Disturbing Truth about Factory Farms and Superbugs

English: A ruptured MRSA cyst. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Dr. Mercola

According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), antibiotic resistance is a major threat to public health worldwide, and the primary cause for this man-made epidemic is the widespread misuse of antibiotics.1

Antibiotic overuse occurs not just in medicine, but also in food production. In fact, agricultural usage accounts for about 80 percent of all antibiotic use in the US,2 so it's a MAJOR source of human antibiotic consumption.

According to a 2009 report3 by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on this subject, factory farms used a whopping 29 million pounds of antibiotics that year alone.

Animals are often fed antibiotics at low doses for disease prevention and growth promotion, and those antibiotics are transferred to you via meat, and even through the animal manure that is used as crop fertilizer.

Antibiotics are also used to compensate for the crowded, unsanitary living conditions associated with large-scale confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

CDC Confirms Link Between CAFOs and Superbugs

Now, the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention4 (CDC) has finally come out saying that yes, antibiotics used in livestock plays a role in antibiotic resistance and “should be phased out.” According to the CDC’s report,5 22 percent of antibiotic-resistant illness in humans is in fact linked to food. As reported by the featured article:6

“The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) said that the report shows that drug-resistant hazards in the food supply pose a serious threat to public health. One-third of the 12 resistant pathogens that CDC categorized as a ‘serious’ threat to public health are found in food.”

The four drug-resistant pathogens in question are Campylobacter, which causes an estimated 310,000 infections and 28 deaths per year; Salmonella, responsible for another 100,000 infections and 38 deaths annually; along with E.coli and Shigella. To address this growing problem, the CDC’s report issues the following recommendations:

• Avoid inappropriate antibiotic use in food animals
• Track antibiotic use in food animals
• Stop spread of Campylobacter among animals on farms
• Improve food production and processing to reduce contamination
• Educate consumers and food workers about safe food handling practices

Source: CDC.gov, Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2013

MRSA Spreading Via Hog Farms?

Two drug-resistant pathogens more commonly associated with antibiotic overuse in human medicine include Clostridium difficile and Staphylococcus aureus. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infects more than 80,460 people and kills 11,285 people annually. Disturbingly, as discussed in a recentMother Jones7 article, MRSA infection has been rapidly increasing among peopleoutside hospital settings as well.

As stated in the article:

“Increasing evidence points to factory-scale hog facilities as a source. In a recent study,8 a team of researchers led by University of Iowa's Tara Smith found MRSA in 8.5 percent of pigs on conventional farms and no pigs on antibiotic-free farms. Meanwhile, a study9, 10 just released by the journalJAMA Internal Medicine found that people who live near hog farms or places where hog manure is applied as fertilizer have a much greater risk of contracting MRSA.”

In the latter study, people with the highest exposure to manure were 38 percent more likely to contract community-associated MRSA, and 30 percent more likely to get healthcare-associated MRSA. Level of exposure was calculated based on proximity to hog farms, the size of the farms, and how much manure the farm in question used.

Back in 2009 a University of Iowa study11 found that a full 70 percent of hogs and 64 percent of workers in industrial animal confinements tested positive for antibiotic-resistant MRSA. The study pointed out that, once MRSA is introduced, it could spread broadly to other swine and their caretakers, as well as to their families and friends.

In other parts of the world, such as the European Union, the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in animal feed has been banned for years. Yet in the US this is still a topic of debate, with industry supporters trying to downplay the inevitable fact that this irresponsible use of antibiotics is most likely posing a serious risk to human health and the environment.

As reported in 2011, you have a 50/50 chance of buying meat tainted with drug-resistant bacteria when you buy meat from your local grocery store. This shocking finding came from a study by the Translational Genomics Research Institute,12which revealed that 47 percent of the meat and poultry samples tested contained antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. These were samples from 80 different brands of beef, chicken, pork, and turkey from more than two dozen grocery stores scattered across the United States, in large cities from Los Angeles to Washington D.C.

The fact that antibiotic-resistant superbugs are found so widely in US meat supplies is a major red flag, a sign that we are nearing the point of no return where superbugs will continue to flourish with very little we can do to stop them. While I am not one to recommend many medications, antibiotics can be VERY useful when you need to treat a serious bacterial infection. When used properly, in the correct contexts and with responsibility, antibiotics can and do save lives that are threatened by bacterial infections. But they will only remain effective if urgent changes are made to curb the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and disease… and this will only happen with a serious reduction in their use now.

Choose Your Foods Wisely

Conventional medicine certainly needs to curtail its prescriptions for antibiotics, but even if you use antibiotics judiciously you're still exposed to great amounts of antibiotics from the foods you eat, and this is entirely unnecessary. This is one of the primary reasons why I ONLY recommend organic, grass-fed, free-range meats or organic pastured chickens, as non-medical use of antibiotics is not permitted in organic farming. They’re also far superior to CAFO-raised meats in terms of nutritional content.

To source pure, healthful meats, your best option is to get to know a local farmer -- one who uses non-toxic farming methods. If you live in an urban area, there are increasing numbers of community-supported agriculture programs available that offer access to healthy, locally grown foods even if you live in the heart of the city. Being able to find high-quality meat is such an important issue for me personally that I've made connections with sources I know provide high-quality organic grass-fed beef and free-range chicken, both of which you can find in my online store. You can eliminate the shipping charges, however, if you find a trusted farmer locally. If you live in the US, the Weston Price Foundation13 also has local chapters in most states, and many of them are connected with buying clubs in which you can easily purchase these types of foods, including grass-fed raw dairy products like milk and butter.

How CAFO Meats May Decimate Your Gut Health

Antibiotic-resistant disease is not the only danger associated with the misuse of these drugs. Excessive exposure to antibiotics—which includes regularly eating antibiotic-laced CAFO meats—also takes a heavy toll on your gastrointestinal health. This in turn can predispose you to virtually any disease. Protecting your gut health and reducing the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are significant reasons for making sure you're only eating grass-fed, organically-raised meats.

In related news, researchers at Oregon State University point out the close links between your gut health and a wide range of health issues.14 As noted in the university press release:

“Problems ranging from autoimmune disease to clinical depression and simple obesity may in fact be linked to immune dysfunction that begins with a ‘failure to communicate’ in the human gut, the scientists say. Health care of the future may include personalized diagnosis of an individual’s ‘microbiome’ to determine what prebiotics or probiotics are needed to provide balance.

Appropriate sanitation such as clean water and sewers are good. But some erroneous lessons in health care may need to be unlearned—leaving behind the fear of dirt, the love of antimicrobial cleansers, and the outdated notion that an antibiotic is always a good idea. We live in a world of ‘germs’ and many of them are good for us.

An emerging theory of disease, [Dr. Natalia] Shulzhenko said, is a disruption in the ‘crosstalk’ between the microbes in the human gut and other cells involved in the immune system and metabolic processes. ‘In a healthy person, these microbes in the gut stimulate the immune system as needed, and it in turn talks back,’ Shulzhenko said. ‘There’s an increasing disruption of these microbes from modern lifestyle, diet, overuse of antibiotics and other issues. With that disruption, the conversation is breaking down.’”

The widespread deterioration of people’s gut health can be traced back to the change in our modern diet. This includes the introduction of meats from unnaturally-raised livestock, fed genetically engineered corn and soy along with a mixture of antibiotics and other drugs. But another important dietary factor is the shunning of traditionally fermented foods, which are naturally high in the beneficial bacteria necessary for optimal gut health. Mounting research shows that beneficial bacteria in your gut is likely to have significant benefits to your health and may be essential for:

• Protection against over-growth of other microorganisms that could cause disease
• Digestion of food and absorption of nutrients and certain carbohydrates
• Producing vitamins, absorbing minerals, and eliminating toxins
• Preventing allergies
• Maintaining natural defenses

Numerous studies have also shown that your gut flora plays a role in:

• Mood, psychological health, and behavior
• Celiac disease
• Diabetes
• Weight gain and obesity
• Metabolic syndrome

Nurturing Your Gut Flora Is One of the Foundations of Optimal Health

Besides antibiotics, your gut bacteria are also vulnerable to factors such as chlorinated water, antibacterial soaps, pollution, and agricultural chemicals—especially glyphosate, which, incidentally, is the most widely used herbicide in the world. To protect your gut health, it’s important to avoid processed, refined foods in your diet and to regularly reseed your gut with good bacteria by eating non-pasteurized, traditionally fermented foods, such as fermented vegetables, or taking a high-quality probiotic supplement.

One of the reasons why fermented foods are so beneficial is because they contain a wide variety of different beneficial bacteria. Also, if fermented with a probiotics starter culture, the amount of healthy bacteria in a serving of fermented vegetables can far exceed the amount you’ll find in commercial probiotics supplements, making it a very cost-effective alternative. Ideally, you want to eat a variety of fermented foods to maximize the variety of bacteria you’re consuming. Healthy options include:

Lassi (an Indian yogurt drink, traditionally enjoyed before dinner)	Various pickled fermentations of cabbage (sauerkraut), turnips, eggplant, cucumbers, onions, squash, and carrots	Tempeh
Traditionally fermented raw milk such as kefir or yogurt, but NOT commercial versions, which typically do not have live cultures and are loaded with sugars that feed pathogenic bacteria	Natto (fermented soy)	Kim chee

When choosing fermented foods, steer clear of pasteurized versions, as pasteurization will destroy many of the naturally occurring probiotics. This includes most of the "probiotic" yogurts you find in every grocery store these days; since they're pasteurized, they will be associated with all of the problems of pasteurized milk products. They also typically contain added sugars, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial coloring, and artificial sweeteners, all of which will only worsen your health.

When you first start out, you’ll want to start small, adding as little as half a tablespoon of fermented vegetables to each meal, and gradually working your way up to about a quarter to half a cup (2 to 4 oz) of fermented vegetables or other cultured food with one to three meals per day. Since cultured foods are efficient detoxifiers, you may experience detox symptoms, or a "healing crisis," if you introduce too many at once. That said, three very positive changes occur when your good-to-bad intestinal bacteria ratio is brought back into balance:

• Digestive problems diminish or disappear
• Your immune system de-stresses and is better equipped to fight off disease of all kinds, contributing to a longer and healthier life
• Your body begins to use all the good food and nutritional supplements you feed it

Related articles

• CDC Reveals Disturbing Truth about Factory Farms and Superbugs
• Factory Farms Fueling Antibiotic Resistance, CDC Report
• Superbugs on the Rise, and Evidence Mounts Against Factory Farms
• Did you know the meat and poultry you buy has high levels of antibiotic resistant superbugs that can be transferred to humans?
• As Superbugs Rise, New Studies Point To Factory Farms (Op-Ed)

Banish Afternoon Fatigue

Sick and Tired (Anastacia song) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Dr. Mercola

Many people experience a slump in energy levels by the time the afternoon rolls around. A number of factors may contribute to this phenomenon. The most common cause is post-lunch hypoglycemia, which is related to your inability to burn fat.

Hence, addressing your diet is key if afternoon fatigue is something you contend with on a regular basis. Besides alterations in your diet, intermittent fasting is one of the most effective ways to switch your body from burning carbs to burning fat, thereby boosting your mental and physical stamina.

Other factors are related to when and how much you exercise. Poor sleep also plays a role, of course, and recent research highlights the interconnectedness between sleep and exercise.

Diet Is Key for Maintaining Your Energy Levels

There are two fuels your body can use, sugar and fat. The sad reality is that our ancestors were adapted to using fat as their primary fuel and over 99 percent of us are now adapted to using sugar or glucose as our number one fuel source.

Because most are primarily burning carbs as fuel, afternoon fatigue is typically related to post-lunch hypoglycemia. By switching your body from using carbs as its primary fuel to burning fats instead, or becoming “fat adapted,” you virtually eliminate such drops in energy levels. Overall, being adapted to burning fat instead of carbs has a number of benefits, including:

• Having plenty of accessible energy on hand, as you effectively burn stored fat for energy throughout the day. One way to tell if you’re fat adapted or not is to take note of how you feel when you skip a meal. If you can skip meals without getting ravenous and cranky (or craving carbs), you’re likely fat-adapted.
• Improved insulin and leptin sensitivity and decreased risk of virtually every known chronic degenerative disease.
• Effectively burn dietary fat for your energy, which leads to less dietary fat being stored in your adipose tissue—hence the weight loss benefits associated with fat adaptation.
• Being able to rely more on fat for energy during exertion, sparing glycogen for when you really need it. This can improve athletic performance, and helps burn more body fat. As explained by Mark Sisson, author of The Primal Blueprint, if you can handle exercising without having to carb-load, you’re probably fat-adapted. If you can work out effectively in a fasted state, you’re definitely fat-adapted.

First, Replace Carbs with Healthful Fats

Keep in mind that when we're talking about harmful carbs, we're only referring to grains and sugars, NOT vegetable carbs. You need very little if any of the former, and plenty of the latter. In fact, when you cut out sugar and grains, you need to radically increase the amount of vegetables you eat since, by volume, the grains you need to trade out are denser than vegetables. You also need to dramatically increase healthful fats, which include:

Olives and olive oil (for cold dishes)	Coconuts, and coconut oil (for all types of cooking and baking)	Butter made from raw grass-fed organic milk
Raw nuts, such as almonds or pecans	Organic pastured egg yolks	Avocados
Pasture-finished meats	Palm oil	Unheated organic nut oils

Avoid highly processed and genetically engineered omega-6 oils like corn, canola and soy as they will upset your omega 6/3 ratio. Trans fats should also be avoided, but contrary to popular advice, saturated fats are a key component of a healthy diet. A reasonable goal will be to have as much as 50-70 percent of daily calories from healthy fat, which will radically reduce your carbohydrate intake.

Fat is far more satiating than carbs, so if you have cut down on carbs and still feel ravenous, it’s a sign that you have not replaced them with sufficient amounts of healthy fat. Most people will likely notice massive improvement in their health and overall energy levels by following this approach. To help you get started on the right track, review my Nutritional Plan, which guides you through these dietary changes one step at a time.

How Intermittent Fasting Can Help

Once you’ve addressed your diet, you can try intermittent fasting. This will effectively help shift your body from carb- to fat-burning mode. Please do not embark on a fasting regimen if you’re still subsisting primarily on processed foods and fast food meals, however. Since it involves skipping meals, making sure you’re getting high quality nutrients with each meal you do eat becomes all the more critical.

Intermittent fasting involves timing your meals to allow for regular periods of fasting. It takes about six to eight hours for your body to metabolize your glycogen stores and after that you start to shift to burning fat. If you keep replenishing your glycogen by eating every eight hours (or sooner), you make it far more difficult for your body to use your fat stores as fuel. Remember, your ancient ancestors never had access to a 24/7 supply of food like virtually all of us do with modern supermarkets. By necessity they regularly engaged in periods of fasting as they had no choice.

While there are several different intermittent fasting regimens, one of the easiest to implement simply involves restricting your daily eating to a narrower window of time, say 6-8 hours, instead of grazing all day long. This equates to 16-18 hours’ worth of fasting each and every day—enough to get your body to shift into fat-burning mode. Once you have made the shift to burning fat as your primary fuel, you will be shocked at how your cravings for sugar and junk food virtually disappear.

As a precautionary note, if you're hypoglycemic, diabetic, have adrenal fatigue or pregnant (and/or breastfeeding), you are better off avoiding any type of fasting or timed meal schedule until you've normalized your blood glucose and insulin levels, or weaned your baby. Other categories of people that would be best served to avoid fasting include those living with chronic stress and those with cortisol dysregulation.

Intermittent fasting also works synergistically with high-intensity interval training (HIIT), which is a foundational part of mycomprehensive exercise recommendations. The combination of fasting and exercising maximizes the impact of cellular factors and catalysts (cyclic AMP and AMP Kinases), which force the breakdown of both fat and glycogen for energy.

Fighting Fatigue with Exercise

The issue of afternoon fatigue was recently covered in a Wall Street Journal1 article, which placed the focus on exercise. Personally, I believe that altering your diet and implementing intermittent fasting will have a far greater impact than making alterations to your exercise schedule alone. But, that said, some of the advice given may be helpful in conjunction with your dietary changes. As reported in the featured article:

“Researchers and fitness trainers say whether you exercise in the morning, afternoon or evening, small changes in your routine can keep you from suffering midday blahs.

Midday is the ideal time to exercise, some fitness experts say. A workout then can give you an energy boost lasting three to four hours... If you prefer working out in the evenings, it's best to avoid exercising two to three hours before bedtime to avoid sleep disruption... On the other hand, if you are a morning exerciser and not getting seven to nine hours of sleep, Lona Sandon, a Dallas fitness instructor and assistant clinical nutrition professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, suggests getting to bed earlier or exercising in the evening.

To avoid midday fatigue and preserve energy throughout the day, most trainers recommend doing more moderate workouts, meaning those in which you hit 70% to 80% of your target heart rate. "Listen to what your body is telling you," says Ms. Sandon. "If you have a high-stress work environment then vigorous workouts may not make you feel better. You might be better off with restorative yoga so your brain can slow down." An ideal schedule would be two to three high-intensity workouts during the week, mixed in with lighter workouts like yoga, walking or weight training, say fitness experts.”

The Importance of Non-Exercise Movement During Your Workday

Sitting for prolonged periods of time can also be a source of fatigue. Besides that, compelling research shows that prolonged sitting in and of itself is a major contributing factor to chronic disease and reduced lifespan—even if you exercise regularly.

To counteract the adverse health effects of sitting, which go far beyond mere fatigue, make it a point to stand up every 10 minutes or so. As explained by Dr. Joan Vernikos, former director of NASA’s Life Sciences Division and author of Sitting Kills, Moving Heals, the reason for these ill effects are due to the fact that when you sit, you’re not interacting with gravity.

Based on her groundbreaking research, we now know that the key is in how many times you interact with gravity, such as standing up from your seated position, in any given day. The act of standing up makes your body interact with the forces of gravity, which is what produces beneficial health effects. Interestingly, the lipoprotein lipase is dramatically reduced during inactivity, and increases with activity, the most effective activity being standing up from a seated position. Lipoprotein lipase is an enzyme that attaches to fat in your bloodstream and transports it into your muscles to be used as fuel. So essentially, simply by standing up, you are also actively helping your body to burn fat for fuel.

After reading Dr. Vernikos's book, Sitting Kills, Moving Heals, and interviewing her, I was inspired to give some serious attention to this because even though I perform a lot of structured exercise, including high intensity interval training, I too was guilty of sitting down a vast majority of the rest of the day.

I simply set a timer on my computer to go off every 10 minutes, at which point I rise from my chair and do four jump squats. As explained by Dr. Vernikos, squatting is an extension of standing. If you squat and stand, you can get the maximum benefit of working against the force of gravity. Moving every 10 minutes or so will also get your blood pumping to oxygenate your cells, which will also combat fatigue. I mix it up though and try to do six to eight different moves every 10 minutes. The ones I currently use are one legged squats, two legged squats, lunges, jump squats, hamstring stretches and pectoral doorway stretches.

An Obvious Culprit: Poor Sleep...

Not to be ignored of course is sleep. If you’re not sleeping well, it will be next to impossible to avoid lagging energy levels. According to recent research, maintaining a regular exercise program can help improve your sleep over time2. It can also boost your cognitive performance, as evidenced by a number of studies3. In one recent study evaluating the effect of exercise on sleep,4volunteers with sleep complaints took two-hour forest-walks to assess how it affected their sleep patterns. According to the authors:

“Two hours of forest walking improved sleep characteristics; impacting actual sleep time, immobile minutes, self-rated depth of sleep, and sleep quality... Furthermore, extension of sleep duration was greater after an afternoon walk compared to a forenoon walk.”

In another study5, the results suggested that improved sleep had a beneficial influence on exercise performance the next day, rather than the exercise influencing sleep. Over time, however, exercise will tend to improve your sleep patterns, even if you’re struggling with more serious sleep problems. As reported by Yahoo News6:

“While prior research has shown that for most people, exercising can improve sleep, for insomniacs the relationship may be a bit more convoluted, the new evidence suggests. The rationale? Head researcher Baron told the New York Times that people with insomnia tend to be 'neurologically different' and have a 'hyper-arousal of the stress system.' Breaking a sweat in the gym one day isn't likely to override the system, she said, and could even exacerbate it.

Still, if you struggle with insomnia and currently don't exercise, Baron said that it's advisable to start -- but don't expect miracles. The process could take months, which can be frustrating for someone suffering from sleep deprivation. 'If you have insomnia you won't exercise yourself into sleep right away,' she said in a press release. 'It's a long-term relationship. You have to keep at it and not get discouraged.'"

Some Sleep Basics

That said, it seems clear that you can help set up a positive feedback loop where both your sleep and exercise benefits. Two key points to remember if you’re having difficulty sleeping include the following. For more tips, please see my article 33 Steps to a Good Night’s Sleep.

• Create a sleep sanctuary. This means removing items associated with entertainment, recreation, work and hobbies, and turning your bedroom into a single-purpose space—one for sleeping. Of utmost importance: Make sure your bedroom iscool, dark and quiet. These three factors can have a major impact on your sleep. In regards to temperature, studies show that the optimal room temperature for sleep is quite cool, between 60 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit, so keep the temperature in your bedroom no higher than 70 degrees.
As for light, even the tiniest bit of light in the room can disrupt your internal clock and your pineal gland's production of melatonin and serotonin, hormones involved in your body’s circadian rhythm of sleep and wakefulness. So close your bedroom door, get rid of night-lights, and most importantly, cover your windows. I recommend using blackout shades or heavy, opaque drapes. Also cover up your clock if it has a lit display. Alternatively, you could wear an eye mask to block out any stray light.
• Turn off your gadgets well before bedtime. Again, the artificial glow from your TV, iPad, computer or smartphone can serve as a stimulus for keeping you awake well past your bedtime by disrupting melatonin production. I recommend turning off all electronic gadgets at least one hour before bed. As Rothstein suggests, that time is far better spent reading a good old fashioned book, practicing relaxation techniques or meditating.

Banish Afternoon Fatigue with Appropriate Diet and Lifestyle Changes

So remember, if you’re frequently battling with afternoon fatigue, check your lunch selections, first of all. More often than not, you’ll find that the more carb-heavy your lunch, the more apt you are to feel tired an hour or two later. To remedy the situation, focus on shifting your diet from carbs to healthful fats. Once your diet has been addressed, implementing intermittent fasting is an effective strategy for really shifting your body into fat-burning mode.

Just remember that proper nutrition becomes even MORE important when fasting, so I believe that addressing your diet is your first step. Always listen to your body, and go slowly ; work your way up to 16-18 hour fasts if your normal schedule has included multiple meals a day. Also be sure to address any hypoglycemic tendencies, such as headaches, weakness, tremors or irritability, as it can get increasingly dangerous the longer you go without eating to level out your blood sugar.

Once you’re fat adapted, your energy levels will remain fairly stable throughout the entire day, and you hunger cravings will virtually disappear. Exercise and sleep are also important factors, so experiment with your workout schedule to see what works best for you. Again, proper sleep can boost your exercise performance, and exercise in turn can help improve your sleep, forming a positive feedback loop.

 http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2013/09/13/afternoon-fatigue.aspx  Link back to Mercola.com website.

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Mental Health Disorders Leading Cause of Non-Fatal Illness Worldwide

English: Logo of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services. White on blue background with white rays but no white "burst". No detailed wording. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Dr. Mercola

Depression is a pervasive health issue today. According to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one in 10 American adults report some form of depression.1 Eleven percent of the US population over the age of 12 is on antidepressant medication.2

Just two years ago, Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, discussed how a shocking 46 percent of Americans fit a diagnosis for one form of mental illness or another.3 This problem is not limited to the United States, however.

In fact, according to a recent study published in The Lancet,4 mental disorders and substance abuse combined were the leading cause of non-fatal illness worldwide in 2010, contributing nearly 23 percent of the total global disease burden!

Data for the study was obtained from the 2010 Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study,5 which includes data from 187 countries. Depressive disorders were the most common, followed by anxiety disorders, drug use disorders, and schizophrenia.

Mental Health Problems on the Rise Across the Globe

The analysis6 also found that mental disorders and substance use disorders were the fifth leading cause of death and disease worldwide. Only China, North Korea, Japan and Nigeria had a statistically lower burden of death and disease from mental disorders and substance abuse. As reported in the featured article:7

“The authors say that this difference in non-fatal illness compared with the cause of death and disease is supported by the fact that mental and substance use disorders caused a low death rate in 2010 at 232,000, relative to the overall illness they caused.”

In all, mental and substance use disorders were responsible for higher global death and illness rates than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, diabetes, and car accidents. Females over the age of 14 had a higher risk of death and disease from mental disorders compared to males.

Males, on the other hand, had a higher risk of death and disease from drug and alcohol dependence across all age groups. According to the authors:8

“Despite the apparently small contribution of years of life lost to premature mortality—with deaths in people with mental disorders coded to the physical cause of death and suicide coded to the category of injuries under self-harm—our findings show the striking and growing challenge that these disorders pose for health systems in developed and developing regions.

In view of the magnitude of their contribution, improvement in population health is only possible if countries make the prevention and treatment of mental and substance use disorders a public health priority.”

This overall trend of rising mental disorders and drug abuse can also be seen in a 2010 US government survey9 in which 1 in 10 American children was found to have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)—a 22 percent increase from 2003.

A whopping 48.4 million prescriptions for ADHD stimulants were written in 2011 in the US,10 a 39 percent jump from 2007. Meanwhile, emergency room visits due to adverse reactions to such drugs rose by more than 400 percent between 2005 and 2011.

What’s Causing This Rise in Worldwide Mental Health Disturbances?

While I’m sure there are many contributing causes, from impoverished circumstances and poor health to poorly managed day-to-day stress and high-tension due to regional wars and strife just to name a few, I also think it’s important to consider massive recent shifts in food choices throughout the world.

Countries across the globe have shifted to far more industrialized processed and devitalized foods that rely heavily on the use of genetically engineered corn and soy. This denatured Western diet has spread its pernicious influence into the developing world as well.

I simply cannot overstate the importance of your food choices when it comes to your mental health. In a very real sense, you have TWO brains—one in your head, and one in your gut—both of which are created from the same tissue during fetal development.

These two systems are connected via the vagus nerve, the tenth cranial nerve that runs from your brain stem down to your abdomen. It is now well established that the vagus nerve is the primary route your gut bacteria use to transmit information to your brain.

Maintaining optimal gut health is therefore paramount when trying to address your mental state. In this regard, the modern “Western” diet has several things working against it:

• Genetically modified foods can significantly alter your gut flora, thereby promoting pathogens while decimating the beneficial microbes necessary for optimal mental and physical health
• Glyphosate—the most widely used herbicide on food crops in the world with nearly ONE BILLION pounds applied every year—has been shown to cause both nutritional deficiencies, especially minerals (which are critical for brain function), and systemic toxicity.
According to the researchers, glyphosate is possibly the most important factor in the development of multiple chronic diseases and conditions, and this includes mental health disorders such as depression. Dr. Don Huber believes it is far more toxic than DDT
• High-fructose diets also feed pathogens in your gut, allowing them to overtake beneficial bacteria. Furthermore, sugar suppresses activity of a key growth hormone in your brain called BDNF. BDNF levels are critically low in both depression and schizophrenia.
Sugar consumption also triggers a cascade of chemical reactions in your body that promote chronic inflammation. In the long term, inflammation disrupts the normal functioning of your immune system, and wreaks havoc on your brain. Last but not least, sugar (particularly fructose) and grains contribute to insulin and leptin resistance and impaired signaling, which also play a significant role in your mental health
• Artificial food ingredients, the artificial sweetener aspartame in particular, can wreak havoc with your brain function. Both depression and panic attacks are indeed known potential side effects of aspartame consumption

The Gut-Brain Connection Will Profoundly Influence Your Mental Health

The impact of your microflora on your brain function was recently reconfirmed by UCLA researchers who, in a proof-of-concept study,11 found that probiotics (beneficial bacteria) indeed altered the brain function in the participants. As reported by UCLA:12

“Researchers have known that the brain sends signals to your gut, which is why stress and other emotions can contribute to gastrointestinal symptoms. This study shows what has been suspected but until now had been proved only in animal studies: that signals travel the opposite way as well. 'Time and time again, we hear from patients that they never felt depressed or anxious until they started experiencing problems with their gut,' [Dr. Kirsten] Tillisch said. 'Our study shows that the gut–brain connection is a two-way street.'"

Similarly, as explained by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, a medical doctor with a postgraduate degree in neurology, toxicity in your gut can flow throughout your body and into your brain, where it can cause symptoms of autism, ADHD, depression, schizophrenia and a whole host of other mental and behavioral disorders. With this in mind, it should be crystal clear that nourishing your gut flora is extremely important from infancy into old age. To do so, I recommend the following strategies:

• Avoid processed, refined foods in your diet.
• Eat traditionally fermented, unpasteurized foods: Fermented foods are the best route to optimal digestive health, as long as you eat the traditionally made, unpasteurized versions. Some of the beneficial bacteria found in fermented foods are also excellent chelators of heavy metals and pesticides, which will also have a beneficial health effect by reducing your toxic load. Healthy choices include:
• Fermented vegetables
• Lassi (an Indian yoghurt drink, traditionally enjoyed before dinner)
• Fermented milk, such as kefir
• Natto (fermented soy)
Ideally, you want to eat a variety of fermented foods to maximize the variety of bacteria you’re consuming. Fermented vegetables, which are one of my new passions, are an excellent way to supply beneficial bacteria back into our gut. And, unlike some other fermented foods, they tend to be palatable, if not downright delicious, to most people.
As an added bonus, they can also a great source of vitamin K2 if you ferment your own using the proper starter culture. We tested samples of high-quality fermented organic vegetables made a specific starter culture, and a typical serving (about two to three ounces) contained not only 10 trillion beneficial bacteria, it also had 500 mcg of vitamin K2, which we now know is a vital co-nutrient to both vitamin D and calcium. Most high-quality probiotic supplements will only supply you with a fraction of the beneficial bacteria found in such homemade fermented veggies, so it’s your most economical route to optimal gut health as well. 
• Take a high-quality probiotic supplement. Although I'm not a major proponent of taking many supplements (as I believe the majority of your nutrients need to come from food), probiotics is an exception if you don’t eat fermented foods on a regular basis.

 http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/09/12/mental-health-disorders.aspx  Please visit Mercola.com for more on this issue.

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Lyme Disease in the US Is 10-Times Higher Than Previously Reported

These black-legged ticks, Ixodes scapularis, are found on a wide range of hosts including mammals, birds and reptiles. Black-legged ticks, I. scapularis are known to transmit Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi, to humans and animals during feeding, when they insert their mouth parts into the skin of a host, and slowly take in the nutrient-rich host blood. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Dr. Mercola

It’s now been fairly well-established that chronic inflammation is an underlying factor in most chronic illnesses. Diseases, such as Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, cardiomyopathy, gastritis, and chronic fatigue, are all turning out to be expressions of chronic infections.

Lyme disease appears to be a major, yet oftentimes hidden, player. This may sound shocking to you, but diagnosing Lyme is very difficult, so the actual number of cases is high relative to reporting.

According to preliminary statistics1, 2 just released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 300,000 new cases of Lyme disease are diagnosed in the US each year. This is about 10 times higher than the officially reported number of cases, indicating that the disease is being vastly underreported.

The data was presented by CDC officials at the 2013 International Conference on Lyme Borreliosis and Other Tick-Borne Diseases in Boston in the middle of August. As reported in the featured article by Medical News Today3:

“This agrees with studies reported in the 1990s that showed the actual number of Lyme diseases cases in the US was likely to be three to twelve times higher than reported... Lyme disease is the most commonly reported tick-borne illness in the US.”

What Is Lyme disease?

Lyme disease was named after the East Coast town of Lyme, Connecticut, where the disease was first identified in 1975.4 The disease was first referred to as "Lyme arthritis" due to the presentation of atypical arthritic symptoms in children that lived in that city. By 1977, the black-legged tick (Ixodes scapularis, also known as the deer tick) was linked to transmission of the infection.

Then in 1982, Willy Burgdorfer, PhD, discovered the bacterium responsible for the infection: the spirochete, named after him, Borrelia burgdorferi,5 is a cousin to the spirochete bacterium that causes syphilis.

In fact, the two look almost identical under a microscope. B. burgdorferi's corkscrew-shaped form allows it to burrow into and hide in a variety of your body's tissues, which is why it causes such wide-ranging multisystem involvement.

Borrelia burgdorferi does not just exist as a spirochete; it has the ability to live intracellularly (inside your cells) as an “L-form” and also encoated as a “cyst” form. These different morphologies explain why treatment is so difficult and recurrence of symptoms occurs after standard antibiotic protocols.

Adding to the difficulty in treating Lyme, the organisms may live in biofilm communities, which are basically a colony of germs surrounded by a slimy glue-like substance that is hard to unravel. For these reasons you will often see Lyme referred to as “stealth.”

No doubt about it, this clever maneuvering and the pleomorphism of the germ helps it hide and survive despite the most aggressive antibiotics of our time. Furthermore, as reported in the featured article:

“The Lyme disease bacterium has a quirky feature for survival. It can exist without iron, which most other living organisms require to make proteins and enzymes. Instead of iron, B. burgdorferi uses manganese, thus eluding immune system defenses that destroy pathogens by starving them of iron.”

You May Never See the Tick That Bites You

You can be host to the Lyme germ. The tick, which feeds off deer, birds, animals (including your pet), then gets on you. It numbs your skin so you won’t feel it. It prefers dark, crevices such as your armpit or behind your ear, or your scalp. Depending on the season, the tick may be a baby, termed a nymph.

It attaches to you (the host) and you may not see it since nymphs are no bigger than a poppy seed. Once it attaches itself to you it feeds on you (they are blood-suckers). At some point, and it may be an hour or a couple of days, it will ‘spit’ its bacterial load into you. The bacteria are released into your blood from the infected tick via saliva. We now know there are five subspecies ofBorrelia burgdorferi, more than 100 strains in the U.S. and 300 worldwide, many of which have developed resistance to our various antibiotics.

It’s worth noting that while many still attribute Lyme transmission exclusively to ticks, Dr. Deitrich Klinghardt, one of the leading authorities on Lyme disease, warns that the bacteria can also be spread by other insects, including mosquitoes, spiders, fleas, and mites. This may be the reason so few Lyme sufferers recall being bitten by a tick. The other reason of course, is that you don’t feel the bite, and usually don’t see the tick!

In fact, fewer than half of Lyme patients recall ever getting a tick bite. Many Lyme patients don't remember such an event because the tick numbs your skin before biting so it is never felt. In some studies,this number is as low as 15 percent. So, if you don't recall seeing a tick on your body, that doesn't rule out the possibility of Lyme disease. There’s even some evidence pointing to Lyme disease being capable of sexual and congenital transmission...

To add confusion to the story of Lyme disease, ticks usually transmit more than the Borrelia organism. They could simultaneously infect you with Bartonella, Rickettsia, Ehrlichia and Babesia. Any or all of these organisms can travel with Borrelia burgdorferi(the causative agent of Lyme) and each causes a different set of symptoms. When a person has Lyme, they often have some co-infections. Simply put, you can have one tick bite, and wind up with five different infections. Each patient with “Lyme disease” presents differently based upon their co-infections, making a standard treatment plan impossible. Treatment is based upon presentation of symptoms.

Lyme Disease: 'The Great Imitator'

Many Lyme patients who battle this disease on a daily basis appear healthy, which is why Lyme disease has been called "the invisible illness." They often "look good," and their routine blood work appears normal, but their internal experience is a far different story. Several people close to me, including my girlfriend Erin and a loved one of  Suzy Cohen, R. Ph, have struggled with Lyme disease for between 15 and 20 years. Both recently tested positive through the GeneX blood test discussed below. This is actually a common scenario for many Lyme patients.

The problem of misdiagnosis is typical for many Lyme patients because conventional labs are not good at detecting the causative agent (Borrelia burgdroferi) or it's co-infecting pathogens. Additionally, physicians have been told for years that Lyme does not occur in some states which is incorrect. Lyme is in every state, and in fact worldwide.

With Lyme, the most disabling symptoms are always invisible. You never feel completely well, there is always some issue to deal with, and as soon as one symptom retreats, another appears. The dial is spinning all the time. The constant and sometimes disabling symptoms leave you physically depleted and spiritually weakened. Complicating matters further, Lyme disease is also notoriously difficult to diagnose, and laboratory tests are known to be unreliable. It’s difficult to test for Lyme for a variety of reasons, but one of the main ones is that there are so many species of the germ, and only a handful of strains are detectable with current lab science technology.

It Can Happen to Anyone

Because Lyme and all of its co-infections cause so many constant symptoms, it easily mimics disorders, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), arthritis, Parkinson’s, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, ALS, ADHD and Alzheimer's disease. The only distinctive hallmark unique to Lyme disease is the "bull’s-eye" rash known as Erythema Migrans,6 a red rash with an expanding red ring around it and this occurs soon after the tick bite. After it clears up, this bull’s-eye rash is gone.

And for the record, it’s not even always in the shape of a bull’s eye. Perhaps now you understand why the cases reported to the CDC have been woefully low. But as just mentioned, less than half of all cases of Lyme can be traced to a tick bite, so this hallmark rash is absent in many of those infected.

So how do you know if you have Lyme disease? Besides the rash, some of the first symptoms of Lyme disease may include a flu-like condition with fever, chills, headache, stiff neck, achiness and fatigue. Treatment at this point is crucial because it may help you avoid chronic Lyme. If you don’t see the tick and remove it, it can progress to ailments like arthritis, facial palsy, nervous system and heart problems and a hundred other symptoms. For a more extensive list of symptoms, refer to the Tick-Borne Disease Alliance7 (TBDA), but some of the more frequent symptoms include the following:

• Muscle and joint pain
• Neurological problems
• Heart involvement
• Vision and hearing problems
• Migraines

To give you an example, recently the College of Charleston President George Benson was hospitalized for Lyme disease according to an email he addressed to campus members. Prior to this, he had been hospitalized for severe back pain, but no one was sure of the exact cause. His possible successor, Republican Lt. Gov. Glenn McConnell was also ill from Lyme disease last year according to The Associated Press. Lyme is everywhere, I suspect that even the most recent numbers reported by the CDC (300,000 cases) is lower than the actual real-life cases. For more real-life examples, see the discussion below, featuring two Lyme patients, and this recent CNN Health article8 by Erik Nivison, producer for HLN's "In Session,” who was recently diagnosed with Lyme disease after 2 years of symptoms.

Controversy Surrounding Lyme Disease

There’s a load of controversy around Lyme disease. In the past, sufferers were told their ailments were “all in their head,” and the disease was largely swept under the rug. Sadly, this still occurs today and this is frequently missed. The controversy for the most part today largely revolves around whether or not antibiotics are effective against chronic Lyme disease, and whether there even is such a thing as chronic Lyme.

According to Suzy Cohen, doctors that belong to the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) do not believe in chronic Lyme and typically will not treat a Lyme patient beyond four weeks. Some medical doctors and practitioners belong to the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society9 (ILADS) group, which does believe that Lyme can and often persists beyond a few weeks, and are willing to treat you beyond the four-week period.

I can tell you, chronic Lyme does exist, and no matter how long you’ve had it, there is always hope for a full recovery. It baffles me as to how physicians can deny infection when these organisms are stealth and evade detection and standard treatment protocols. As described by investigative journalist Beth Daley in the PBS interview10 above:

“It's a very controversial disease, in large part because there are so many questions about treatment and lingering symptoms of people with Lyme and if people actually have Lyme disease who are sick... [T]raditionally, you get bit by a tick, you might see a rash or feel a fever or you go to the doctor. They sort of diagnose you through tests or clinically. And you would probably get three to four weeks of oral antibiotics. And that is -- most people agree, is usually enough to knock the disease from your system completely. Sometimes, it goes a little bit longer if it's more involved, but short courses of antibiotics overall.

However, a large segment of people believe that their symptoms linger for years sometimes, and the only way to treat them is to use long-course antibiotics, often through intravenously or orally, for years on end to -- so they can live, so they can really get out of bed in the morning. And that is a controversy. The medical establishment says, listen, there's no proof this longer course of antibiotics work at all. And these Lyme patients say, yes, it does... And a lot of the debate centers on, a lot of insurance companies won't pay for those antibiotics. As a result, lots of people go bankrupt...”

According to Daley, there’s little discussion within the medical community to determine whether patients with lingering symptoms actually benefit from long-course antibiotics or not. However, some researchers are looking into the matter. Researchers at Yale, for example, are investigating whether the killed-off bacteria might be leaving protein residues behind, causing long-term symptoms. Other research being performed at Tufts suggests that the bacteria can indeed survive, at least in animal studies, and that this weakened bacteria might still contribute to problems. Daley also points out that these latest statistics really bring Lyme disease to the fore politically:

“If you just consider Massachusetts, which is -- where The Boston Globe is, we spend $10 million a year and more on mosquito control. We spend $60,000 on tick-borne diseases. The disparity is great. And as Lyme disease burden grows on public health, hopefully -- I think people are hoping that the political forces will come to bear, that they will start seeing money to eradicate ticks in the environment or help people learn more about them.”

I personally believe that long term antibiotic treatment is not a wise choice for most, and that every natural alternative should be considered prior to that strategy as there is a major danger for impairing your beneficial bacteria and developing a yeast or fungal co-infections, which are already common in the disease.

The use of antifungals like fluconazole and nystatin may certainly be appropriate and helpful when a secondary yeast infection is present, and it often is present in cases of Lyme disease. In an ideal world, you would boost your immune function with a healthy diet, antioxidants such as astaxanthin and even a compounded drug called low-dose naltrexone (LDN), known to help your body fight harder. A gentler solution to conventional antibiotics that can strip your body of needed probiotics and cause a myriad of symptoms is the Nutramedix line of herbal antimicrobials. This was developed by my friend Dr. Lee Cowden and is often termed the “Cowden Protocol.” It is not thought to cause resistance because this protocol cycles various herbal antimicrobials.

Is There Such a Thing as Chronic Lyme Disease?

Slate Magazine11 ran an article earlier this summer highlighting the controversy surrounding chronic Lyme disease, also referred to as “post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome” (PTLDS). According to some studies,12 PTLDS affects 0.5 to 13 percent of patients treated for Lyme:

“Doctors divide chronic Lyme disease into two categories, broadly speaking. The first involves patients who have a known history of infection by Borrelia burgdorferi, the spirochete responsible for Lyme disease. A small subgroup of patients treated for the disease experiences aches, fatigue, and other nonspecific symptoms more than a year after the infection clears. Whether these symptoms have anything to do with the initial infection or treatment is a subject of controversy among mainstream doctors, because we don’t have enough data to make a judgment.

Then there are patients with no proven history of actual infection, who represent the overwhelming majority of people claiming to suffer from chronic Lyme. This form of chronic Lyme is controversial in the same sense that rhinoceros horn therapy is controversial: There’s no reliable data to support it.”

While some patients do report success on long-term antibiotic treatments, there are clearly risks associated with such a strategy. For one, you raise your risk of developing antibiotic-resistant disease, and antibiotics kill off both good and bad bacteria, making it virtually impossible to maintain optimal gut health without rigorous reseeding of probiotics. By disrupting your gut flora, you then expose yourself to a whole host of other pathologies. This is an important point, and a major part of the overall controversy. So should you be treated with long-term antibiotics if you do not have a history of active Lyme infection? I believe the side effects of taking antibiotics long-term are detrimental enough to consider your alternatives. And remember, Lyme organisms can exist in three different forms (cyst, spirochete and L-form) so they are really very good at hiding from antibiotics anyway.

If you are one of those people that are sensitive to alcohol, medications, antibiotics or perfume, this is a sign that you likely have a methylation defect in your genetics. The methylation pathway is a detoxification pathway in your body that clears toxins. Lyme disease sufferers often have a methylation problem, especially those people with neurological symptoms that are unresponsive to conventional treatments. Suzy Cohen wrote a detailed article about methylation and explains how to naturally circumvent this problem if you have Lyme disease, and ease your symptoms. For that article click here.

 http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/09/04/lyme-disease.aspx  Link back to Mercola.com for more on this topic plus several videos.

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