Major WHO study concludes calcium supplements can reduce complications during pregnancy
Preeclampsia, the development of high blood pressure and protein in the urine during pregnancy and its more severe complications such as eclampsia, can threaten the lives of both mother and child. While there is no therapy to prevent preeclampsia, a link to calcium deficiency has been suggested. In a study published in the March issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, researchers across the globe, under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO), investigated whether a calcium supplement could reduce the complications and mortality from this condition.Over 8300 women with low dietary calcium (<600 mg/day, about half of that recommended during pregnancy) were selected for the study. The subjects were randomly divided into two groups that had similar gestational ages, demographic characteristics, and normal blood pressures before treatment started. Half were given 1.5g of a calcium supplement per day and half received a placebo.
While the incidence of preeclampsia was not statistically different in the supplemented women, eclampsia, other severe complications and severe gestational hypertension were significantly lower. Overall, the “severe preeclamptic complications index” and the “severe maternal morbidity and mortality index,” including all severe conditions, were also reduced with calcium.
Preterm and early preterm delivery (<32 weeks) tended to be reduced among women ¡Ü20 years of age who were at highest risk for low calcium and complications. It is very important to note that neonatal mortality was also lower in the calcium group.
This multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial was performed at antenatal care centers located in Rosario, Argentina; Assiut, Egypt; Nagpur and Vellore, India; Lima, Peru; East London and Johannesburg, South Africa; and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. These centers are part of the WHO Maternal and Perinatal Research Network, each having extensive clinical trial experience.
Writing in the article, Jose Villar, MD, states, “This large randomized trial in populations with low calcium intake demonstrates that while supplementation with 1.5 gm calcium/day did not result in a statistically significant decrease in the overall incidence of preeclampsia, calcium significantly decreased the risk of its more serious complications, including maternal and severe neonatal morbidity and mortality, as well as preterm delivery, the latter among young women.”
CALCIUM AND VITAMIN D: STANFORD RESEARCHER SAYS NEW DATA CONFIRMS THEY HELP WOMEN AVOID HIP FRACTURES
Taking calcium and Vitamin D slightly decreased the risk of hip fractures in older women, but not the risk for other types of fractures or for colorectal cancer, according to the latest findings from the federally funded Women’s Health Initiative. Additionally, the supplements slightly increased the incidence of kidney stones.A researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine who helped oversee the WHI study said the results don’t change current recommendations that women over age 50 should consume 1,200 milligrams of calcium and 400-600 international units of Vitamin D each day to maintain their bone health. However, Marcia Stefanick, PhD, professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, pointed out that adequate levels of these nutrients don’t have to come from supplements.
“You may be able to get enough calcium and Vitamin D through the foods you eat,†said Stefanick, who chaired the WHI steering committee.
The findings will be published in the Feb, 16 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. They are the latest clinical results from the WHI, a 15-year, broad-based look at the causes and prevention of diseases affecting older women. Previous WHI studies have involved hormone therapy, low-fat diets and heart disease.
The calcium/Vitamin D study involved more than 36,000 postmenopausal women between the ages of 50 and 79 who were tracked over the course of seven years. Researchers wanted to determine whether women who took the supplements could reduce their risk of bone fractures, especially hip fractures, and colorectal cancer.
Half of the trial participants were randomly assigned to take daily supplements of 1,000 mg. of elemental calcium (as calcium carbonate) and 400 IU of Vitamin D3—the recommended dosage to prevent osteoporosis that was in effect when the WHI trial was designed in the early 1990s. The remaining women were given a placebo.
The study found that women assigned to take the calcium and Vitamin D pills experienced a 12 percent reduction in hip fractures, a difference that was not statistically significant (14 fractures per 10,000 women on the supplements compared with 16 per 10,000 in the placebo group) over the course of the seven-year study. But not all women adhered completely to the supplement regimen. What the study revealed, though, is that among those who took 80 percent or more of the recommended dosage, there was a 29 percent decrease in hip fractures.
The supplements didn’t make a difference in reducing the rates of spine, wrist and other fractures, or in reducing the risk of colorectal cancer.
Although most women tolerated the supplements well, there was a 17 percent increase in the rate of kidney stones (34 cases per 10,000 women in the supplement group, compared with 29 cases per 10,000 women taking a placebo). Kidney stones are hardened mineral deposits that form in the kidney and often cause pain when discharged from the body.
Calcium and Vitamin D have long been staples in the effort to improve bone health among older women, who are four times more likely than men of the same age to suffer from osteoporosis —a disease in which bones become fragile and more likely to break. The condition contributes to 1.5 million fractures each year in the United States, including more than 300,000 hip fractures. Forty percent of women over age 50 experience a fracture of the hip, spine or wrist in their lifetime.
Additionally, some observational studies have suggested that a higher intake of calcium and Vitamin D could lower the risk for colorectal cancer, but results from past clinical trials have been mixed. Colorectal cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States for men and women combined.
With the new evidence from the WHI trial, Stefanick said women should continue to make sure they get enough calcium and Vitamin D for their bone health, but that they shouldn’t expect this to make a difference in preventing colorectal cancer. “Because we don’t have good evidence of how to prevent colorectal cancer, the importance of early detection through regular screenings should be emphasized for both women and men from age 50 onward,†Stefanick said.
The calcium/Vitamin D study is the last of three WHI randomized clinical trials to be published. A previous trial on hormone therapy showed that estrogen increased risks in such diseases as stroke and blood clots, and when combined with a progestin, also increases breast cancer among postmenopausal women. The second study, showing that a low-fat diet did not reduce the risks of cancer and heart disease among postmenopausal women, was released earlier this month
Comparative Absorption of Calcium Sources and Calcium Citrate Malate for the Prevention of Osteoporosis
Anthropologically speaking, humans were high consumers of calcium until the onset of the Agricultural Age, 10,000 years ago. Current calcium intake is one-quarter to one-third that of our evolutionary diet and, if we are genetically identical to the Late Paleolithic Homo sapiens, we may be consuming a calcium-deficient diet our bodies cannot adjust to by physiologic mechanisms. Meta-analyses of calcium and bone mass studies demonstrate supplementation of 500 to 1500 mg calcium daily improves bone mass in adolescents, young adults, older men, and postmenopausal women. Calcium citrate malate has high bioavailability and thus has been the subject of calcium studies in these populations. Positive effects have been seen in prepubertal girls, adolescents, and postmenopausal women. The addition of trace minerals and vitamin D in separate trials has improved the effect of calcium citrate malate on bone density and shown a reduction of fracture risk.
Are you getting enough calcium - Brief Article
Calcium is essential for healthy bones, but we may not be getting as much as we need. Without healthy bones, running is risky business. The repetitive pounding can result in stress fractures of vulnerable bones. The National Institutes of Health recently increased their recommended daily allowances for calcium that most of us should consume to maximize peak adult bone mass and maintain it.
Adults, ages 25 to 50, need a hefty calcium intake of 1,000 mg per day. According to the USDA, 90% of women and 60% of men fail to consume adequate calcium for optimum bone health. Calcium requirements are even higher during childhood, adolescence, and for senior citizens. A daily intake of 1,500 mg is recommended for men and women over 65. Women have increased needs for calcium during pregnancy, breast feeding, and menopause.
The best source of calcium in the diet is non-fat or low-fat dairy products. An eight-ounce glass of skim milk provides about 300 mg of calcium and no fat. Vitamin D improves the absorption of calcium, and is usually included in most dairy products for just that reason. Some vegetables are good sources of calcium: collard greens (1 cup, 289 mg), turnip greens (1 cup, 252 mg), dandelion greens (1 cup, 252 mg), mustard greens (1 cup, 193 mg), bokchoy/kale (1 cup, 147 mg), Brussels sprouts (1 cup, 144 mg),and broccoli (1 cup, 138 mg).
Additional dietary sources are tofu, canned salmon, legumes, seeds, and nuts. Given daily requirements of 1,000 to 1,500 mg, it may be harder than you think to get what you need.
Calcium emerging as key nutrient for weight loss; coral calcium supplements can help you lose weight
Calcium could be the key nutrient needed to help you lose weight, according to a growing consensus of new research examining the mineral. Calcium not only helps with hypertension, the research shows: it also appears to support healthy physiology in a way that results in the loss of excess body fat.
But there’s a major misconception with all this talk about calcium: people think that if calcium helps them lose weight, then drinking cow’s milk or eating cheese pizza is the way to go about getting that calcium, and that’s just plain bad thinking. Cow’s milk is associated with all sorts of chronic stagnation disorders such as asthma, constipation and sinus infections. And cheese, for its part, is extremely high in both saturated fat and sodium.
There are far better ways to get the calcium you need to support a weight loss effort, and nutritional supplements offer the answer. Coral calcium supplements offer a convenient way to take regular doses of the mineral, and plants like broccoli are naturally loaded with precisely the form of calcium your body wants. Quinoa, a supergrain, is also very high in calcium while containing a complete protein. Whole food meal replacement powders like The Ultimate Meal are also high in calcium.
Definitely get your calcium, even if you’re not trying to lose weight, but don’t make the common mistake in thinking that calcium = milk. That’s just a marketing myth promoted by the dairy industry. Coral calcium supplements are far better for you, and plant-based calcium is better yet. Work to get your calcium from superfoods, whole foods, vegetables and supergrains, not from bovine juice. And, of course, to make sure you don’t lose the calcium you already have, never drink soft drinks, which have been proven to strip calcium right from your bones.
Functional foods gain in popularity, but health claims on most brand-name groceries mislead consumers
Functional foods are gaining in popularity: big-name grocery product manufacturers like Kraft are making huge R&D investments in bringing these nutritionally enhanced foods to market. Likewise, customer demand for healthier, enhanced foods is surging.
But here’s the real story on functional foods: most health claims on brand-name grocery store products are hogwash. Here’s what I mean: take the most popular brand of strawberry milk powder. It’s made primarily with refined white sugar, an ingredient known to promote obesity, diabetes, mood swings and ADHD in children. On the front label of this product, you’ll find a claim about how it provides 100% of the daily requirement for calcium. This claim makes the product appear healthy when, in fact, it’s a product made with ingredients that directly promote chronic disease. If anything, the label should say, “Diabetes in a can!”
Most of the health claims on brand-name functional foods are, in fact, misleading. The typical processed food product contains refined carbohydrates, hydrogenated oils, and various chemical additives like aspartame, MSG or artificial coloring. You can’t make this product healthy by adding a tiny dab of calcium, iodine or lutein. The product is inherently unhealthy, and enhancing it with a few milligrams of something that’s good for you doesn’t offset the product’s fundamental potential for harming your health.
In fact, the big food manufacturers really just exploit these health claims to sell more products, not to fundamentally make their foods healthier. They can take a highly toxic, disease-promoting manufactured food item, dose it up with extra calcium or soy, and slap a healthy-sounding claim on the front label, all with the full approval of the FDA.
If anything, food manufacturers hide behind these health claims, using them to camouflage unhealthy foods by adorning them with labels and claims that make them appear to be healthful. Meanwhile, the truly healthy foods aren’t allowed to make any claims whatsoever. Spirulina, for example, which is an extraordinary health-enhancing superfood that contains phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals and abundant protein, can’t be sold with any health claims whatsoever. Yet instant chocolate milk made primarily with sugar can. How’s that for food politics?
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 This is why I think health claims on brand-name foods are worse than useless — they’re actually misleading to consumers. But they’re great marketing gimmicks, and people believe the claims, which is why the big food makers want to keep slapping these claims on their food products. The truth, however, is that virtually all the grocery products manufactured by the big, popular food producers are extremely bad for human health. They’re made with an alarming variety of metabolic disruptors — ingredients that interfere with normal human metabolism. Tossing in a few milligrams of ground of sea shells (calcium powder) doesn’t materially improve the health of these products.
Osteoporosis remains undiagnosed in millions of Americans; here’s how to beat the disease with nutrition, exercise and sunlight
Millions of Americans have osteoporosis but don’t know it, according to a new study authored by Stanford University School of Medicine. It says that 10 million Americans have osteoporosis right now, and 4 million more are at risk, but many people don’t notice that they have the condition until they receive a bone fracture — usually in the hip, the spine, or the wrist.
There’s a great deal of misinformation about osteoporosis in organized medicine. It’s a highly lucrative disease — more than 17 billion dollars were spent treating osteoporosis in 2001 alone, and I’m sure that number is much higher today. Osteoporosis sounds like a complex disease, but it really isn’t. In Western medicine, doctors and researchers like to make things sound far more complicated than they really are, which is why this disease has such a complex-sounding name. But osteoporosis should really be named “brittle bones disease.” It’s nothing more than brittle bones, or a loss of bone mass or bone density. There’s really nothing complicated about it.
The primary sources of this loss of bone mass are quiet simple — they are diet and physical exercise. And it’s not what you necessarily think about diet and physical exercise, so let’s take a look at this in detail, and I’m confident you will learn some new information here about osteoporosis.
Osteoporosis is really caused by only three things. They are: 1) diet, 2) physical exercise, and 3) lack of exposure to natural sunlight. It’s really not that complex, so let’s take a closer look at these three things, and explore their correlation with osteoporosis and loss of bone density.
First, we have diet. When it comes to diet and osteoporosis, most people think that a lack of calcium is the number one dietary concern. But this isn’t true — calcium is only a minor factor when it comes to preventing and treating osteoporosis. Certainly calcium supplements can help, especially if they provide calcium derived from plant sources, but they alone cannot reverse osteoporosis.
The primary dietary cause of osteoporosis is the consumption of highly acidic foods and food ingredients, such as refined white sugar, refined white flour, high-fructose corn syrup, soft drinks, cookies, candies, sweets, desserts, and anything containing sweeteners. Something rather destructive happens in your body when you consume acidic ingredients. Your blood must maintain a specific pH level in order to support human health. If your pH varies from a level of about 7.1, you start to suffer rather destructive side effects, and if it strays extremely far from 7.1, you will die within a matter of minutes. So the body does everything possible to make sure that your blood maintains a healthy pH level. When you consume highly acidic foods, your body has to come up with a strategy for buffering the acidity of those foods with alkaline minerals, and the way it does that is by reaching into your skeletal system to find those alkaline minerals such as calcium and magnesium, then releasing those into your bloodstream to buffer the acidity of the food ingredients you have absorbed. In this way, your body can balance the pH of its blood and keep you alive.
So every time you drink a soft drink, or drink a product containing corn syrup or sugar, you are effectively taking a few grams of bone density right out of your skeletal system. This gets passed through your kidneys, where it can also contribute to kidney stones, by the way, and then leaves your body in your urine. In a very real sense then, you are pissing away your bones when you consume refined sugars and refined white flour. Anything that’s highly acidic will cause this effect in your body.
This is the number one dietary cause of osteoporosis — not a lack of calcium. And for many women, especially older women, it comes in the form of the sugar in their morning cup of coffee. They start their day with a drink that depletes their bone mass. And then they continue on with the day engaging in other lifestyle habits that deplete their bones even further. A couple of calcium supplements cannot undo all this damage.
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 To prevent losing your bone mass to dietary causes, simply avoid consuming any white flour, processed sugars, added sugars, soft drinks, sweets, candies, breads, or any other ingredients that are made with refined carbohydrates. Essentially, if you follow the low-carb diet, you will be well on your way to avoiding refined carbohydrates — but beware — red meat is also highly acidic. In fact, meat products are acidic in nature and will contribute to the acidity of your diet. If you want to have an alkaline diet, you need to be eating superfoods like chlorella and spirulina. You need to eat fresh vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, onions, celery, and other green, leafy vegetables. You need to get plenty of calcium and magnesium from healthy sources such as organic, plant-based vitamins. You also need to supplement your diet with various sea vegetables, which are naturally alkaline. Those include seaweed, kelp, and many others. And one of my favorite foods for supporting an alkaline diet is, of course, sprouts. I love sunflower sprouts, broccoli sprouts, clover sprouts, and other varieties. These are all considered superfoods because they have extremely high nutrient density.
The second cause of osteoporosis, or loss of bone mass, is lack of physical activity, and to understand this, you have to look at the miracle of the human body and understand how the human body knows to build bone mass in the first place. Bones are piezo-electric devices. As such devices, they give off an electric current when they are physically stressed. In other words, if you take a bone, and put it on a lab table and apply pressure to it, it will actually produce an electric charge. In your body, this electric charge attracts a matrix of minerals to the location that’s being stressed where they add to the bone mass density and essentially build bigger and stronger bones.
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In other words, by simply getting up and standing on your legs, you are telling your body you need to build stronger leg bones. If you walk on a regular basis, you’re telling your body you need stronger hips. And the more you engage in these frequent stresses of your bones, the stronger your bones get. Your body has a very strong adaptation response to the activities that you choose to pursue, and this is one of those adaptation responses. In my book, it’s a rather miraculous response because it allows the human body to adapt over time to almost any level of physical activity you choose to pursue.
Now, this is all basic stuff. This is really Anatomy and Physiology 101. These are the basics, right here, and yet I’m amazed at how many doctors neglect to tell their patients about the importance of physical exercise. Instead, they tend to treat osteoporosis with nothing but drugs. They imagine that osteoporosis is caused by a lack of prescription drugs, and therefore drugs are the only thing that can treat it. In fact, drugs are only marginally effective. The body has a much stronger, built-in system for reversing brittle bones disease, or osteoporosis if you want to call it that, and that mechanism is to simply stress your bones and then let your body build up higher bone density on its own. You don’t even have to think about it — all you have to do is stress your bones. Your body builds stronger bones automatically.
Now, to see some examples of why what I’m telling you is true, take a look at what happens to astronauts when they orbit the planet in zero gravity environments. The longer they stay in zero gravity, the more bone mass they start to lose. If they stay in zero gravity for several months, the bones literally become mushy (this is one of the major problems with long-term space travel). Their heads get spherical like a balloon and start to lose their earthly shape. When they eventually come back to earth, some astronauts can hardly walk at all — their bodies have lost the ability to support their own weight, and they have to undergo physical rehab (gravity training, basically) in the earth’s gravity in order for their body to readapt to an environment that has to support their body weight.
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 It can happen that fast, and if you sit on the couch most of the day, or lay in bed most of the day, and don’t expose your body to earth’s gravity by standing or walking, you are essentially giving yourself a sort of zero gravity treatment — you’re telling your body that you don’t need your bones, and therefore your body will get rid its “extra” bone mass. See, the body is a highly efficient machine. The body lets go of things that you don’t absolutely need. That’s because during human evolution, calories were scarce, and it didn’t make strategic sense for an organism to invest caloric energy in muscle mass or bone mass that wasn’t needed. That’s why if you stop working out you’ll lose muscle mass, and if you stop walking and stressing your bones, you will lose bone mass. Once again, this is really basic stuff — there’s nothing complex in this at all. Osteoporosis is simply a name given to a set of symptoms that will appear when a person stops exercising their body and stops stressing their bones. Physicians never describe it in these terms, of course. They want to make it sound complicated, technical, and out of your intellectual range. But if you can understand the effects of gravity and the acidity of unhealthful foods, you already know all you need to know about preventing osteoporosis.
With all of that in mind, it’s very easy to see how you can prevent and even reverse osteoporosis regardless of your current age. The first thing is, of course, to shift to a highly alkaline diet and avoid all acidic food and drinks. The second thing is to engage in regular physical exercise, such as walking, jogging, swimming, cycling and so on. Of course, you should always be working with a health professional before undergoing any new exercise program to make sure that you’re capable of handling it, but even if you can’t engage in something like jogging, there’s always something you can do — there’s some way you can move your body, even if it means sitting in a chair and pumping some dumbbells a few times a day.
In all of this, I must also stress the importance of undergoing strength training. Nothing increases your bone density like strength training. And I’m talking about going to the gym and pushing weights on weight machines. This will increase your bone mass density so rapidly that it will absolutely stun you and your doctors. No prescription drug can come close to duplicating the effectiveness of strength training on your bone mass.
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 See, when you lift your own body, you’re stressing your bones to a certain degree, and that’s helping build bone mass to a limit. But when you start adding weight to your body and lifting that as well as your body weight, you’re telling your body that you need even more density in your bones. So, if you put 100 pounds on your shoulders and squat that weight using your leg muscles and your pelvis for support, you are essentially telling your body that you need stronger leg muscles and a stronger skeletal system to support that weight. This gives you a higher degree of adaptive response than you could possibly achieve from lifting only your body weight. So strength training is absolutely essential, especially for elderly people who wish to prevent or reverse osteoporosis, and yet it is precisely elderly people who tend to avoid strength training because they carry the misconception that it’s an activity for young people only. But in reality, it is older people who need it far more than younger people.
Moving onto the third part of osteoporosis, let’s talk about natural sunlight. When you don’t get natural sunlight, your body thinks that you’re in hibernation, in a sense. And a lot of things start to go wrong with your body and your mind when you lack natural sunlight on your skin. Osteoporosis is one of those things. That’s because when you expose your skin to sunlight, your body automatically generates vitamin D, and vitamin D is essential for using calcium to build increased bone mass. Without vitamin D in your body, your body cannot use the calcium that you’re eating in your diet. So you could be eating all the calcium in the world, and you could be exercising every day, but if you’re not getting sunlight on your skin, and you’re not getting vitamin D into your body, and you don’t have the fundamental building blocks that your body needs to add to its own bone mass. This will inevitably result in a great loss of bone mass or an inability to add any new bone mass.
Natural sunlight is absolutely essential to this process. You have to get it on your skin, on a frequent basis, without sunscreen. The next best thing if you can’t get natural sunlight is to take vitamin D supplements such as cod liver oil. You can also get vitamin D in other forms, but cod liver oil is the best form available. You can find it any health food store. But remember you can make vitamin D yourself simply by getting some sunlight on your skin (your body is a living, breathing vitamin D factory…).
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 How much sunlight do you need? I say 30 minutes a day, but it depends on where you live on the planet. The closer you are to the equator, the less time you need in the sun. But the darker your skin, the more time you need, so a person who lives close to the equator but has dark skin pigmentation needs far more sunlight exposure than, say, a person living close to the equator with pale skin. At the same time, a person with dark skin living in northern climates, such as Canada or the UK, needs a very large amount of time in the sun in order to maintain optimum health.
That’s because people with dark sun pigmentation did not evolve in such northern climates. They actually evolved in more equatorial regions where sunlight was far more intense. It’s also important to note that you should avoid using sunscreens during the time that you’re attempting to get sunlight nutrition. That’s because sunscreen will block the sun from being absorbed by your skin, and of course it’s pointless to pursue nutrition from the sun if you’re using sunscreen to block it in the first place. You have to get natural sunlight on your skin without any interference.
Of course, use common sense here. If you’re pale and not used to getting sun on your skin, you may be easily burned at first. So watch your time in the sun, especially when you’re not using sunscreen. Over time, of course, your skin will adapt and you will be able to handle far longer times in the sun.
The bottom line is that if you put all these three together — diet, physical exercise, and exposure to natural sunlight — you can quite easily prevent and even reverse osteoporosis. This is a very simple disease. It has a few simple causes, and it’s incredibly easy to reverse. You do not need prescription drugs to treat this disease. You do not need surgical procedures or other radical medical therapies. Osteoporosis is a natural result of poor dietary and lifestyle habits, and it can be easily reversed in a matter of months by changing what you do on a daily basis.
The fact that it goes undiagnosed in so many millions of Americans simply speaks to the fact that American society is an extremely unhealthful society that consumes vast quantities of sugars and processed foods, avoids physical exercise, and flees from the sunlight as if were some kind of raging demon in the sky. But you, I think, know better, and now you know how to prevent and reverse osteoporosis without using prescription drugs, no matter what your age.
Milk and dairy products cause heart disease, diabetes and osteoporosis — interview with Robert Cohen
Mike Adams: What is it that drove you to have this kind of interest and energy to pursue the truth about milk and dairy products?
Robert Cohen: Three little girls named Jennifer, Sarah, and Lizzie — my daughters. I wanted them to have healthy bodies. I wanted them not to live four years of high school life with zits all over their body like their dad did. And you know something? They’ve been zit free! No acne, and if you look at my book, Milk A to Z, I take every letter of the alphabet and fill in something about milk. Z is for zits, and we know that these cows are actually being milked before they give birth, and that milk is different milk — it’s milk instructing mammary tissue to grow. Little girls have changed these days, but we find that with the secretion of all of these androgens, the cows are constantly using the androgens to produce other hormones. Teenage acne is improved the second we give up milk. It takes a couple of weeks, and the acne’s gone. And these androgens stimulate the sebaceous glands, which are the glands that cause the acne, cause the zits.
So we find a dairy link to a number of human conditions. And I’m not the first to say this — Dr. Spock said this. Dr. Spock sold 75 million copies of his book on child care. The only book that sold more than Dr. Spock’s book in history is the Bible. Dr. Spock said that no human, no child, no adult needs cow’s milk — it’s a deception on the government’s part to promote. And we’re learning, as I’ve said, more doctors are learning today something they were not taught in medical school. You want to look at the etiology of allergies and diabetes? You look at diabetes, you look at the New England Journal of Medicine, July 31, 1992 — right there, you can look it up! It said that exposure to these bovine proteins, bovine serum lactobumin is a trigger for insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, and a few months later, October of ‘92, Scientific America talked about the dairy slogan,”Milk, it does a body good.” It said, “Milk, it does a body good — it sounds a little hollow these days.”
Mike Adams: Can you give a brief summary of — you’ve mentioned a few here, diabetes and acne, heart disease is mentioned in your book quite prominently — but what other chronic diseases are, say, aggravated or even caused by chronic milk consumption?
Robert Cohen: Well, you know, that’s an interesting question. Let’s look at the Big Five — in America, the number one killer is heart disease, and then we’ve got osteoporosis and cancer, and diabetes and asthma. We look at nations where they drink milk, we find these diseases are common. We look at nations where cheese consumption has tripled in the last 30 years, like England and France and Canada and the United States, we find also a tripling of asthma and breast cancers. Guess what country has the highest rate of breast cancer? Number one in breast cancer rate, Denmark, followed by Norway, followed by Holland, followed by Sweden — are you detecting a trend?
Mike: Milk consumption.
Robert Cohen: Let’s play some more trivia with you, Mike. We know breast cancer — what country has the highest rate of heart disease?
Mike Adams: Well, I’m still thinking the United States.
Robert Cohen: Nope! Denmark, Norway, Holland and Sweden — you’re going to get it sooner or later! Bone disease, heart disease, breast cancer — see where are we going with this? –highest rates of dairy consumption. We’re seeing absolute correlations between these diseases and dairy consumption, and I can give you the reason. We have much more than just national epidemiological studies — we have mechanisms by which these diseases occur, in breast cancer and every cancer, thousands of things cause cancer. Every time we pick up a newspaper there’s a new thing identified as causing cancer.
But thousands of things cause it — once you get it in your body, one thing makes it grow, and the one thing that makes it grow is the most powerful growth hormone you make in your body called insulin growth factor. And remarkably, the greatest miracle of science, of nature, is that this hormone in a cow’s body and in a human body is identical. As a matter of fact, out of 4700 different species of mammal and hundreds of millions of different proteins in nature, there’s only one hormone in the entire animal kingdom that is identical between two species — human and cow IGF-1, which has been called the key factor in the growth and proliferation of breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer, every human cancer.
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 Mike Adams: Now of course, the dairy industry says that all of these hormones are destroyed through pasteurization and they don’t get absorbed by humans who consume their products. We know that’s not true, but why is that?
Robert Cohen: Let’s analyze that statement, because maybe they’re right, and if they’re right, that means breastfeeding doesn’t work. So if you’re thinking that breastfeeding doesn’t work, then go ahead and drink your cow’s milk, but if by some remote chance you’re thinking, Well, maybe breastfeeding does work, well by drinking the cow’s milk you’re breastfeeding, and you’re taking the hormones, and in a very efficient way, more efficient than even nature, because nature finds a way to make lots of something. Like, if you look at fish, at codfish — they’re laying tens of thousands of eggs. Some species of fish lay over half a million eggs, because the fish, somehow there’s some innate knowledge that has determined that most of those eggs are going to be eaten by predators. Most of those eggs will not survive to become new baby fish.
Well, the body works the same way — you make millions and millions of sperm. You make millions and millions of cells. You make enough so that something survives. And in the case of this hormone, IGF-1, your body is constantly making it, and it’s broken down very rapidly, or bound to other protein receptors. But in the case of cow’s milk, we’ve improved upon nature — we have cow’s milk where normally these proteins are gone very rapidly. We homogenize milk - in other words, we take the milk and make the fat molecules between 10 and 100 times smaller. We make many more of them — a pint of milk can contain a trillion tiny fat molecules. They envelop and protect these hormones, which naturally, most of them are destroyed. So now we have a mechanism by which we double the amount of this powerful growth hormone in your body, and where it usually is broken down in less than a second or two, it now remains active for up to 30 minutes. When it finds an existing cancer, which is also common, that is the turn-on mechanism. And that’s why the nations that are drinking the most milk today and eating the most cheese are the ones with the highest rates of every human cancer.
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Calcium supplements all but useless without adequate vitamin D from sunlight exposure: interview with Dr. Michael Holick, author of The UV Advantage
The following is part seven of an eight-part interview with Dr. Michael Holick, author of “The UV advantage” and one of the world’s most respected authorities on vitamin D and the health benefits of natural sunlight. His work can be found at www.UVadvantage.com. Be sure to print out the vitamin D myths, facts and statistics page summarizing the key points of this interview.
Adams: In your book you talk about the link with calcium and calcium assimilation. How important is that for people to understand?
Dr. Holick: Well, it’s critically important for people to realize that even if they have an adequate amount of vitamin D, if they don’t have any calcium around, the vitamin D can’t have the desired effect on bone health without being able to get enough calcium out of the diet and to put it into the bloodstream which will eventually get to your bones. So, making sure that you have adequate calcium intake is very important. And the recommendation by the Institute of Medicine (and I was on this committee back in 1997) is that if you’re a teenager, 1300mg a day of calcium, for adults ages 18-50 it’s 1000mg of calcium and 51+ years it’s 1200mgs of calcium for both men and women.
Adams: And you mention that you have to have calcium in your system for vitamin D to work - is the opposite also true? You’ve got to have vitamin D for the calcium to be effective?
Dr. Holick: Oh, no question about it. If you are deficient in vitamin D, you absorb on average 10-15% of the calcium that’s in your diet. If you’re sufficient in vitamin D, if you have adequate sun exposure or adequate intake of vitamin D, you absorb about 30% of the calcium in your diet. During pregnancy and lactation, and during growth spurts, the body responds appropriately by actually increasing that efficiency up to 80%.
Adams: So the normal level is 30%.
Dr. Holick: 30% for healthy adults, yes.
Adams: So a person who’s taking, let’s say coral calcium supplements, if they’re not getting sunshine or vitamin D to go with it, their absorption is halved.
Dr. Holick: Yeah, exactly, and it’s really of little benefit.
 Related book:
The Healing Power of Sunlight and Vitamin D: an exclusive interview with Dr. Michael Holick
In this interview, Dr. Holick reveals fascinating facts on how vitamin D is created and used in the human body to ward off chronic diseases like cancer, osteoporosis, mental disorders and more.Â
 Adams: That’s fascinating. Once again showing that there’s no single magic pill, you have to be healthy across the board.
Dr. Holick: That’s right. And what I typically recommend to my patients is Tums or Os-Cal or Caltrate or any of the respected brands … Super Cal or all good sources of calcium.
Adams: As long as you’ve got vitamin D.
Dr. Holick: Correct. If you have adequate vitamin D or some sun exposure.
Adams: Cod liver oil is of course a great source of vitamin D, as you mention, but some people are concerned about contamination of these oily fish with heavy metals - is that a concern?
Dr. Holick: Yes, PCBs. And so, what you have to do is if you’re going to buy it, buy it from a respectable source. Certainly it’s a step in the right direction. But you know there are omega fatty acids in there that have benefits to the heart, and have other health benefits. So it may be that many of those outweigh the possible risk if there are contaminants in there. Although, like I said, a lot of the manufacturers are pretty good at making sure that there aren’t.
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Vitamin D myths, facts and statistics
Vitamin D prevents osteoporosis, depression, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and even effects diabetes and obesity. Vitamin D is perhaps the single most underrated nutrient in the world of nutrition. That’s probably because it’s free: your body makes it when sunlight touches your skin. Drug companies can’t sell you sunlight, so there’s no promotion of its health benefits. Truth is, most people don’t know the real story on vitamin D and health. So here’s an overview taken from an interview between Mike Adams and Dr. Michael Holick.
Vitamin D is produced by your skin in response to exposure to ultraviolet radiation from natural sunlight.
The healing rays of natural sunlight (that generate vitamin D in your skin) cannot penetrate glass. So you don’t generate vitamin D when sitting in your car or home.
It is nearly impossible to get adequate amounts of vitamin D from your diet. Sunlight exposure is the only reliable way to generate vitamin D in your own body.
A person would have to drink ten tall glasses of vitamin D fortified milk each day just to get minimum levels of vitamin D into their diet.
The further you live from the equator, the longer exposure you need to the sun in order to generate vitamin D. Canada, the UK and most U.S. states are far from the equator.
People with dark skin pigmentation may need 20 - 30 times as much exposure to sunlight as fair-skinned people to generate the same amount of vitamin D. That’s why prostate cancer is epidemic among black men — it’s a simple, but widespread, sunlight deficiency.
Sufficient levels of vitamin D are crucial for calcium absorption in your intestines. Without sufficient vitamin D, your body cannot absorb calcium, rendering calcium supplements useless.
Chronic vitamin D deficiency cannot be reversed overnight: it takes months of vitamin D supplementation and sunlight exposure to rebuild the body’s bones and nervous system.
Even weak sunscreens (SPF=8) block your body’s ability to generate vitamin D by 95%. This is how sunscreen products actually cause disease — by creating a critical vitamin deficiency in the body.
It is impossible to generate too much vitamin D in your body from sunlight exposure: your body will self-regulate and only generate what it needs.
If it hurts to press firmly on your sternum, you may be suffering from chronic vitamin D deficiency right now.
Vitamin D is “activated” in your body by your kidneys and liver before it can be used.
Having kidney disease or liver damage can greatly impair your body’s ability to activate circulating vitamin D.
The sunscreen industry doesn’t want you to know that your body actually needs sunlight exposure because that realization would mean lower sales of sunscreen products.
Even though vitamin D is one of the most powerful healing chemicals in your body, your body makes it absolutely free. No prescription required.
On the issue of sunlight exposure, by the way, it turns out that super antioxidants greatly boost your body’s ability to handle sunlight without burning. Astaxanthin is one of the most powerful “internal sunscreens” and can allow you to stay under the sun twice as long without burning. Other powerful antioxidants with this ability include the superfruits like Acai, Pomegranates (POM Wonderful juice), blueberries, etc.
Diseases and conditions cause by vitamin D deficiency:
Osteoporosis is commonly caused by a lack of vitamin D, which greatly impairs calcium absorption.
Sufficient vitamin D prevents prostate cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, depression, colon cancer and schizophrenia.
“Rickets” is the name of a bone-wasting disease caused by vitamin D deficiency.
Vitamin D deficiency may exacerbate type 2 diabetes and impair insulin production in the pancreas.
Obesity impairs vitamin D utilization in the body, meaning obese people need twice as much vitamin D.
Vitamin D is used around the world to treat Psoriasis.
Vitamin D deficiency causes schizophrenia.
Seasonal Affective Disorder is caused by a melatonin imbalance initiated by lack of exposure to sunlight.
Chronic vitamin D deficiency is often misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia because its symptoms are so similar: muscle weakness, aches and pains.
Your risk of developing serious diseases like diabetes and cancer is reduced 50% - 80% through simple, sensible exposure to natural sunlight 2-3 times each week.
Infants who receive vitamin D supplementation (2000 units daily) have an 80% reduced risk of developing type 1 diabetes over the next twenty years.
Shocking Vitamin D deficiency statistics:
32% of doctors and med school students are vitamin D deficient.
40% of the U.S. population is vitamin D deficient.
42% of African American women of childbearing age are deficient in vitamin D.
48% of young girls (9-11 years old) are vitamin D deficient.
Up to 60% of all hospital patients are vitamin D deficient.
76% of pregnant mothers are severely vitamin D deficient, causing widespread vitamin D deficiencies in their unborn children, which predisposes them to type 1 diabetes, arthritis, multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia later in life. 81% of the children born to these mothers were deficient.
Up to 80% of nursing home patients are vitamin D deficient.
What you can do:
Sensible exposure to natural sunlight is the simplest, easiest and yet one of the most important strategies for improving your health. I urge you to read the book, “The UV Advantage” by Dr. Michael Holick to get the full story on natural sunlight. You can find this book at most local bookstores or through BN.com, Amazon.com, etc. Note: This is not a paid endorsement or an affiliate link. I recommend it because of its great importance in preventing chronic disease and enhancing health without drugs or surgery. This may be the single most important book on health you ever read. If more people understood this information, we could drastically reduce the rates of chronic disease in this country and around the world. Sunlight exposure is truly one of the most powerful healing therapies in the world, far surpassing the best efforts of today’s so-called “advanced medicine.” There is no drug, no surgical procedure, and no high-tech procedure that comes even close to the astonishing healing power of natural sunlight.