one of the most well known experts on organic farming, pests, diseases and parasites are "nature’s professors of good husbandry", meaning that diseased plants indicate a problem in farming, and provide an opportunity to look for mistakes and correct them.

So, what happens when farmers spray their fields with pesticides, herbicides and fungicides? They kill the army of microorganisms that support plant life, rendering the soil dead.  Plants cannot grow in dead soil without the aid of chemical fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers do not make for healthy plants. Unhealthy plants do not make for healthy people.  So our health rests on the health of the bacteria in the soil.

In times before chemical agriculture, we would consume live bacteria along with the food we ate. In healthy people there are thousands of species of bacteria that live in our digestive tract from the mouth, throughout the intestines and colon, that help us digest our food, synthesize vitamins like folate, vitamin K and biotin, and that are vital to the function of our immune system.

Bacteria break down our food into a useable form that can be absorbed through our intestines and utilized by the body. Bacteria clean the walls of the intestine and colon so that waste can be excreted easily and are therefore key to the body’s ability to detoxify itself.

Exposure to bacteria is critical to building a strong immune system, as the body needs something to fight against in order to build its army. Overuse of antibacterial soaps, pasteurized products and antibiotics has led to a sicker and more allergic population, as the body has not had the opportunity to build its antibodies.

So, the question becomes – do you have enough bugs in your gut, and are they the right kind? Were you ever on antibiotics? If so, they killed all the bacteria in your gut, so if you did not actively replace them, probably not.

In today’s world of processed, denatured, sugar and chemically laden food that came from dead soil, most people have a bacteria population in their gut that is 85% "bad" bacteria and only 15% "good" bacteria, and the ratio should be the other way around.

Good bacteria are killed off by the chlorine and fluoride in the water we drink, caffeine, birth control pills and other drugs, stress, food additives, and too many bad bacteria that compete in the gut for food and a place to live. No wonder so many people have irritable bowel syndrome or other problems that stem from an inability to detoxify themselves.

Many people are carrying around with them several pounds of dead, rotting fecal matter in their intestinal tract, which creates a potential for self-poisoning and disease. Symptoms of poor quality bacteria in the gut is an inability to lose weight, carbohydrate cravings, recurrent candida or yeast problems, frequent constipation or diarrhea, digestion or acid reflux problems, joint pain and stiffness, frequent colds or flu, skin problems like acne or eczema for example.

So, how do we re-establish good-quality bacteria in our gut? We can start by eating living, whole organic food grown in live soil, eating more high quality fermented foods, and by filtering our water so we are not drinking chlorine.

Most importantly, take a quality probiotic supplement daily in order to repopulate the gut quickly with good bacteria. I like Primal Defense by Garden of Life, and I have just been made aware of InLiven by MiVitality which also looks really good, although I have not yet personally tried that one.

A good probiotic is a detox program, so start slowly in case you have detoxification reactions like not feeling well, headaches, or a need to be close to the bathroom. If you are reacting, cut your dosage or skip a day until you feel better. Most people don’t react negatively at all however. Build up your dosage to the recommended levels over time as your body cleans itself out and you feel better and better.

Related tips:
Dealing with health issues
The Hygiene Hypothesis
Worm composting to eat your garbage and feed your garden

Chek, Paul Under the Veil of Deception 2002
Abbott, Phyllis, PhD Bacteria in Control of Life, Death and Evolution? Authorhouse, Bloomington Indiana, 2006.
Online at Bacteria
CD MiVitality Organic & Natural Enterprise Group, 2004.

Copyright 2005-2007 Vreni Gurd

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What did you do with your old cell phone?  Not the one you are using now, but the one you retired?  Did you just toss it?  What about your old computer?  VCR?

E-waste is anything electronic including keyboards, circuit boards, PDAs, routers, printers etc., and it is now the fastest growing source of consumer waste. 

Because of all the really awful stuff in them, like mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, and brominated flame retardants for example, land-filling these products is a very bad idea, as these toxins leach into the soil and into drinking water. 

Incinerating e-waste sends the toxins into the air.  Many of these toxic materials are very persistent and stay in the environment for long periods of time, accumulating in the tissue of plants and animals, slowly building up in the food chain, and can contribute to health problems such as cancer, and neurological, immune, endocrine, developmental and reproductive disorders. 

Children, with their smaller body size and developing systems are more vulnerable to these persistent bio-accumulative toxins.

As usual, the EU is way ahead of North America with regard to regulating these toxic substances.  As of July ’06, no new electric or electronic product on the market in the EU can contain lead, brominated flame retardants or cadmium. 

And of course, because of the new regulations, companies were forced to innovate to maintain market-share, and the result is slightly less toxic items coming to market.

But perhaps we need to think twice before rushing out to buy these electronic gadgets.  Can you make do without?  Do you really need the latest and greatest, or can you manage with what you’ve got for another few years if you upgrade memory etc? 

And what do we do with our current electronic garbage when we really must make a change? Please don’t dump it in the garbage, that’s for sure!

Some computer companies like IBM, and HP now have return programs so check with your manufacturer.    Many schools, libraries, non-profit organizations, retirement homes will gladly take your old computer. 

In Canada, contact the Electronic Recycling Association and they will pick up your computer(s) from your home, business, or government office and donate it for free. 

On the left sidebar of the ERA there is a link for pick-up in the US and United Kingdom as well.  Here is a list of where you can donate your old phone in Canada. 

In the States, look for a phone recycling program near you here.  Most communities have or are developing computer and other e-waste recycling programs, so google e-waste and your community, and find out where you can recycle the stuff near you. 

If these products cannot be refurbished and  reused, they are taken apart carefully to remove the metals, separate out the plastics and the glass. 

Many of the companies that do this aim for zero waste going to landfill, and there can be a good profit in this service, so if there is no e-waste recycling available near you yet, I suggest you hang onto your old electronic equipment, as this service will come to you soon. 

There is too much harm to our environment and therefore our health by simply allowing electronic trash to go to landfill.

Related tips:
Mercury, a strong nerve poison

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Mercury has been known to be a potent nerve toxin for about fifteen years, and recently the University of Calgary has shown exactly how mercury causes this nerve degeneration by examining what happens to nerve cells in a culture medium when mercury is added. Please view this short yet excellent and understandable presentation from the University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine, to see for yourself how mercury attaches to the receptor sites of another protein, and destroys the structure of the nerve.

Mercury is especially damaging to fetuses and infants as their nervous systems are only just developing.  A very common cause of mercury exposure in infants is from vaccines that contain thimerosal, a vaccine preservative that is 50% mercury, and with the aggressive immunization schedule suggested for infants, the cumulative dose of thimerosal becomes quite high (the flu vaccine alone that is given to infants has more mercury in it than is allowable under the EPA standards!) The mercury in these vaccines has been linked to autism. Thankfully, because of the outcry, thimerosal is slowly being taken out of vaccines, but it is by no means gone, so be careful of what is being injected into your baby. Mercury is not the only problem with the infant vaccination schedule – more on this in a future tip, but for the sake of your baby under the age of two, please see the user-friendly vaccination schedule published on Dr. Mercola’s website for more information about this extremely important topic.

Lately we have been hearing news about how much of the fish we eat is now toxic due to high levels of mercury from the polluted waterways in which they swim. Many sushi restaurants in California were recently tested, and the fish in many instances were found to have dangerously high levels of mercury – especially the tuna. If you eat a lot of fish, use this mercury calculator to check your dosage, and perhaps switch to less toxic fish. This is especially important for pregnant women and infants. Remember that cooking the fish does not get rid of the mercury. It is sad that fish are now so polluted that they border on dangerous to eat, as most of us get far too few of the omega 3 fatty acids that fish can provide. For this reason, it is a good idea to get your omega 3s from fish oil supplements, as they generally have been cleaned of mercury.

In the grand scheme of things, the mercury poisoning from fish is minor compared to the mercury that gets into our systems from metal fillings in the mouth. The average amalgam filling has 750,000 micrograms of mercury and releases about 10 micrograms a day. Mercury vapor constantly leaks from silver or gold amalgams and crowns, and even more so when the person chews, or puts something hot in their mouth, like tea, coffee or hot food. The mercury is inhaled, goes up the olfactory nerve to the hippocampus in the brain where it effects memory. It is believed by some that amalgam fillings are heavily implicated in Alzheimer’s disease. Mercury also spreads throughout the body, causing degenerative problems in the nervous system and causing organs, particularly the kidneys, to function less optimally. Please see the video The smoking teeth, and see the mercury vapor coming off a 25 year old amalgam, as well as the studies done on sheep and monkeys that examined where and how quickly mercury from their fillings infiltrated their systems. Notice how the mercury got into the fetus, and into the mother’s milk. If you have metal amalgams or crowns in your mouth, particularly if Alzheimer’s disease exists in your family, a precautionary measure may be to see a biological dentist that has been trained to remove these fillings without exposing you, the dental assistants or him/herself to the vapors, and get them out of your mouth as soon as possible. If you have metal amalgams in your mouth, or you work in a dental office and are exposed to metal amalgams on a regular basis, take chlorella daily, a seaweed that is known to be very good at removing heavy metals from the body.

Related Tips:
How hormones, neurotransmitters and steroids work
Essential fats: Omega 3 to Omega 6 ratio

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If your family’s health and the health of the environment is important to you, you may wish to dispose of those Teflon pots and pans and use stainless steel or ceramic-coated pans instead. The US Environmental Protection Agency just put out the notice in February of 2006, that the chemical, perflourooctanoic acid (PFOA) which is used to make the non-stick coating Teflon used on pots and pans and food packaging like microwave popcorn bags, is known to be linked to birth defects in animal studies and is likely to be a carcinogen.  PFOA seems to be in the blood of most Americans, as found in studies that examined blood from American blood banks, and is likely to be in the blood of most of the rest of us as well.  PFOA enters into our bodies very easily through the cooked food when the non-stick pan is either scratched, or when it is heated, (which is what we do with pans and popcorn bags!) Heated Teflon also releases toxic fumes which we inhale.  These chemicals seem to have a very long half-life (1.5 years for males) and they remain in our bodies because our livers cannot find a way to get rid of them. And other chemical classes break down into PFOA, so even if PFOA were banned, we will be stuck with its effects for a very long time.

Not only are the chemicals released by heating Teflon toxic to humans, but research has shown that they also break down the ozone layer of our planet thereby contributing to global warming.  Their persistence in the environment is a big problem. And other chemical classes break down into PFOA, so banning PFOA would not resolve this issue.

DuPont was fined many millions of dollars by the EPA a few months ago for hiding the toxicity of PFOA from the US government for 20 years. And they are currently taking out full page newspaper ads stating that Teflon pans are safe!  Please understand that most companies are usually more interested in their bottom line than in your health.  Don’t be duped into thinking otherwise. For more on the extremes some companies will go to to protect their bottom line despite serious health or environmental concerns, see the DVD The Corporation.

Now, I’m no cook, but my understanding is that the way to stop food from sticking in stainless steel or ceramic cookware is to heat the fat first, and then put in the food you are cooking. (Remember to use a stable fat for cooking, such as organic coconut oil, organic butter, organic ghee, or organic beef or chicken fat, as opposed to vegetable oils that are unstable and go rancid when heated.)

Related Tips:
Fats, the good, the bad and the ugly
Saturated fat – the misunderstood nutrient

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Artificial sweeteners are not a healthy substitute for sugar and they often cause people to eat more food and gain weight. When the body detects a sweet taste, it expects carbohydrates that contain nutrition, and when the gut finds no nutrition, the message is sent to the brain to eat more in order to get the nutrition needed.

The FDA has had more complaints about Aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal, Canderel, NatraSweet, Spoonfuls, DiabetiSweet) than any other food additive, and yet it is still on the GRAS list (Generally Regarded As Safe) despite its strong association with brain tumours and seizures. 

It is a synthetic compound made up of Phenylalanine and Aspartic Acid held in a chemical bond by Methanol, which breaks down into Formic Acid, Formaldehyde and Diketopiperazine (DKP).  It is the DKP that causes brain tumours.

Aspartame breaks down more quickly with heat, and as such, is worse in hot drinks, or in soda pop that may have been in the sun at some point in its journey to our fridges.  If you have ever tasted a diet drink that didn’t taste sweet, you know the Aspartame in it broke down into the above mentioned neurotoxins (nerve poisons). 

Some symptoms of Aspartame toxicity include migraines, depression, seizures, attention deficit disorder, angry rages, joint pain, muscle spasm, and it can mimic diseases like MS, chronic fatigue syndrome, and fibromyalgia. Symptoms like migraines may appear quickly in some people, while in others there may be no symptoms for some time. 

If you or someone you care about has any of these symptoms, remove Aspartame from the diet for four to six weeks before medical testing to see if the symptoms resolve, and so that the artificial sweetener won’t cloud the diagnosis. 

Once again, read labels, because Aspartame is everywhere, including children’s vitamins, cool aid type fruit drinks, diet soda pop, sugar free chewing gum, gelatin desserts, frozen desserts, fillings and toppings for baked goods, hot chocolate mixes, breath mints, yogurt, wine coolers, tea beverages, some flavoured bottled waters, some fibre cereals, cold remedies and other medications.

Mary Nash Stoddard compiled the research on Aspartame into a report that she titled Deadly Deception: Story of Aspartame : Shocking Expose of the World’s Most Controversial Sweetener, if you are interested in looking into this subject further.

Sucralose, under the brand name of Splenda, is gaining in popularity as a substitute for sugar. Because this product is newer there is less research to look at, but what is there should give pause for thought.

It is advertised as being made from sugar, but that does not mean it is anything like sugar, just as water in no way resembles the oxygen and hydrogen from which it is made.

To make sucralose, three chlorine atoms are substituted for three oxygen-hydrogen groups on the sugar molecule turning it into a chlorocarbon. Chlorocarbons have been known to cause genetic, organ, immune and reproductive damage for some time, and they cause swelling of the liver as well as swelling and calcificatiion of the kidneys. 

If you get any mid-back pain in the kidney area or bladder irritation after consuming Splenda, take it out of your diet immediately.

Choose healthful sweeteners like raw (unpasteurized) honey, organic maple syrup, Rapadura or stevia to sweeten your food if necessary.

Related Tips:
Sugar – The Disease Generator

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Plastic water bottles are very convenient for carting water around when we are on the go, as they don’t break if we drop them. It is worth paying attention to the type of plastic your water bottle is made of, to ensure that the chemicals in the plastic do not leach into the water. If you taste plastic, you are drinking it, so get yourself another bottle.

To be certain that you are choosing a bottle that does not leach, check the recycling symbol on your bottle. If it is a #2 HDPE (high density polyethylene), or a #4 LDPE (low density polyethylene), or a #5 PP (polypropylene), your bottle is fine. The type of plastic bottle in which water is usually sold is usually a #1, and is only recommended for one time use. Do not refill it. Better to use a reusable water bottle, and fill it with your own filtered water from home, and keep these single-use bottles out of the landfill.

Unfortunately, those fabulous colourful hard plastic lexan bottles made with polycarbonate plastics and identified by the #7 recycling symbol, may leach BPA. (Bisphenol A is a xenoestrogen, a known endocrine disruptor, meaning it disturbs the hormonal messaging in our bodies).  Synthetic chemical endocrine disruptors are particularly devastating to babies and young children.

Unfortunately, most plastic baby bottles and drinking cups are made with plastics containing Bisphenol A. In 2006 Europe banned all products made for children under age 3 containing BPA, and as of Dec. 2006 the city of San Francisco followed suit. In March 2007 a billion-dollar class action suit was commenced against Gerber, Playtex, Evenflo, Avent, and Dr. Brown’s in Los Angeles superior court for harm done to babies caused by drinking out of baby bottles and sippy cups containing BPA. So, to be certain that your baby is not exposed, use glass bottles.

For more of the science on the effects of BPA on our endocrine system etc. see these studies: Environmental Health Perspectives Journal. Nalgene, the company that manufactures the lexan bottles also makes #2 HDPE bottles in the same sizes and shapes, so we do have a viable alternative. Order one at Nalgene.

Check the recycling numbers on all your plastic food containers as well, and gradually move to storing all food in glass or ceramic. Store water in glass if possible, and out of direct sunlight.

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