ARTICLE: Vitamin D Requirements for Nursing Mothers and Infants

Vitamin D requirements during lactation: high-dose maternal supplementation as therapy to prevent hypovitaminosis D for both the mother and the nursing infant

by Bruce W Hollis and Carol L Wagner
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/80/6/1752S.long

Abstract

Scientific data pertaining to vitamin D supplementation during lactation are scarce. The daily recommended intake for vitamin D during lactation has been arbitrarily set at 400 IU/d (10 μg/d). This recommendation is irrelevant with respect to maintaining the nutritional vitamin D status of mothers and nursing infants, especially among darkly pigmented individuals. Our objective was to examine the effect of high-dose maternal vitamin D2 supplementation on the nutritional vitamin D status of mothers and nursing infants.

Fully lactating women (n = 18) were enrolled at 1 mo after birth to 1 of 2 treatment arms, ie, 1600 IU vitamin D2 and 400 IU vitamin D3 (prenatal vitamin) or 3600 IU vitamin D2 and 400 IU vitamin D3, for a 3-mo study period.

High-dose (1600 or 3600 IU/d) vitamin D2 supplementation for a period of 3 mo safely increased circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentrations for both groups.

The antirachitic activity of milk from mothers receiving 2000 IU/d vitamin D increased by 34.2 IU/L, on average, whereas the activity in the 4000 IU/d group increased by 94.2 IU/L. Nursing infant circulating 25(OH)D2 concentrations reflected maternal intake and the amount contained in the milk. With limited sun exposure, an intake of 400 IU/d vitamin D would not sustain circulating 25(OH)D concentrations and thus would supply only limited amounts of vitamin D to nursing infants in breast milk.

A maternal intake of 2000 IU/d vitamin D would elevate circulating 25(OH)D concentrations for both mothers and nursing infants, albeit with limited capacity, especially with respect to nursing infants.

A maternal intake of 4000 IU/d could achieve substantial progress toward improving both maternal and neonatal nutritional vitamin D status.

Read more about this study here.

 

New York Times Regarding The Latest Gut Research

New York Times regarding the latest gut research

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/magazine/say-hello-to-the-100-trillion-bacteria-that-make-up-your-microbiome.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

By MICHAEL POLLAN

I can tell you the exact date that I began to think of myself in the first-person plural — as a superorganism, that is, rather than a plain old individual human being. It happened on March 7. That’s when I opened my e-mail to find a huge, processor-choking file of charts and raw data from a laboratory located at the BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado, Boulder. As part of a new citizen-science initiative called the American Gut project, the lab sequenced my microbiome — that is, the genes not of “me,” exactly, but of the several hundred microbial species with whom I share this body. These bacteria, which number around 100 trillion, are living (and dying) right now on the surface of my skin, on my tongue and deep in the coils of my intestines, where the largest contingent of them will be found, a pound or two of microbes together forming a vast, largely uncharted interior wilderness that scientists are just beginning to map.
I clicked open a file called Taxa Tables, and a colorful bar chart popped up on my screen. Each bar represented a sample taken (with a swab) from my skin, mouth and feces. For purposes of comparison, these were juxtaposed with bars representing the microbiomes of about 100 “average” Americans previously sequenced.
Here were the names of the hundreds of bacterial species that call me home. In sheer numbers, these microbes and their genes dwarf us. It turns out that we are only 10 percent human: for every human cell that is intrinsic to our body, there are about 10 resident microbes — including commensals (generally harmless freeloaders) and mutualists (favor traders) and, in only a tiny number of cases, pathogens. To the extent that we are bearers of genetic information, more than 99 percent of it is microbial. And it appears increasingly likely that this “second genome,” as it is sometimes called, exerts an influence on our health as great and possibly even greater than the genes we inherit from our parents. But while your inherited genes are more or less fixed, it may be possible to reshape, even cultivate, your second genome.
Justin Sonnenburg, a microbiologist at Stanford, suggests that we would do well to begin regarding the human body as “an elaborate vessel optimized for the growth and spread of our microbial inhabitants.” This humbling new way of thinking about the self has large implications for human and microbial health, which turn out to be inextricably linked. Disorders in our internal ecosystem — a loss of diversity, say, or a proliferation of the “wrong” kind of microbes — may predispose us to obesity and a whole range of chronic diseases, as well as some infections. “Fecal transplants,” which involve installing a healthy person’s microbiota into a sick person’s gut, have been shown to effectively treat an antibiotic-resistant intestinal pathogen named C. difficile, which kills 14,000 Americans each year. (Researchers use the word “microbiota” to refer to all the microbes in a community and “microbiome” to refer to their collective genes.) We’ve known for a few years that obese mice transplanted with the intestinal community of lean mice lose weight and vice versa. (We don’t know why.) A similar experiment was performed recently on humans by researchers in the Netherlands: when the contents of a lean donor’s microbiota were transferred to the guts of male patients with metabolic syndrome, the researchers found striking improvements in the recipients’ sensitivity to insulin, an important marker for metabolic health. Somehow, the gut microbes were influencing the patients’ metabolisms.
Our resident microbes also appear to play a critical role in training and modulating our immune system, helping it to accurately distinguish between friend and foe and not go nuts on, well, nuts and all sorts of other potential allergens. Some researchers believe that the alarming increase in autoimmune diseases in the West may owe to a disruption in the ancient relationship between our bodies and their “old friends” — the microbial symbionts with whom we coevolved.
These claims sound extravagant, and in fact many microbiome researchers are careful not to make the mistake that scientists working on the human genome did a decade or so ago, when they promised they were on the trail of cures to many diseases. We’re still waiting. Yet whether any cures emerge from the exploration of the second genome, the implications of what has already been learned — for our sense of self, for our definition of health and for our attitude toward bacteria in general — are difficult to overstate. Human health should now “be thought of as a collective property of the human-associated microbiota,” as one group of researchers recently concluded in a landmark review article on microbial ecology — that is, as a function of the community, not the individual.
Such a paradigm shift comes not a moment too soon, because as a civilization, we’ve just spent the better part of a century doing our unwitting best to wreck the human-associated microbiota with a multifronted war on bacteria and a diet notably detrimental to its well-being. Researchers now speak of an impoverished “Westernized microbiome” and ask whether the time has come to embark on a project of “restoration ecology” — not in the rain forest or on the prairie but right here at home, in the human gut.
In March I traveled to Boulder to see the Illumina HiSeq 2000 sequencing machine that had shed its powerful light on my own microbiome and to meet the scientists and computer programmers who were making sense of my data. The lab is headed by Rob Knight, a rangy, crew-cut 36-year-old biologist who first came to the United States from his native New Zealand to study invasive species, a serious problem in his home country. Knight earned his Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Princeton when he was 24 and then drifted from the study of visible species and communities to invisible ones. Along the way he discovered he had a knack for computational biology. Knight is regarded as a brilliant analyst of sequencing data, skilled at finding patterns in the flood of information produced by the machines that “batch sequence” all the DNA in a sample and then tease out the unique genetic signatures of each microbe. This talent explains why so many of the scientists exploring the microbiome today send their samples to be sequenced and analyzed by his lab; it is also why you will find Knight’s name on most of the important papers in the field.
Over the course of two days in Boulder, I enjoyed several meals with Knight and his colleagues, postdocs and graduate students, though I must say I was a little taken aback by the table talk. I don’t think I’ve ever heard so much discussion of human feces at dinner, but then one thing these scientists are up to is a radical revaluation of the contents of the human colon. I learned about Knight’s 16-month-old daughter, who has had most of the diapers to which she has contributed sampled and sequenced. Knight said at dinner that he sampled himself every day; his wife, Amanda Birmingham, who joined us one night, told me that she was happy to be down to once a week. “Of course I keep a couple of swabs in my bag at all times,” she said, rolling her eyes, “because you never know.”
A result of the family’s extensive self-study has been a series of papers examining family microbial dynamics. The data helped demonstrate that the microbial communities of couples sharing a house are similar, suggesting the importance of the environment in shaping an individual’s microbiome. Knight also found that the presence of a family dog tended to blend everyone’s skin communities, probably via licking and petting. One paper, titled “Moving Pictures of the Human Microbiome,” tracked the day-to-day shifts in the microbial composition of each body site. Knight produced animations showing how each community — gut, skin and mouth — hosted a fundamentally different cast of microbial characters that varied within a fairly narrow range over time.
Knight’s daily sampling of his daughter’s diapers (along with those of a colleague’s child) also traced the remarkable process by which a baby’s gut community, which in utero is sterile and more or less a blank slate, is colonized. This process begins shortly after birth, when a distinctive infant community of microbes assembles in the gut. Then, with the introduction of solid food and then weaning, the types of microbes gradually shift until, by age 3, the baby’s gut comes to resemble an adult community much like that of its parents.
The study of babies and their specialized diet has yielded key insights into how the colonization of the gut unfolds and why it matters so much to our health. One of the earliest clues to the complexity of the microbiome came from an unexpected corner: the effort to solve a mystery about milk. For years, nutrition scientists were confounded by the presence in human breast milk of certain complex carbohydrates, called oligosaccharides, which the human infant lacks the enzymes necessary to digest. Evolutionary theory argues that every component of mother’s milk should have some value to the developing baby or natural selection would have long ago discarded it as a waste of the mother’s precious resources.
It turns out the oligosaccharides are there to nourish not the baby but one particular gut bacterium called Bifidobacterium infantis, which is uniquely well-suited to break down and make use of the specific oligosaccharides present in mother’s milk. When all goes well, the bifidobacteria proliferate and dominate, helping to keep the infant healthy by crowding out less savory microbial characters before they can become established and, perhaps most important, by nurturing the integrity of the epithelium — the lining of the intestines, which plays a critical role in protecting us from infection and inflammation.
“Mother’s milk, being the only mammalian food shaped by natural selection, is the Rosetta stone for all food,” says Bruce German, a food scientist at the University of California, Davis, who researches milk. “And what it’s telling us is that when natural selection creates a food, it is concerned not just with feeding the child but the child’s gut bugs too.”
Where do these all-important bifidobacteria come from and what does it mean if, like me, you were never breast-fed? Mother’s milk is not, as once was thought, sterile: it is both a “prebiotic” — a food for microbes — and a “probiotic,” a population of beneficial microbes introduced into the body. Some of them may find their way from the mother’s colon to her milk ducts and from there into the baby’s gut with its first feeding. Because designers of infant formula did not, at least until recently, take account of these findings, including neither prebiotic oligosaccharides or probiotic bacteria in their formula, the guts of bottle-fed babies are not optimally colonized.
Most of the microbes that make up a baby’s gut community are acquired during birth — a microbially rich and messy process that exposes the baby to a whole suite of maternal microbes. Babies born by Caesarean, however, a comparatively sterile procedure, do not acquire their mother’s vaginal and intestinal microbes at birth. Their initial gut communities more closely resemble that of their mother’s (and father’s) skin, which is less than ideal and may account for higher rates of allergy, asthma and autoimmune problems in C-section babies: not having been seeded with the optimal assortment of microbes at birth, their immune systems may fail to develop properly.
You acquire most of the initial microbes in your gut community from your parents, but others are picked up from the environment. “The world is covered in a fine patina of feces,” as the Stanford microbiologist Stanley Falkow tells students. The new sequencing tools have confirmed his hunch: Did you know that house dust can contain significant amounts of fecal particles? Or that, whenever a toilet is flushed, some of its contents are aerosolized? Knight’s lab has sequenced the bacteria on toothbrushes. This news came during breakfast, so I didn’t ask for details, but got them anyway: “You want to keep your toothbrush a minimum of six feet away from a toilet,” one of Knight’s colleagues told me.
Some scientists in the field borrow the term “ecosystem services” from ecology to catalog all the things that the microbial community does for us as its host or habitat, and the services rendered are remarkably varied and impressive. “Invasion resistance” is one. Our resident microbes work to keep pathogens from gaining a toehold by occupying potential niches or otherwise rendering the environment inhospitable to foreigners. The robustness of an individual’s gut community might explain why some people fall victim to food poisoning while others can blithely eat the same meal with no ill effects.
Our gut bacteria also play a role in the manufacture of substances like neurotransmitters (including serotonin); enzymes and vitamins (notably Bs and K) and other essential nutrients (including important amino acid and short-chain fatty acids); and a suite of other signaling molecules that talk to, and influence, the immune and the metabolic systems. Some of these compounds may play a role in regulating our stress levels and even temperament: when gut microbes from easygoing, adventurous mice are transplanted into the guts of anxious and timid mice, they become more adventurous. The expression “thinking with your gut” may contain a larger kernel of truth than we thought.
The gut microbes are looking after their own interests, chief among them getting enough to eat and regulating the passage of food through their environment. The bacteria themselves appear to help manage these functions by producing signaling chemicals that regulate our appetite, satiety and digestion. Much of what we’re learning about the microbiome’s role in human metabolism has come from studying “gnotobiotic mice” — mice raised in labs like Jeffrey I. Gordon’s at Washington University, in St. Louis, to be microbially sterile, or germ-free. Recently, Gordon’s lab transplanted the gut microbes of Malawian children with kwashiorkor — an acute form of malnutrition — into germ-free mice. The lab found those mice with kwashiorkor who were fed the children’s typical diet could not readily metabolize nutrients, indicating that it may take more than calories to remedy malnutrition. Repairing a patient’s disordered metabolism may require reshaping the community of species in his or her gut.
Keeping the immune system productively engaged with microbes — exposed to lots of them in our bodies, our diet and our environment — is another important ecosystem service and one that might turn out to be critical to our health. “We used to think the immune system had this fairly straightforward job,” Michael Fischbach, a biochemist at the University of California, San Francisco, says. “All bacteria were clearly ‘nonself’ so simply had to be recognized and dealt with. But the job of the immune system now appears to be far more nuanced and complex. It has to learn to consider our mutualists” — e.g., resident bacteria — “as self too. In the future we won’t even call it the immune system, but the microbial interaction system.” The absence of constructive engagement between microbes and immune system (particularly during certain windows of development) could be behind the increase in autoimmune conditions in the West.
So why haven’t we evolved our own systems to perform these most critical functions of life? Why have we outsourced all this work to a bunch of microbes? One theory is that, because microbes evolve so much faster than we do (in some cases a new generation every 20 minutes), they can respond to changes in the environment — to threats as well as opportunities — with much greater speed and agility than “we” can. Exquisitely reactive and adaptive, bacteria can swap genes and pieces of DNA among themselves. This versatility is especially handy when a new toxin or food source appears in the environment. The microbiota can swiftly come up with precisely the right gene needed to fight it — or eat it. In one recent study, researchers found that a common gut microbe in Japanese people has acquired a gene from a marine bacterium that allows the Japanese to digest seaweed, something the rest of us can’t do as well.
This plasticity serves to extend our comparatively rigid genome, giving us access to a tremendous bag of biochemical tricks we did not need to evolve ourselves. “The bacteria in your gut are continually reading the environment and responding,” says Joel Kimmons, a nutrition scientist and epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. “They’re a microbial mirror of the changing world. And because they can evolve so quickly, they help our bodies respond to changes in our environment.”
A handful of microbiologists have begun sounding the alarm about our civilization’s unwitting destruction of the human microbiome and its consequences. Important microbial species may have already gone extinct, before we have had a chance to learn who they are or what they do. What we think of as an interior wilderness may in fact be nothing of the kind, having long ago been reshaped by unconscious human actions. Taking the ecological metaphor further, the “Westernized microbiome” most of us
Preliminary results indicate that a pristine microbiome — of people who have had little or no contact with Westerners — features much greater biodiversity, including a number of species never before sequenced, and, as mentioned, much higher levels of prevotella than is typically found in the Western gut. Dominguez-Bello says these vibrant, diverse and antibiotic-naïve microbiomes may play a role in Amerindians’ markedly lower rates of allergies, asthma, atopic disease and chronic conditions like Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
One bacterium commonly found in the non-Western microbiome but nearly extinct in ours is a corkscrew-shaped inhabitant of the stomach by the name of Helicobacter pylori. Dominguez-Bello’s husband, Martin Blaser, a physician and microbiologist at N.Y.U., has been studying H. pylori since the mid-1980s and is convinced that it is an endangered species, the extinction of which we may someday rue. According to the “missing microbiota hypothesis,” we depend on microbes like H. pylori to regulate various metabolic and immune functions, and their disappearance is disordering those systems. The loss is cumulative: “Each generation is passing on fewer of these microbes,” Blaser told me, with the result that the Western microbiome is being progressively impoverished.
He calls H. pylori the “poster child” for the missing microbes and says medicine has actually been trying to exterminate it since 1983, when Australian scientists proposed that the microbe was responsible for peptic ulcers; it has since been implicated in stomach cancer as well. But H. pylori is a most complicated character, the entire spectrum of microbial good and evil rolled into one bug. Scientists learned that H. pylori also plays a role in regulating acid in the stomach. Presumably it does this to render its preferred habitat inhospitable to competitors, but the effect on its host can be salutary. People without H. pylori may not get peptic ulcers, but they frequently do suffer from acid reflux. Untreated, this can lead to Barrett’s esophagus and, eventually, a certain type of esophageal cancer, rates of which have soared in the West as H. pylori has gone missing.
When after a recent bout of acid reflux, my doctor ordered an endoscopy, I discovered that, like most Americans today, my stomach has no H. pylori. My gastroenterologist was pleased, but after talking to Blaser, the news seemed more equivocal, because H. pylori also does us a lot of good. The microbe engages with the immune system, quieting the inflammatory response in ways that serve its own interests — to be left in peace — as well as our own. This calming effect on the immune system may explain why populations that still harbor H. pylori are less prone to allergy and asthma. Blaser’s lab has also found evidence that H. pylori plays an important role in human metabolism by regulating levels of the appetite hormone ghrelin. “When the stomach is empty, it produces a lot of ghrelin, the chemical signal to the brain to eat,” Blaser says. “Then, when it has had enough, the stomach shuts down ghrelin production, and the host feels satiated.” He says the disappearance of H. pylori may be contributing to obesity by muting these signals.
But what about the diseases H. pylori is blamed for? Blaser says these tend to occur only late in life, and he makes the rather breathtaking suggestion that this microbe’s evolutionary role might be to help shuffle us off life’s stage once our childbearing years have passed. So important does Blaser regard this strange, paradoxical symbiont that he has proposed not one but two unconventional therapeutic interventions: inoculate children with H. pylori to give them the benefit of its services early in life, and then exterminate it with antibiotics at age 40, when it is liable to begin causing trouble.
These days Blaser is most concerned about the damage that antibiotics, even in tiny doses, are doing to the microbiome — and particularly to our immune system and weight. “Farmers have been performing a great experiment for more than 60 years,” Blaser says, “by giving subtherapeutic doses of antibiotics to their animals to make them gain weight.” Scientists aren’t sure exactly why this practice works, but the drugs may favor bacteria that are more efficient at harvesting energy from the diet. “Are we doing the same thing to our kids?” he asks. Children in the West receive, on average, between 10 and 20 courses of antibiotics before they turn 18. And those prescribed drugs aren’t the only antimicrobials finding their way to the microbiota; scientists have found antibiotic residues in meat, milk and surface water as well. Blaser is also concerned about the use of antimicrobial compounds in our diet and everyday lives — everything from chlorine washes for lettuce to hand sanitizers. “We’re using these chemicals precisely because they’re antimicrobial,” Blaser says. “And of course they do us some good. But we need to ask, what are they doing to our microbiota?” No one is questioning the value of antibiotics to civilization — they have helped us to conquer a great many infectious diseases and increased our life expectancy. But, as in any war, the war on bacteria appears to have had some unintended consequences.
One of the more striking results from the sequencing of my microbiome was the impact of a single course of antibiotics on my gut community. My dentist had put me on a course of Amoxicillin as a precaution before oral surgery. (Without prophylactic antibiotics, of course, surgery would be considerably more dangerous.) Within a week, my impressively non-Western “alpha diversity” — a measure of the microbial diversity in my gut — had plummeted and come to look very much like the American average. My (possibly) healthy levels of prevotella had also disappeared, to be replaced by a spike in bacteroides (much more common in the West) and an alarming bloom of proteobacteria, a phylum that includes a great many weedy and pathogenic characters, including E. coli and salmonella. What had appeared to be a pretty healthy, diversified gut was now raising expressions of concern among the microbiologists who looked at my data.
“Your E. coli bloom is creepy,” Ruth Ley, a Cornell University microbiologist who studies the microbiome’s role in obesity, told me. “If we put that sample in germ-free mice, I bet they’d get inflamed.” Great. Just when I was beginning to think of myself as a promising donor for a fecal transplant, now I had a gut that would make mice sick. I was relieved to learn that my gut community would eventually bounce back to something resembling its former state. Yet one recent study found that when subjects were given a second course of antibiotics, the recovery of their interior ecosystem was less complete than after the first.
Few of the scientists I interviewed had much doubt that the Western diet was altering our gut microbiome in troubling ways. Some, like Blaser, are concerned about the antimicrobials we’re ingesting with our meals; others with the sterility of processed food. Most agreed that the lack of fiber in the Western diet was deleterious to the microbiome, and still others voiced concerns about the additives in processed foods, few of which have ever been studied for their specific effects on the microbiota. According to a recent article in Nature by the Stanford microbiologist Justin Sonnenburg, “Consumption of hyperhygienic, mass-produced, highly processed and calorie-dense foods is testing how rapidly the microbiota of individuals in industrialized countries can adapt.” As our microbiome evolves to cope with the Western diet, Sonnenburg says he worries that various genes are becoming harder to find as the microbiome’s inherent biodiversity declines along with our everyday exposure to bacteria.
Catherine Lozupone in Boulder and Andrew Gewirtz, an immunologist at Georgia State University, directed my attention to the emulsifiers commonly used in many processed foods — ingredients with names like lecithin, Datem, CMC and polysorbate 80. Gewirtz’s lab has done studies in mice indicating that some of these detergentlike compounds may damage the mucosa — the protective lining of the gut wall — potentially leading to leakage and inflammation.
A growing number of medical researchers are coming around to the idea that the common denominator of many, if not most, of the chronic diseases from which we suffer today may be inflammation — a heightened and persistent immune response by the body to a real or perceived threat. Various markers for inflammation are common in people with metabolic syndrome, the complex of abnormalities that predisposes people to illnesses like cardiovascular disease, obesity, Type 2 diabetes and perhaps cancer. While health organizations differ on the exact definition of metabolic syndrome, a 2009 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 34 percent of American adults are afflicted with the condition. But is inflammation yet another symptom of metabolic syndrome, or is it perhaps the cause of it? And if it is the cause, what is its origin?
One theory is that the problem begins in the gut, with a disorder of the microbiota, specifically of the all-important epithelium that lines our digestive tract. This internal skin — the surface area of which is large enough to cover a tennis court — mediates our relationship to the world outside our bodies; more than 50 tons of food pass through it in a lifetime. The microbiota play a critical role in maintaining the health of the epithelium: some bacteria, like the bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus plantarum (common in fermented vegetables), seem to directly enhance its function. These and other gut bacteria also contribute to its welfare by feeding it. Unlike most tissues, which take their nourishment from the bloodstream, epithelial cells in the colon obtain much of theirs from the short-chain fatty acids that gut bacteria produce as a byproduct of their fermentation of plant fiber in the large intestine.
But if the epithelial barrier isn’t properly nourished, it can become more permeable, allowing it to be breached. Bacteria, endotoxins — which are the toxic byproducts of certain bacteria — and proteins can slip into the blood stream, thereby causing the body’s immune system to mount a response. This resulting low-grade inflammation, which affects the entire body, may lead over time to metabolic syndrome and a number of the chronic diseases that have been linked to it.
Evidence in support of this theory is beginning to accumulate, some of the most intriguing coming from the lab of Patrice Cani at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Brussels. When Cani fed a high-fat, “junk food” diet to mice, the community of microbes in their guts changed much as it does in humans on a fast-food diet. But Cani also found the junk-food diet made the animals’ gut barriers notably more permeable, allowing endotoxins to leak into the bloodstream. This produced a low-grade inflammation that eventually led to metabolic syndrome. Cani concludes that, at least in mice, “gut bacteria can initiate the inflammatory processes associated with obesity and insulin resistance” by increasing gut permeability.
These and other experiments suggest that inflammation in the gut may be the cause of metabolic syndrome, not its result, and that changes in the microbial community and lining of the gut wall may produce this inflammation. If Cani is correct — and there is now some evidence indicating that the same mechanism is at work in humans — then medical science may be on the trail of a Grand Unified Theory of Chronic Disease, at the very heart of which we will find the gut microbiome.
My first reaction to learning all this was to want to do something about it immediately, something to nurture the health of my microbiome. But most of the scientists I interviewed were reluctant to make practical recommendations; it’s too soon, they told me, we don’t know enough yet. Some of this hesitance reflects an understandable abundance of caution. The microbiome researchers don’t want to make the mistake of overpromising, as the genome researchers did. They are also concerned about feeding a gigantic bloom of prebiotic and probiotic quackery and rightly so: probiotics are already being hyped as the new panacea, even though it isn’t at all clear what these supposedly beneficial bacteria do for us or how they do what they do. There is some research suggesting that some probiotics may be effective in a number of ways: modulating the immune system; reducing allergic response; shortening the length and severity of colds in children; relieving diarrhea and irritable bowel symptoms; and improving the function of the epithelium. The problem is that, because the probiotic marketplace is largely unregulated, it’s impossible to know what, if anything, you’re getting when you buy a “probiotic” product. One study tested 14 commercial probiotics and found that only one contained the exact species stated on the label.
But some of the scientists’ reluctance to make recommendations surely flows from the institutional bias of science and medicine: that the future of microbiome management should remain firmly in the hands of science and medicine. Down this path — which holds real promise — lie improved probiotics and prebiotics, fecal transplants (with better names) and related therapies. Jeffrey Gordon, one of those scientists who peers far over the horizon, looks forward to a time when disorders of the microbiome will be treated with “synbiotics” — suites of targeted, next-generation probiotic microbes administered along with the appropriate prebiotic nutrients to nourish them. The fecal transplant will give way to something far more targeted: a purified and cultured assemblage of a dozen or so microbial species that, along with new therapeutic foods, will be introduced to the gut community to repair “lesions” — important missing species or functions. Yet, assuming it all works as advertised, such an approach will also allow Big Pharma and Big Food to stake out and colonize the human microbiome for profit.
When I asked Gordon about do-it-yourself microbiome management, he said he looked forward to a day “when people can cultivate this wonderful garden that is so influential in our health and well-being” — but that day awaits a lot more science. So he declined to offer any gardening tips or dietary advice. “We have to manage expectations,” he said.
Alas, I am impatient. So I gave up asking scientists for recommendations and began asking them instead how, in light of what they’ve learned about the microbiome, they have changed their own diets and lifestyles. Most of them have made changes. They were slower to take, or give their children, antibiotics. (I should emphasize that in no way is this an argument for the rejection of antibiotics when they are medically called for.) Some spoke of relaxing the sanitary regime in their homes, encouraging their children to play outside in the dirt and with animals — deliberately increasing their exposure to the great patina. Many researchers told me they had eliminated or cut back on processed foods, either because of its lack of fiber or out of concern about additives. In general they seemed to place less faith in probiotics (which few of them used) than in prebiotics — foods likely to encourage the growth of “good bacteria” already present. Several, including Justin Sonnenburg, said they had added fermented foods to their diet: yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut. These foods can contain large numbers of probiotic bacteria, like L. plantarum and bifidobacteria, and while most probiotic bacteria don’t appear to take up permanent residence in the gut, there is evidence that they might leave their mark on the community, sometimes by changing the gene expression of the permanent residents — in effect turning on or off metabolic pathways within the cell — and sometimes by stimulating or calming the immune response.
What about increasing our exposure to bacteria? “There’s a case for dirtying up your diet,” Sonnenburg told me. Yet advising people not to thoroughly wash their produce is probably unwise in a world of pesticide residues. “I view it as a cost-benefit analysis,” Sonnenburg wrote in an e-mail. “Increased exposure to environmental microbes likely decreases chance of many Western diseases, but increases pathogen exposure. Certainly the costs go up as scary antibiotic-resistant bacteria become more prevalent.” So wash your hands in situations when pathogens or toxic chemicals are likely present, but maybe not after petting your dog. “In terms of food, I think eating fermented foods is the answer — as opposed to not washing food, unless it is from your garden,” he said.
With his wife, Erica, also a microbiologist, Sonnenburg tends a colony of gnotobiotic mice at Stanford, examining (among other things) the effects of the Western diet on their microbiota. (Removing fiber drives down diversity, but the effect is reversible.) He’s an amateur baker, and when I visited his lab, we talked about the benefits of baking with whole grains.
“Fiber is not a single nutrient,” Sonnenburg said, which is why fiber supplements are no magic bullet. “There are hundreds of different polysaccharides” — complex carbohydrates, including fiber — “in plants, and different microbes like to chomp on different ones.” To boost fiber, the food industry added lots of a polysaccharide called inulin to hundreds of products, but that’s just one kind (often derived from the chicory-plant root) and so may only favor a limited number of microbes. I was hearing instead an argument for a variety of whole grains and a diverse diet of plants and vegetables as well as fruits. “The safest way to increase your microbial biodiversity is to eat a variety of polysaccharides,” he said.
His comment chimed with something a gastroenterologist at the University of Pittsburgh told me. “The big problem with the Western diet,” Stephen O’Keefe said, “is that it doesn’t feed the gut, only the upper G I. All the food has been processed to be readily absorbed, leaving nothing for the lower G I. But it turns out that one of the keys to health is fermentation in the large intestine.” And the key to feeding the fermentation in the large intestine is giving it lots of plants with their various types of fiber, including resistant starch (found in bananas, oats, beans); soluble fiber (in onions and other root vegetables, nuts); and insoluble fiber (in whole grains, especially bran, and avocados).
With our diet of swiftly absorbed sugars and fats, we’re eating for one and depriving the trillion of the food they like best: complex carbohydrates and fermentable plant fibers. The byproduct of fermentation is the short-chain fatty acids that nourish the gut barrier and help prevent inflammation. And there are studies suggesting that simply adding plants to a fast-food diet will mitigate its inflammatory effect.
The outlines of a diet for the new superorganism were coming clear, and it didn’t require the ministrations of the food scientists at Nestlé or General Mills to design it. Big Food and Big Pharma probably do have a role to play, as will Jeffrey Gordon’s next-generation synbiotics, in repairing the microbiota of people who can’t or don’t care to simply change their diets. This is going to be big business. Yet the components of a microbiota-friendly diet are already on the supermarket shelves and in farmers’ markets.
Viewed from this perspective, the foods in the markets appear in a new light, and I began to see how you might begin to shop and cook with the microbiome in mind, the better to feed the fermentation in our guts. The less a food is processed, the more of it that gets safely through the gastrointestinal tract and into the eager clutches of the microbiota. Al dente pasta, for example, feeds the bugs better than soft pasta does; steel-cut oats better than rolled; raw or lightly cooked vegetables offer the bugs more to chomp on than overcooked, etc. This is at once a very old and a very new way of thinking about food: it suggests that all calories are not created equal and that the structure of a food and how it is prepared may matter as much as its nutrient composition.
It is a striking idea that one of the keys to good health may turn out to involve managing our internal fermentation. Having recently learned to manage several external fermentations — of bread and kimchi and beer — I know a little about the vagaries of that process. You depend on the microbes, and you do your best to align their interests with yours, mainly by feeding them the kinds of things they like to eat — good “substrate.” But absolute control of the process is too much to hope for. It’s a lot more like gardening than governing.
The successful gardener has always known you don’t need to master the science of the soil, which is yet another hotbed of microbial fermentation, in order to nourish and nurture it. You just need to know what it likes to eat — basically, organic matter — and how, in a general way, to align your interests with the interests of the microbes and the plants. The gardener also discovers that, when pathogens or pests appear, chemical interventions “work,” that is, solve the immediate problem, but at a cost to the long-term health of the soil and the whole garden. The drive for absolute control leads to unanticipated forms of disorder.
This, it seems to me, is pretty much where we stand today with respect to our microbiomes — our teeming, quasi-wilderness. We don’t know a lot, but we probably know enough to begin taking better care of it. We have a pretty good idea of what it likes to eat, and what strong chemicals do to it. We know all we need to know, in other words, to begin, with modesty, to tend the unruly garden within.

In health,
________________________________

Kari J. Kindem, CFHom, CEASE Practitioner, Classical Homeopath....Let Miracles Find You!

www.HomeopathyForWomen.org
www.HomeopathySNC.org
www.NaturalFertiltyHomeopath.com
Follow me in Twitter: www.twitter.com/HomeopathyWomen and www.twitter.com/FertilityFix

ARTICLE & FILM: Blockbuster documentary "$tatin Nation" reveals the great cholesterol cover-up

http://www.naturalnews.com/040233_Statin_Nation_cholesterol_drugs_movie_trailer.html

Blockbuster documentary '$tatin Nation' reveals the great cholesterol cover-up

Wednesday, May 08, 2013
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

Click here to watch the powerful preview trailer on Natural News.

Cholesterol drugs are based on the intentional misrepresentation of medical evidence

$tatin Nation is the first film to publicly question the Big Pharma narrative on statin drugs. It explores these three shocking facts that are now emerging in the medical literature:

1) People with high cholesterol tend to live longer

2) People with heart disease tend to have low levels of cholesterol

3) Cholesterol-lowering on a population level does not reduce the rate of heart disease

Huh? But your doctor told you exactly the opposite, right? That's because your doctor has been brainwashed or bribed by the drug companies that now generate $29 billion dollars a year from selling statin drugs.

Your doctor needs to see this film! Show him the trailer at:
http://programs.naturalnews.com/Statin_Nation__NN.htm

Meet filmmaker Justin Smith

Justin Smith, the creator of $tatin Nation, is also the author of $29 Billion Reasons to Lie About Cholesterol. He has a degree in engineering and was a competitive cyclist before turning to research and filmmaking.

Here's some Q&A with Justin Smith:

Why did you make this film?

I have made this film out of sheer frustration with the current situation. To date, most of the information that people receive about this subject is provided directly or indirectly by the pharmaceutical companies. This information is heavily biased, of course, toward increasing company profits, with a disregard for peoples' health.

In the film, you raise some important issues concerning statin medications. How would you like people to react to this?

My approach, with this film, is to provide people with information to make better informed decisions about their own health. Each person should make a personal decision about the issues raised. I hope that the film will prompt more people to ask their doctor important questions like: if I take this cholesterol medication, how much longer might I live? This question is important because most people will not receive any life extension from statins. While statins may, in some cases, slightly reduce the risk of heart problems, at the same time statins also increase the risk for other serious diseases. So, overall there is usually no net benefit.

There is some evidence that cholesterol medications can be beneficial for middle-aged men who have already had at least one heart attack. However, the benefit here has got nothing to do with cholesterol lowering. It relates to the positive effects that statins can have on inflammation and plaque stabilization. In this situation, there is some life extension, but it is difficult to say how much. The life extension even here may still only be a few days or weeks and this, of course, has to be balanced against the adverse effects of statins.

In addition, there is a well established connection between low cholesterol levels and a shorter life span. So, even if the statin was beneficial during middle-age, the adverse effects are likely to drastically outweigh any positive effects as the person reaches old age.

Was the film commissioned / How was the film funded?
I desperately wanted to make this film and I knew that getting it commissioned would be difficult and time consuming. Therefore. I invested some money myself and managed to raise money from crowd funding.

In addition, I managed to build a crew of people who are also passionate about this subject and would be willing to work on a deferred payment basis. The crew have all been willing to defer their payment until the film is released.

Originally, I planned to go through the traditional route (festivals and commissioning editors etc.) once the film was finished. However, I am concerned that this might take several months to a year, possibly longer, and I have a burning desire to expose this issue as soon as possible.

Personally, I feel that the timing is right to present this information to people. I hope to gain the interest of a major broadcaster in the UK, in the United States, or elsewhere but in the meantime I plan to release the film online via video on demand.

Do you think that people can freely consume cholesterol-rich foods?

Well, the idea that saturated fats and cholesterol simply clog-up the arteries has never been proven scientifically. It was just an idea.

In addition, there are many fascinating facts, such as the foods that contain cholesterol also contain large amounts of the nutrients that we know protect the heart. We have been told to avoid cholesterol-rich foods, but these foods often contain antioxidants and high levels of vitamins that keep our arteries healthy.

Click here for full access to $tation Nation from Natural News.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/040233_Statin_Nation_cholesterol_drugs_movie_trailer.html#ixzz2SjU1wXV3

 

Food investigations: Welch's juice cocktails are 80% corn syrup and tap water!

A shocking new food investigation by Natural News reveals that Welch's "juice cocktail" products -- which are aggressively marketed as if they were nothing but juice -- are actually 80% tap water and high fructose corn syrup!

Here's the proof... forward this email to others who need to know: http://www.naturalnews.com/040151_Welchs_fruit_juice_high_fructose_corn_syrup.html

 

__,_._,___

Seven amazing spring superfoods to enhance your health

Seven amazing spring superfoods to enhance your health: http://www.naturalnews.com/040163_springtime_superfoods_nutrition.html

(NaturalNews) In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), spring is a time for rejuvenation and regeneration. Outdoor nature reflects this as foliage returns and flowers blossom while birds fill the air with their celebratory singing.

We should also follow this seasonal event by practicing dietary cleansing and rejuvenation. TCM considers spring to correlate with the liver. So foods that help cleanse the liver are appropriate, in addition to using liver herbs dandelion and milk thistle as extract supplements or teas.

The foods that are harvested during spring are the most appropriate. Make sure they're organic if they're in the EWG's (Environmental Working Group) Dirty Dozen. If listed in EWG's Clean Fifteen you can save a couple of bucks (http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/).

Here are those seven springtime food tips

(1) Sweet potato or yams are year-round superfoods. Not many are aware of how much nutrition is packed into these inexpensive veggies, but they are packed with nutrition. And TCM has them in its spring foods list.

Here's a way to prepare them as a tasty dish that's able to survive as leftovers for a quick, tasty snack.

First peel one or two sweet potatoes or yams (preferably), then slice them into medium-sized medallions. Place them in water and boil until tender enough to mash. Pour out the water and mash until completely soft.

Drop in a generous dollop of organic butter, add a healthy squeeze of lemon, and carefully drizzle a bit of organic maple syrup onto the mash without overly sweetening. Mix thoroughly and taste. It retains its flavor after a couple days in the fridge without reheating.

(2) Globe artichokes are actually related to milk thistle and contain the same active ingredient that's used as a liver tonic, silymarin. They also contain cynarin, a phytonutrient that also supports liver health.

Of course, you can always purchase pickled or canned artichoke "hearts", but it's better you buy them fresh and prepare them yourself by removing the outer leaves and steaming the inner hearts.

(3) Garlic has so many health benefits it's hard to list them all. But it is among TCM's list of liver rejuvenating foods.

One way to consume them raw easily is to slice up three cloves and mix the pieces in with a few chunks of avocado topped with olives and parsley (to quell the odor). Add olive oil, lemon or vinegar, and sea salt.

(4) Cherries are another spring food that TCM says helps relieve liver chi (subtle energy) stagnation.

(5) Asparagus appears on a few different spring superfood lists. It's high in B vitamins, folate, potassium, rutin, selenium, and vitamin K. Asparagus helps regulate blood pressure and strengthen kidney function.

It's best to select the thinner asparagus stalks and cook only the tips, not the tough lower stalks if you want to maximize flavor.

(6) Leeks are another spring superfood, high in sulphides that protect against heart disease and lower high blood pressure. Those compounds are also protective against colon and prostate cancers.

Leeks are eye health boosters with their lutein and zeaxanthin content, and they are high in key minerals and vitamin K.

If you've ever enjoyed potato pancakes, here's an easy mouth watering sweet pea and leek recipe that serves as a potato pancake substitute (http://food52.com/recipes/16946-sweet-pea-and-leek-pancakes#comments).

(7) Fava beans are another nutrient-dense food that's normally harvested in the spring. They are high fiber and low calorie, ideal for using in a weight loss diet after those winter food indulgences.

Fava beans contribute to heart health and stabilize blood sugar. Just like other beans, there are a variety of serving options, hot and cold.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/10-sensational-spring-superfoods.html

www.acufinder.com

http://localfoods.about.com/od/whatsinseason/a/SpringFruitVeg.htm

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/040163_springtime_superfoods_nutrition.html#ixzz2S9daXlac

GMO's in foods at Trader Joes vs. Whole Foods stores

If Trader Joe's eliminated GMOs from its in-house brands over ten years ago, why can't Whole Foods do the same?

http://www.naturalnews.com/039767_Trader_Joes_Whole_Foods_GMO_labeling.html

(NaturalNews) In the wake of the recent announcement by Whole Foods Market that the retailer will require the labeling of all foods containing genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in its stores by 2018, many in the natural health community are now wondering, why the long wait? Whole Foods' reluctance to adopt truth-in-labeling standards in a more timely fashion illustrates that the company's priorities are somewhat muddled, especially since one of its major competitors, Trader Joe's, completely removed GMOs from its product line more than a decade ago without issue.

Whole Foods and Trader Joe's are similar in that both grocers are highly regarded by the natural health community for their extensive selection of "natural" and organic foods, but neither company currently labels the presence of GMOs in its products. But the primary reason why Trader Joe's does not label GMOs, according to an information page posted on the company's website, is that none of its private-label products, which represent the vast majority of products in the store, contain GMOs.

"Our approach to Genetically Modified Organisms is simple: we do not allow GMO ingredients in our private label products (anything with Trader Joe's, Trader Jose's, Trader Ming's, etc. on the label)," explains a Trader Joe's Customer Update from December 12, 2012. "Our efforts began in 2001, when we determined that, given a choice, our customers would prefer to eat foods and beverages made without the use of genetically engineered ingredients."

This is a far cry from how Whole Foods has handled the GMO issue, at least until very recently, despite more than likely having had similar input from its customers. For years, we here at Natural News have been calling on Whole Foods to take action and not only label GMOs in its stores, but also to remove them from its own product line. And while we are pleased that Whole Foods has taken the lead on the labeling issue by at least establishing a timeline for a complete phase-out, Trader Joe's has been much more judicious in actually getting the job done.

"While developing products containing ingredients likely to come from genetically modified sources, we have the supplier of the product perform the necessary research to provide documentation that the suspect ingredients are from non-GMO sources," says Trader Joe's. "This documentation is in the form of affidavits, identity-preserved certification of seed stock, and third-party lab results from the testing of the ingredients in question."

Trader Joe's double checks to make sure its products are actually GMO-free

Beyond this, Trader Joe's explains that it routinely conducts random audits on products sold in its stores that contain "suspect ingredients" in order to ensure that customers are not being exposed to GMOs as a result of potentially unscrupulous suppliers using bad ingredients. This is commendable, as prior to the company's latest update on GMOs, there was no indication as to how Trader Joe's ensures that its products are actually GMO-free.

You can read the much-welcomed update from Trader Joe's here:
http://www.traderjoes.com/about/customer-updates-responses.asp?i=4

Meanwhile, Whole Foods offers a much more opaque explanation as to the status of GMOs in its products. While Whole Foods deserves commendation for adopting early and promoting the Non-GMO Project label for its private-label 365 Everyday Value line, many of its products still contain GMOs, despite being marketed as containing "Nothing Artificial, Ever."

"Whole Foods Market has been collaborating with many of its supplier partners for several years to source products without GMO ingredients," states the company, implying that GMOs are still present in at least some of its private-label products. "In 2009, the company began putting its 365 Everyday Value line through Non-GMO Project verification and encouraged its grocery supplier partners to do the same."

Trader Joe's, on the other hand, does not currently use Non-GMO Project verification on any of its private-label products.

You can read Whole Foods' GMO page here: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com

ARTICLE: Obama signs Monsanto Protection Act into law

In an outrageous betrayal of all Americans, President Obama just signed the so-called "Monsanto Protection Act" into law.

This law gives Monsanto authority over federal courts and allows it to plant experimental GMO crops even if they pose an extreme risk to human health and environmental health.

As ibtimes.com reports, the bill "effectively bars federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of GMO or GE crops and seeds, no matter what health consequences from the consumption of these products may come to light in the future."

Here's the shocking full story: http://www.naturalnews.com/039668_Monsanto_Protection_Act_Obama_deception_GMOs.html

VIDEO: The Great Culling: Our Water - Dangers of Fluoride

Watch this important video (1:32 minutes) about fluoride and its dangers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7BqFtyCRJc

ARTICLE: In Vaccines We Trust? Paul Offit threatens religious and philosophical vaccine exemptions. A response by Suzanne Humphries, MD

In Vaccines We Trust? Paul Offit threatens religious and philosophical vaccine exemptions. A response by Suzanne Humphries, MD
– August 26, 2012

http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/2012/08/26/paul-offit-threatens-religious-and-philosphical-vaccine-exemptions-a-respose-by-suzanne-humphries-md/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+vaccinationcouncil+%28International+Medical+Council+on+Vaccination%29

Millionaire vaccine inventor and mandatory vaccine advocate Paul Offit recently released a short VIDEO for doctors on medscape. Here is a transcript of the speech. Please read it before moving along. It is only one page long. This statement that outlines Offit's personal belief system could be a prelude to the legal removal of all philosophical and religious vaccine exemptions in the United States of America. This is something that Offit has been working toward for years, and the likely end-purpose of his series of books.

Paul Offit believes that exempting your child from vaccination is morally reprehensible. He considers himself an authority on autism, all infectious diseases, morality, history, every religious system, and infant immunology. You may also recognize Dr Offit as the one who says that all vaccines are perfectly safe and infants can tolerate theoretically 10,000 of them at once:

"A more practical way to determine the diversity of the immune response would be to estimate the number of vaccines to which a child could respond at one time…. each infant would have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10, 000 vaccines at any one time." [1]

The status accorded to him by the pharmaceutical and medical fields permits him to influence the opinions and practice of lower rung physicians regarding vaccine exemptions. Unfortunately, even doctors will simply believe the "expert"[2] without bothering to go and check their own medical literature, to see if the self-proclaimed expertise has a solid scientific foundation. Research shows that when people listen to the expert, the part of their brains that is capable of independent thought goes to sleep.[3]

In Offit's video, he said that religious exemptions do not "make sense" and went on to inform doctors on the chronological age of three religious scriptures, and how they could not possibly have anything to do with vaccination because vaccines are so much newer than those tattered and outmoded scribbles of hundreds or thousands of years ago. Those "outmoded" books, including the Old Testament and the Koran, include specific passages containing principles which obliquely address many health issues. To many people, these scriptures place vaccines amongst may things which are not consistent with scriptural hygiene. Here are specific references from the HOLY BIBLE and the KORAN. Dr Katme's explanation of the Islamic problems with vaccination can be read HERE. Hindu faith also has restrictions on what is permitted in their bodies, the treatment of cows and monkeys etc. Vaccination is an affront to many Hindus who know the contents of vaccines. The Dalai Lama hopefully does not understand the full impact of his alliances.

God gave Moses core principles on Mt. Sinai that are held in high esteem by both Christians and Jews the world over. Offit misses out on the timelessness of God's words. God's principles don't wear out. Neither do they need continuous repeating and revising.

God could have instructed Moses on how to inoculate the Israelites in the desert when the diseases came upon them. If you take note of the Old Testament books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, you'll see that there were very specific guidelines handed down on everything from worship of God to disease management, with warnings as to what would happen if those guidelines were ignored. The Israelites had highly skilled metal smiths and very sophisticated craftsmen and oil production. They had access to all the tools that Edward Jenner used to invent the smallpox vaccine, which included cowpox (not smallpox) pus scraped directly from infected cow bellies, a crude filter, glycerine, and a sharp prong. Paul Offit may not realize how crude the highly praised first vaccine really was. Still, medical vaccination or inoculation of any sort, was never part of God's instruction.

Hospital-based doctors who consider any disease that is supposedly treatable by pharmaceutical medicine to have a spiritual component, are considered to be quacks. Lip service, however, is given through the tolerance of chaplains and religious representatives, so long as they don't interfere with the use of drugs, vaccines or "medical science."

In the New Testament, did Jesus, the greatest human healer of all time, ever turn to Luke, the physician-apostle, to do any of the healing work of people brought to him? No. Did any of the apostles and disciples ever call on Luke to do God's healing for them? No. Did Jesus instruct Luke to carry on with his old medical practices later? No. Jesus left the Holy Spirit here on earth for any and all to ask for, receive and gain wisdom from.

In medical school, doctors are taught to view the human body as a random mistake-ridden vessel, which is to be forced into submission with antibiotics, antihypertensives, antihistamines, anti-inflammatories, surgery, drugs etc. The natural extension of this paradigm over the past 100 years has been for the medical profession to condition human beings to not trust anyone but certified medical doctors to fix this defective mistake-ridden aberration of creation. Veterinary science has similarly conditioned humans to consider animals as defective, mistake-ridden creation prototypes. The number one successful strategy in creating this industry has been to always implant fear into people's heads. That increases cortisol, undermines the immune system, and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Vaccines are the template for the fear-based belief system that those who don't know their history will easily fall for. The trajectory of fear removes God from the picture. A fear-ridden populace couldn't possibly credit God with any usefulness once the medical/pharmaceutical industry sets itself up in God's place.

Through the resultant lack of faith in the human creation and the God who does actually have the power to heal all through both the design of the body and miracles, seeps the arrogance (and ignorance) of doctors and scientists who think they can outwit God's nature. While sometimes it might look like it's possible to outwit nature, for example by using antibiotics, the law of "What you sow you will reap" often comes back with a vengeance. Drug-resistant bacteria like MRSA, VRE, and overgrowth of the colitis-causing Clostridium difficile, are prime examples.

Doctors like Paul Offit believe that the slowly maturing immune system of an infant is defective[4] and that vaccinations[5][6], designed to put it into hyper-drive, will fix the defects. On the other hand, Dr Offit doesn't have much faith in his own laboratory creations, since he believes that the anti-vaccination movement "threatens us all," including presumably …the vaccinated.

Paul Offit makes reference to the two states that have ruled that parents do not have a religious privilege to decide how their children's bodies are treated, citing US Constitutional amendment 14. The 14th amendment was designed to protect newly freed slaves. It is being used for a different purpose in Mississippi and West Virginia. Many people are unaware that the 14th amendment is the most controversial amendment ever proposed, and that according to some legal experts, it was NEVER LEGALLY RATIFIED. See also this PDF.

If corporate medicine is going to be permitted to over-ride parental philosophical and religious objections, and invade the bodies of our children with dozens of vaccine antigens, chemicals, animal DNA, aborted fetal tissue, and CANCER CELLS, the source of these laws must come under scrutiny.

The impingement on Article I of the FIRST AMENDMENT of the Constitution should also be taken into consideration.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

It would appear that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has made PLANS that would steamroll right over the protection of our free speech.

"An anti-vaccine surveillance and alert system Seth Kalichman of the http://www.uconn.edu in the USA will establish an Internet-based global monitoring and rapid alert system for finding, analysing, and counteracting communication campaigns containing misinformation regarding vaccines to support global immunization efforts."

Only time will tell what is going to be considered "misinformation" and "counteraction." If parents were convinced that vaccines are safe and effective, there would be no anti-vaccination movement. It shouldn't take military action or Internet surveillance to maintain the health of communities or global immunization efforts. This type of action is not new. It is reminiscent of policies found in National Socialist empires, Stalinist countries, or Communist China.

Those who push removal of philosophical and religious exemption should at least be free of financial CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, and they are NOT. More importantly, in order to bolster the 30-billion-dollar-per-year-income vaccine industry they consider to be evidence-based science, they should not be proclaiming worldwide expertise in what it takes to have a personal relationship with Jesus, something they appear to have no experience in.

Dr Offit considers "evidence based medicine" to be separate from religion, or spirituality – yet the Christian scriptures, both old testament and new, make it perfectly clear that good health is solely predicated on a living relationship with God.

When it comes to vaccines, these flag bearers of evidence-based medicine use research protocols which involve tight selection and exclusion criteria for vaccine study entrants. They then recommend those same vaccines, assuring safety to concerned parents, to even the children who would have been refused entry to that vaccine safety study.

Instead of placebos, evidence based medicines uses vaccines, and calls them placebos, yet vaccines do not fit their own definition of placebo;

pla·ce·bo/pləˈsēbō/Noun:
1. A harmless pill, medicine, or procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient than for any physiological effect.
2. A substance that has no therapeutic effect, used as a control in testing new drugs.

Here are some examples of vaccine trial "placebos":
The hepatitis A vaccine was the placebo for the influenza vaccine in a well publicized STUDY. The study's designer is quoted as SAYING that he didn't want to withhold a potentially beneficial treatment from the control subjects. "Hepatitis was not studied, but to keep the investigators from knowing which colonies received flu vaccine, they had to offer placebo shots, and hepatitis shots do some good while sterile water injections do not." So, if the placebo is supposed to have no therapeutic effect as the definition that was taken from an ardently pro-vaccine website that criticizes our criticism of their use of placebos, and the study used hepA placebo because "water does no good" … where on earth is the match up with even their definition of science?

You can go HERE and see for yourself how many dangerous false placebo trials are done. THIS is an interesting one where the placebo for evaluating the safety of albumin-containing vaccines in egg-allergic children is …an egg-containing vaccine.

Multi antigen vaccines used in trials, as placebos for other multi antigen vaccines happens all of the time. These studies would be the ones Offit refers to, regarding the safety of giving numerous vaccines on the same day.

Not using real placebos, like saline, is a trade sleight of hand, because harmful placebos will give results which show that the study vaccine appears to have the same safety profile as the placebo- and is therefore seemingly OK.

The truth is, that corporate medicine makes the rules up to suit its own needs. When children die and parents successfully sue the vaccine companies responsible for the deaths, first congressmen (who accept massive corporate medicine campaign funding) then the Supreme Court, jump in to protect vaccine interests. It is politics and money, which rule on vaccine recommendations. I've only cited a couple examples of the hypocrisy of the vaccine faithful. There are hundreds if not thousands more examples of both scientific hypocrisy and CORRUPTION.

Paul Offit challenges the issue of philosophical exemption using the word origins. He says: "Philo means love, sophos means wisdom. Exactly where is the wisdom in saying that it is better not to get vaccines than to get them?"

For many educated parents, scientists and parents of vaccine-injured children who have given birth to subsequently unvaccinated children, who have the kind of health that God intended (and pediatricians appear to not understand), there is plenty of wisdom and indeed love, in not vaccinating.

Many of us who once bowed at the altar of "eminence-based" medicine, have learned the hard way, and had to re-boot our belief system. We have learned through experience and researching the latest core scientific understanding of the immune system, that the human body can and does do the job God intended. By going back to the scriptures and understanding the principles from the "manufacturer's manual," we have a new found awe and respect for God's design. We are learning that we can trust God's design to maintain its health, providing we follow God's principles to support and maintain what he manufactured, which is what it means to have a relationship with God, and to believe in God's word.

And I ask you Paul Offit, where is the wisdom in injecting newborn infants with neurotoxins, carcinogens, foreign animal and viral DNA, and metals that are known to alter the natural course of God's exquisitely designed immunity? To many who believe in God, vaccines are anything but divine. Fear of disease and faith in vaccination, along with the alteration of the human organism with new bacteria, new vaccine viruses and chronic illness- are not part of God's curriculum.

In the developed world today, we see risk-averse parenting, and cocooned children, both of whom have become disconnected from the earth, largely as a result of corporate medicine. Yet when this same medical system fails with its drugs, etc, they turn back to such things as MAGGOT THERAPY, and in desperation, try FECAL TRANSPLANTATION. See THIS ARTICLE TOO. Both of these treatments are, in an ironic sort of way, God's contributions. Isn't that interesting? These are things that any nation in existence in the Old Testament times, could have done…

The problem with man trying to assume the role of God is that every new discovery shows scientists more of what they DON'T know. Occasionally the medical system discovers a mistake they have made and then they have to change course and discontinue some long-held practice because it caused cancer, heart disease, fetal malformations, or loss of life. But rarely is the public told about that. Where possible, such knowledge is kept "in house."

We have to ask ourselves why the most heavily funded research is towards chemically or biologically altering an immune system about which the MEDICAL SYSTEM KNOWS LITTLE.

Where are the studies that show the short and long term safety in vaccinating a woman who bears a new life in her womb? The vaccine product description states that they have not been tested for mutagenicity or teratogenicity. Certainly they will never be tested for long-term consequences on the developing child. Do the lessons of DIETHYLSTILBESTROL (DES) not apply to vaccines? The eminence based medical system will no doubt perform vaccine studies only asking carefully crafted pre-determined questions with an eye to what they want to see. The data generated by the statisticians of pharmaceutically funded studies, with cunningly chosen placebos, will no doubt find no toxicity in vaccinating pregnant women, whatsoever.

Where are the long term studies on vaccinated vs. unvaccinated and the status of their health? "It can't be done," say Offit, et al. Most importantly, where is the interest in successful treatment of the infectious diseases? After all, one of the most potent marketing phrases behind so many of these vaccines is "because there is no cure." Perhaps the word "cure" is banned on the potential research list.

As medical students, we learned the biochemical process of oxidative metabolism and the function of the amazing mitochondria. How many practicing doctors really appreciate the design of those biochemical and electrical pathways that are essential to properly functioning and robust health? How many doctors know how to put that knowledge into practice? Why doesn't medical education support nutritional programs that are geared toward this primary process of oxygen utilization into energy and inflammation reduction? There is nothing more important to the sustenance and vibrance of health. Just try holding your breath for three minutes and you will see how true that is. There is nothing more important than the body's use of oxygen, which extends far beyond the lungs and ultimately involves the mitochondria. Where are the studies looking into how vaccines alter the process of oxidative metabolism, the ratio of NAD/NADH? I shudder to think what the results would show. Where are the studies looking at whether vaccines have an adverse epigenetic effect on the development and function of the immune system? To me these intricate and elaborate processes are sacred and designed by a power far greater than Paul Offit or any scientist. Yet most of them act is if it would be possible for them to develop a far better human with a much better immune system than the ones they are studying.

Those of us who do not vaccinate our children have learned from each other how to support our children through the usual childhood illnesses, because we can't rely on conventional medicine's approach. It is just too limited in principles, vision and solutions.

In the timeline of humanity, vaccines are a modern invention but they have absolutely NO claim to the betterment of humanity. There are distinct and known factors that had a far bigger impact on diseases and mortality than vaccines, and they were implemented long before the vaccines were in full use. See AIELLO, NELSON, and MCKINLEY. See also "THE AMAZING DECLINE." Until the proper study is conducted to compare the health of vaccinated vs unvaccinated children, nobody has the authority to uphold vaccination as superior to holistic management.

Paul Offit claims to be an unbiased scientist with no personal interest in vaccination. To me, this does not make sense. In 2008 while sitting on the ACIP as a voting member, Children's Hospital Of Pennsylvania sold its royalty stake in Offit's vaccine RotaTeq for $182 million, and Offit received an unspecified percentage: his share of the intellectual property, said to be "in the millions." Why doesn't he just call himself what he really is? A "multimillionaire vaccine patent owner who, by INFLUENCING IMMUNIZATION PRACTICES while sitting on the Advisory Committee For Immunization Practices, had a huge personal interest in policymaking, and wants to remove your personal rights as to what goes into your infant and your body by way of injection, and touts his own personal feelings on religion and wisdom to naïve doctors over the internet."

According to a 2009 Philadelphia Magazine interview with Offit, a reporter asked him once if he was the Antichrist, and he replied, "I'm just one of the Devil's many humble servants."

Addendum:In the initial publication of this document I misspoke. I said "Public Law 97-280 96 STAT.1211 is a law that Declares the Bible to Be The Word of God. This represents Congress' stance that the Bible has its rightful place above the Constitution because our forefathers were inspired by the Bible in the writing of the Constitution." Public Law 97-280 96 STAT.1211 is not actually a "law," as my critics have so generously pointed out. Even though it is labeled a "Law," technically it was a "resolution." However, I'd like to have Dr Offit prove his statement about a child safely taking 10,000 vaccines (note he does not say vaccine antigens, but vaccines) at once. Here's my suggestion: Let's not give 10,000 vaccines to a child, but to a monkey who is about the same size and weight of a two month old child. That should be able to prove if Offit is right.

REFERENCES:
[1] Offit, Paul et al. 2002. Addressing Parents' Concerns: Do Multiple Vaccines Overwhelm or Weaken the Infant's Immune System? Pediatrics. 2002 Jan;109(1):124-9. PMID:11773551
[2] http://www.ted.com/talks/noreena_hertz_how_to_use_experts_and_when_not_to.html
[3] Engelmann et al. "Expert Financial Advice Neurobiologically "Offloads" Financial Decision-Making under Risk"PLoS ONE. 2009; 4(3): e4957. PMC2655712 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2655712/
[4] Chelvarajan RL et al. "Defective macrophage function in neonates and its impact on unresponsiveness of neonates to polysaccharide antigens." J Leukoc Biol. 2004 Jun;75(6):982-94. Epub 2004 Feb 24. PMID:14982942
[5] Siegrist CA." Neonatal and early life vaccinology."Vaccine. 2001 May 14;19(25-26):3331-46. PMID:11348697
[6] Marshall-Clark et al. "Neonatal immunity: how well has it grown up?" Immunol Today. 2000 Jan;21(1):35-41. PMID:10637557

Dr Humphries is a board certified nephrologist. She is also a licensed internist and a homeopath.
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