Friday, January 3, 2014

How Sugar Can Become Toxic

Venezuelan sugar cane (Saccharum) harvested fo...
Venezuelan sugar cane (Saccharum) harvested for processing. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By Dr. Mercola
Mice fed a diet containing 25 percent sugar – the equivalent of three cans of soda daily – were twice as likely to die as mice fed a similar diet without sugar. 1
Such was the finding of a new 58-week University of Utah study, which once again highlights the early death sentence many Americans may receive for indulging far too often in this sweet treat.
While the mice did not display obvious signs of metabolic diseases, such as obesity, they were nonetheless significantly affected by the sugar. Male mice fed sugar were 26 percent less territorial and produced 25 percent fewer offspring, for example.
Said study author James Ruff in Time:2
“The [mice] are having fewer offspring because they are having a hard time competing, they’re less effective at foraging and raising young. That is due to lots of perturbations across their physiology.
Since most substances that are toxic in mice are also toxic in people, it’s likely that those underlying physical problems that cause those mice to have increased mortality are at play in people.”

19-Fold Increase in Sugar Consumption in Just Three Centuries

In Sugar Love: A Not so Sweet Story,3 author Rich Cohen chronicles the, often bloody, history of sugar and humans’ love affair with this sweet poison. One of the most noteworthy statistics is this: in 1700, the average Englishman ate four pounds of sugar a year.
This has increased steadily to reach 77 pounds of sugar annually for the average American today, which amounts to more than 22 teaspoons of added sugar daily.
And therein lies the problem. Consuming small amounts of sugar may not be a problem, but consuming sugar by the pound certainly is. As Dr. Richard Johnson, who was interviewed for the article, said:
It seems like every time I study an illness and trace a path to the first cause, I find my way back to sugar. Why is it that one-third of adults [worldwide] have high blood pressure, when in 1900 only 5 percent had high blood pressure?
Why did 153 million people have diabetes in 1980, and now we’re up to 347 million? Why are more and more Americans obese? Sugar, we believe, is one of the culprits, if not the major culprit.”
This isn’t simply a matter of consuming ‘empty calories,’ either, as the American Heart Association would have you believe.
“It has nothing to do with its calories,” endocrinologist Robert Lustig stated.“Sugar is a poison by itself when consumed at high doses.”4

Why Calories from Sugar and Fructose May Increase Your Risk of Serious Disease

According to Dr. Lustig, fructose is "isocaloric but not isometabolic." This means you can have the same amount of calories from fructose or glucose, fructose and protein, or fructose and fat, but the metabolic effect will be entirely different despite the identical calorie count.
This is largely because different nutrients provoke different hormonal responses, and those hormonal responses determine, among other things, how much fat you accumulate.
Half of the sugar the average American consumes in a day is fructose, which is 300 percent more than the amount that will trigger biochemical havoc. And many Americans consume more than twice that amount! Thanks to the excellent work of researchers like Dr. Robert Lustig, as well as Dr. Richard Johnson, we now know that fructose:
  • Is metabolized differently from glucose, with the majority being turned directly into fat.
  • Tricks your body into gaining weight by fooling your metabolism, as it turns off your body's appetite-control system. Fructose does not appropriately stimulate insulin, which in turn does not suppress ghrelin (the "hunger hormone") and doesn't stimulate leptin (the "satiety hormone"), which together result in your eating more and developing insulin resistance.
  • Rapidly leads to weight gain and abdominal obesity ("beer belly"), decreased HDL, increased LDL, elevated triglycerides, elevated blood sugar, and high blood pressure—i.e., classic metabolic syndrome.
  • Over time leads to insulin resistance, which is not only an underlying factor of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but also many cancers.
This is why the general rule that you can lose weight only by counting calories simply doesn't work. After fructose, other sugars and grains are likely the most excessively consumed foods that promote weight gain and chronic disease.

This also includes food items that are typically viewed as healthy, such as fruit juice or even large amounts of high-fructose fruits. What needs to be understood is that when consumed in large amounts, these items will also adversely affect your insulin, which is a crucially potent fat regulator.
So even drinking large amounts of fruit juice on a daily basis can contribute to weight gain... In short, you do not get fat because you eat too many calories and don't exercise enough. You get fat because you eat the wrong kind of calories. As long as you keep eating fructose and grains, you're programming your body to create and store fat.

The Fat Switch: Unveiling the Five Basic Truths That Can Help You Lose Weight

Dr. Johnson discovered the method that animals use to gain fat prior to times of food scarcity, which turned out to be a powerful adaptive benefit. His research showed that fructose activates a key enzyme, fructokinase, which in turn activates another enzyme that causes cells to accumulate fat. When this enzyme is blocked, fat cannot be stored in the cell.
Interestingly, this is the exact same "switch" animals use to fatten up in the fall and to burn fat during the winter. Fructose is the dietary ingredient that turns on this "switch," causing cells to accumulate fat, both in animals and in humans. His latest book, The Fat Switch, dispels many of the most pervasive myths relating to diet and obesity. There are five basic truths that Dr. Johnson explains in detail in the book that overturn current concepts:
  1. Large portions of food and too little exercise are NOT solely responsible for why you are gaining weight
  2. Metabolic Syndrome is actually a healthy adaptive condition that animals undergo to store fat to help them survive periods of famine. The problem is most all of us are always feasting and never undergo fasting. Our bodies have not adapted to this yet and as a result, this beneficial switch actually causes damage to contemporary man
  3. Uric acid is increased by specific foods and causally contributes to obesity and insulin resistance
  4. Fructose-containing sugars cause obesity not by calories but by turning on the ‘fat switch’
  5. Effective treatment of obesity requires turning off your fat switch and improving the function of your cells' mitochondria
I highly recommend picking up a copy of this book, which is a useful tool for those struggling with their weight. Dietary sugar, and fructose in particular, is a significant "tripper of your fat switch," so understanding how sugars of all kinds affect your weight and health is imperative.
Is Any Amount of Sugar Safe?
Excess sugar consumption has been clearly linked to health problems like diabetes,5 heart attack6 and much more, so it’s likely that the less sugar you eat, the better, and this is particularly true when it comes to fructose. As a standard recommendation, I advise keeping your TOTAL fructose consumption below 25 grams per dayFor most people, it would also be wise to limit your fructose from fruit to 15 grams or less, as you're virtually guaranteed to consume "hidden" sources of fructose if you drink beverages other than water and eat processed food.
Fifteen grams of fructose is not much -- it represents two bananas, one-third cup of raisins, or two Medjool dates. Remember, the average 12-ounce can of soda contains 40 grams of sugar, at least half of which is fructose, so one can of soda alone would exceed your daily allotment.  
I realize that there is a controversy over fructose from fruits. I believe that the average American will benefit from following these fructose restrictions, as many are seriously overweight. But for those who are fit and normal body weight, I suspect you could increase those levels significantly if the fructose is from WHOLE fruit, not juice, and not suffer any complications. More than likely you would receive health benefits from the phytonutrients in the fruit as long as you were fit and not overweight.
In his book, The Sugar Fix, Dr. Johnson includes detailed tables showing the content of fructose in different foods -- an information base that isn't readily available when you're trying to find out exactly how much fructose is in various foods. I encourage you to pick up a copy of this excellent resource. You can find an abbreviated listing of the fructose content of common fruits in this previous article.
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Dirty Local Government Construction Secrets


Watch your tax dollars closely:


Since the beginning of taxation there has been a certain class of people who think they are entitled to steal tax dollars.  A lot of this theft occurs through local, state and federal government construction projects.  Federal projects seem to be the hardest government projects to target, due to the mostly stringent safeguards that were established after years of theft.  Those safeguards are only effective when they are enforced; unfortunately enforcement becomes lax during some projects and theft still does occur.  State government projects are next in line because anti-theft safeguards and their enforcement are often less stringent than those of the federal government.  Local government projects are by far the easiest construction projects for thieves to target due to the lack of effective safeguards and the non-enforcement of safeguards that may exist.  The average citizen who passes by or visits a school construction project seldom wonders or questions whether all of the tax dollars appropriated for the project are being used just for that project.

The players who perpetrate this type of theft are normally within the higher echelon of local governments, construction companies, professional engineering services firms, etc.  Within local governments the key players are people like public school superintendents and their immediate staff, construction managers, purchasing agents, finance directors, county administrators and their immediate staff, county attorneys and elected board members.  The players within the businesses are generally the owners, CEO’s, CFO’s, sales reps and in many instances sub-contractors hired by the construction companies.  The players will often times manipulate governing laws in order to limit the number of people involved in certain projects.  In many instances they have been known to fabricate justifications for construction process decisions by manipulating committee member selections and agendas, providing false estimates of projected costs, manipulating professional services selection processes to limit the number of design engineers involved, manipulating construction company selection processes, passing insider information and limiting the involvement of the average citizen and tax payer. 

Some contractors have ongoing arrangements with government players that enable them to bid a predetermined percentage lower than the lowest responsible bid.  There are also instances where contractors will be among the last to submit a bid so they can wait for a government player to provide information on the first bids submitted.  The contractors then adjust their bid price accordingly and in many instances will include exclusions for various scopes of work that will later be charged as change orders.  Government construction project budgets normally have funds set aside to cover unforeseen increases in construction costs. Well bid, designed, constructed and managed construction projects normally will not require the utilization of these contingency funds.

Multi million dollar construction projects require the purchase of many types of building materials.  The quantities of a vast number of these materials will fluctuate somewhat with project construction.  Most of these fluctuations are considered normal within reason. Unfortunately, this normal occurrence is used in many instances as the catalyst to perpetrate numerous crimes to include the theft of tax dollars.  In most instances no cash changes hands between the thieves because moving large quantities of cash is becoming ever harder to hide. Payoffs are more frequently made in the form of things like building materials and labor to provide someone a new house, catering and other expenses at someone’s wedding or other private function, assistance in loan financing, a new car or boat, trip and travel expenses, college funds, etc.

When building materials are used for payoff, shipments of the necessary payoff quantities are normally diverted to a location other than the intended government project. The cost of the materials is then buried in the government project costs and no one is the wiser.  When labor is used or included in a payoff, subcontractors associated with the government project are normally used.  All or a portion of the labor costs to build the payoff house are also then buried in the government project costs.  The tax payers are ripped off and one of the perpetrators builds a house for a fraction of what it would really cost. 

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Gerald Celente - USA Watch Dog, Trending News

Coat of arms of Syria -- the "Hawk of Qur...
Coat of arms of Syria  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)




Top Trends of 2014: Iran, Syria, Egypt, Israel, Yemen and Turkey are just a few of the countries facing big problems. Interest rates are going to go up, When interest rates go up, the economy is going down—period. I think they are going to institute more tapering, and it's going to create a financial crisis worldwide. It will be a year of extremes.
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The Globalist Asia, Podcast E193 How Close Have We Come To Nuclear War?

Canterbury Cathedral: West Front, Nave and Cen...
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)



The Globalist: Asia.  Podcast edition number 193.  A daily radio broadcast out of England.  International news from outside the US.  Don't have time to listen to this here?  Download a copy to listen to it at a later time.  How close have we come to nuclear war?  Check out this show to find out.
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CNN's Anderson Cooper, 360, Daily Podcast Jan. 2nd, 2014

Anderson Cooper visited Wolfson Children's Hos...
Anderson Cooper visited Wolfson Children's Hospital. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)



Anderson Cooper, 360 Degrees.  January 2nd, 2014 daily podcast.  Over 100 million people affected by major storms across the nation.  Sorry, CNN does not offer downloads on these podcasts.  You have to play this one here.
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How to Stop the FBI From Reading Your Email

Federal Bureau of Investigation Seal
Federal Bureau of Investigation Seal (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)



If you take a listen to this broadcast, I do not care what you want to call it, it's a clear violation of everyone's privacy what the FBI is doing here as well as any other government agency.  I could care less what laws they are talking about as those laws are in direct violation of and or to the United States Constitution.  No questions about it.
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Reasons To Quit Facebook In 2014, Wall Street Journal This Morning. Podcast

Facebook logo Español: Logotipo de Facebook Fr...
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)



Radio podcast from the Wall Street Journal This Morning.  Sound reasons to just leave Facebook and stop using that network altogether.  The main issue in debate for no longer using the service?  Very serious privacy issue and violations.  Yes, Facebook is now invading your privacy without your knowledge or approval.

  Who needs to support a company that has no respect for others?  Time to just say goodby.
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