McCain bill threatens access to vitamins and supplements
Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) has introduced a new bill called The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) of 2010 (S. 3002), that, if enacted, would severely curtail free access to dietary supplements. Cosponsored by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota), the bill would essentially give the FDA full control over the supplement industry.
Most of the industrialized world has incredibly restrictive laws governing supplements. People worldwide often purchase supplements from the U.S. because they are freely available at low costs. All of this could change, however, if DSSA passes. DSSA would change key sections of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C), undoing protections in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994, effectively eliminating free access to supplements.
The importance of DSHEA
The passage of DSHEA resulted from millions of Americans who worked hard to reinforce their freedom to buy and sell supplements. At the time, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was alleging that nutrients like CoQ10 and selenium were dangerous and should be pulled from the market.
Though weak in some areas, DSHEA established a foundation upon which free access to dietary supplements would be protected from attacks by drug companies and the FDA.
What prompted DSSA?
McCain's DSSA bill emerged in response to illegal steroid use among Major League Baseball players. Likely instigated by pharmaceutical interests, the bill is being posited as necessary to prevent supplement adulteration. The FDA already has the power to pull supplements from the market that are contaminated but it has not been doing its job.
DSSA is not only unnecessary, but it would actually reward the FDA for its failures. DSSA would also strip DSHEA and give full control of the supplement industry to the FDA. FDA would decide which supplements are legal.
Perhaps the most chilling aspect of DSSA is that it would allow the HHS Secretary to establish a list of permitted supplements. Reversing common law, which assumes all is legal unless restricted, DSSA would allow only what is permitted to be legal.
In a nutshell, DSSA would increase supplement costs for consumers, grant incredible new power over the supplement industry to the FDA, and drastically limit the availability of supplements. Drug companies could also use the bill to remove supplements from the market, patent them, and sell them as drugs!
It is absolutely critical to contact your Congressmen and oppose this bill. LifeExtension Magazine has a convenient "Action Alert" page in which to do so.
My Comment:
We cannot allow the totally inept FDA and the powerful and market hungry drug companies to control our access to supplements and vitamins. It is obvious to anyone with a brain that the FDA is incapable of managing anything correctly and cannot avoid conflicts of interest with the drug companies. Americans have a right to freedom of choice without being “told” what supplements we are allowed to use. The FDA and the mainstream medical establishment has been wrong on so many levels, how could we possibly expect them to make good choices on our behalf.
I don’t know whose pocket Sen. McCain is in, but sponsoring DSSA under the guise of protecting the American public is not the reason for driving this bill through the Senate. Eliminating sales competition in any form is more likely the reason. Money always talks!
Vitamin D prevents seniors from falls
Seniors who take a large daily dose of vitamin D may be significantly less likely to suffer from falls, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Center on Aging and Mobility at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and published in the British Medical Journal."
Falls are important events to prevent," said researcher Heike A. Bischoff-Ferrari, "and 700 to 1000 IU of vitamin D per day is safe and inexpensive."
Approximately one-third of all adults over the age of 64 and 50 percent of those over the age of 49 fall at least once per year. In 9 percent of these cases, a visit to the emergency room is required. In 6 percent of cases, a fracture results. Falls are often one of the primary events resulting in admission to a nursing home.
Researchers analyzed the results of eight different studies on a total of 2,400 people over the age of 64. All the studies looked at whether vitamin D supplementation could reduce the risk of falls in the elderly.
The researchers found that at doses below 700 IU per day, there was no reduction in the risk of falls. Above this level, however, the risk of falls was reduced by as much as one in four.
"It takes 700 to 1000 international units (IU) of vitamin D per day and nothing less will work," Bischoff-Ferrari said. " At the higher dose of 700 to 1000 IU vitamin D, the benefit on fall prevention is significant -- at least 19 percent, 26 percent with vitamin D3."
Although vitamin D2 is the form most commonly found in supplements, the body absorbs vitamin D3 more effectively.
Low Vitamin D Levels Raises Blood Pressure
Vitamin D deficiency may triple a person's risk of high blood pressure, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and presented at a meeting of the American Heart Association in Chicago.
"Our results indicate that early vitamin D deficiency may increase the long-term risk of high blood pressure in women at mid-life," researcher Flojaune Griffin said.
The researchers recruited 559 white women from Tecumseh, Michigan, who were between 24 and 44 years old when the study began in 1992. The participants' vitamin D blood levels were measured at the beginning of the study and once a year after that for 15 years.
At the beginning of the study, 5.5 percent of the women who were deficient in vitamin D suffered from high blood pressure, compared with only 2.8 percent of the women who had sufficient levels of the vitamin. At the end of the study in 2007, 10 percent of the women in the deficiency group had high blood pressure, compared with only 3.7 percent in the "sufficient" group."
This is preliminary data so we can't say with certainty that low vitamin D levels are directly linked to high blood pressure," Griffin said. " But this may be another example of how what you do early in life impacts your health years later."
Vitamin D is known to play a crucial role in producing strong bones and teeth. New research increasingly suggests that it also helps regulate the immune system and protect against cancer, autoimmune disorders and heart disease.
The body naturally produces vitamin D upon exposure to sunlight. A number of factors have led to widespread deficiency, however, especially at latitudes far from the equator. These factors include less time spent outside and overuse of sunscreen. Dark-skinned people living at extreme latitudes are also especially vulnerable, as their bodies produce less vitamin D from the same amount of sun than those of lighter-skinned people.
My Comment:
More and more evidense is showing just how important vitamin D is to our health. Because of a lack of intense sunshine, everyone living in the Northwest should be taking a vitamin D3 supplement. The latest recommended dosage is 2,000 IU per day split between morning and night. This is both safe and effective at helping you stay healthy in so many different ways.
Your body creates vitamin D when exposed to direct sunshine. When the sun is out be sure to try and get 15-20 minutes of direct sun every day. Expose as much of your skin as you can during the exposure. Remember that sun coming through a window is filtered and will not be effective for creating vitamin D.
Lack of meat causes poor sex (no pun intended)
Here’s an interesting tidbit on eating pork and improving your sex life. Many people believe that vegans enjoy a lower level of sex than their meat eating counterparts. There may be a reason they are rumored to perform poorly. They are usually missing two key ingredients necessary for a good sex life: protein and zinc.
The connection between good meat and great sex has gotten some unexpected attention since Argentina's president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, said that pork helped boost her sex life.
"I've just been told something I didn't know; that eating pork improves your sex life," she was quoted as saying. "I'd say it's a lot nicer to eat a bit of grilled pork than take Viagra." She said when she ate some pork, "things went very well that weekend."
She is right (even if she was just trying to get easy applause from an audience of pork industry bigwigs). Pork will boost your sex life. So will beef, poultry, dairy and shellfish -- all foods rich in protein and zinc, which are essential to testosterone production. Men with low testosterone levels have weaker sex drives.
Here's a piece of trivia you can use: British schoolmasters used to put boys on vegetarian diets to slow the libido and prevent masturbation. The logic was sound, but I doubt it worked very well -- boys are boys, after all, and they have higher testosterone levels to begin with. But as we age, our bodies need more -- but make less. To make up for that cruel irony, you need to eat meat.
The best source of zinc -- by far -- is oysters. There's a reason they've been used as aphrodisiacs for centuries: They work. Just don't ask any vegans about that. They'll have no idea what you're talking about.
Statins cause diabetes
Reported by Health Sciences Institute
It's absolutely insane. The FDA recently made it official: Crestor – a cholesterol-lowering statin drug – has now been approved for certain "patients" who do not have high cholesterol.
Reuters reports that the advisory panel that gave the green light for the new approval "voiced concern that doctors might use Crestor too broadly in patients with low risk." Which is amazing because they know without question that many mainstream doctors will start prescribing Crestor without applying excessive brainpower to what they're doing.
The problem with that is Side Effects. In a Q&A for healthcare professionals, the agency made the primary side effect – muscle pain – sound like no big deal. Hey – you can get that with any statin! Relax! (Of course, "muscle pain" sounds much less serious than what it actually is: a symptom of muscle damage.)
Then the agency ended the Q&A with this mysterious note: "An unexpected safety finding in the JUPITER trial was an increase in the number of individuals receiving CRESTOR compared to those receiving a placebo who developed diabetes. Previous meta-analyses have suggested that this is an effect of all statin drugs and is not unique to CRESTOR."
Well, FDA...which is it? An "unexpected safety finding," or a not unique "effect of all statin drugs"? Doesn't matter. What matters is that many new Crestor users at very low risk of heart problems will develop diabetes.
Low-carb living tops nasty weight-loss pill
Fads, gimmicks, drugs.....diet trends come and go. But there's one lifestyle that beats all of them every single time. That would be low-carb living. And there is research to prove it.
When researchers compared the popular new weight-loss drug orlistat -- sold as Alli and Xenical -- to a low-carb diet, not only did the low-carb group lose more weight, they also lowered their blood pressure in the process. That's the power of a higher protean diet that includes meat.
Here's the details: Researchers studied 146 dieters with an average age of 52 and body mass index of 39 (that would put a 5'10" man at 271 pounds). After 48 weeks, the low-carb eaters lost an average of 9.5 percent of their body weight while enjoying some of the best food of their lives. The drug-takers managed to lose 8.5 percent of their body weight in between bouts of the gas, incontinence and diarrhea that often accompany this med.
To the researchers, that was a tie...but once you factor in blood-pressure readings, it wasn't even a fair fight -- the drugs never had a chance. Low-carb dieters lost an average of 6 points off their systolic and 4.5 points off their diastolic readings.
The drug-poppers, on the other hand, had almost no change in blood pressure at all, according to the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. But they probably did get more bathroom reading done.
After all, this med has one of the most disgusting diet mechanisms imaginable. Orlistat works by forcing dietary fat right back out the other end -- sometimes quickly and dramatically. Stick close to the toilet when you take these pills -- you might even want to eat your meals there, just to be safe.
Saturated Fat Does Not Cause Heart Disease
The demonization of saturated fat began in 1953 with Dr. Ancel Key's publication of a paper comparing fat intake and heart disease mortality, and the misguided ousting of saturated fat has continued ever since.
The idea that saturated fat is bad for your heart became so ingrained in the medical and health community, anyone daring enough to question this dogma was automatically viewed as a quack, regardless of the evidence presented.
Instead, trans fats became all the rage and have since saturated the market. But times are finally changing, and in many ways for the better.
Along with a new interest in reviewing the sanity of vaccinating against every microscopic foe under the sun, medical scientists have finally begun to take a hard look at the link between saturated fats and heart disease – only to find that there is none.
Additionally, by now many have realized that it’s the trans fat found in margarine, vegetable shortening, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils that is the true villain, causing far more significant health problems than saturated fat ever could.
Yet Another Study Finds No Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease
Over the years, researchers have repeatedly failed to find the link between saturated fat and heart disease that Dr. Keys initially thought he had discovered, and this latest study is no exception.
When they pooled data from 21 studies that included nearly 348,000 adults, and surveyed their dietary habits and health events for anywhere from five to 23 years, they found no difference in the risks of heart disease and stroke between people with the lowest and highest intakes of saturated fat.
Most likely, the studies that have linked the so-called “Western diet” to an increased heart disease risk simply confirm that sugar and refined carbohydrates are harmful to your heart health. Because although the Western diet is high in red and processed meats and saturated fats, it’s also alarmingly high in sugar and refined carbs like bread, crackers, cookies, etc.
An encouraging part of this article was Dr. Eckel’s statement that “the thinking on diet and heart health is moving away from a focus on single nutrients and toward ‘dietary patterns’."
Whole foods – real food that has been minimally processed and manipulated – contain so many symbiotic micronutrients that work together to produce the end result. The moment you start taking these ingredients apart, you lose the overall nutritional value, and you change how the nutrients operate inside your body.
Take the Mediterranean diet, for example. It consists mainly of whole, fresh foods like fruits and vegetables, along with fish, whole grains and unsaturated fats like virgin olive oil.
This type of diet has repeatedly been found to help lower your risk of heart disease and stroke. And although it’s low in saturated fats, perhaps the most significant thing about the Mediterranean style diet is the absence of processed foods, which are loaded with sugars and dangerous trans fats.
So, essentially, a healthy diet is quite simply a natural diet of REAL foods. And that’s the type of “eating pattern” you’ll want to strive for, if you want to be optimally healthy.
Confusing the Facts About Saturated Fats
Part of the scientific confusion about saturated fats relates to the fact that your body is capable of synthesizing the saturated fats it needs from carbohydrates, and these saturated fats are principally the same ones present in dietary fats of animal origin.
However, and this is the key, not all saturated fatty acids are created equal. There are subtle differences that have profound health implications, and if you avoid eating all saturated fats you will suffer serious health consequences. There are in fact more than a dozen different types of saturated fat, but you predominantly consume only three: stearic acid, palmitic acid and lauric acid.
It’s already been well established that stearic acid (found in cocoa and animal fat) has no effect on your cholesterol levels at all, and actually gets converted in your liver into the monounsaturated fat called oleic acid.
The other two, palmitic and lauric acid, do raise total cholesterol. However, since they raise “good” cholesterol as much or more than “bad” cholesterol, you’re still actually lowering your risk of heart disease.
Yes, You DO Need Saturated Fat!
Foods containing saturated fats include:
When you eat fats as part of your meal, they slow down absorption so that you can go longer without feeling hungry. In addition, they act as carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K.
Dietary fats are also needed for the conversion of carotene to vitamin A, for mineral absorption, and for a host of other biological processes.
Saturated fats are also:
- The preferred fuel for your heart, and also used as a source of fuel during energy expenditure
- Useful antiviral agents (caprylic acid)
- Effective as an anticaries, antiplaque and anti fungal agents (lauric acid)
- Useful to actually lower cholesterol levels (palmitic and stearic acids)
- Modulators of genetic regulation and prevent cancer (butyric acid)
The Link Between TRANS FAT and Heart Disease
Now, it is still clear that there is some association between fat and heart disease. The problem lies in the fact that most studies make no effort to differentiate between saturated fat and trans fat. Additionally, the other primary processed food that typically is associated with trans fat is sugar, specifically fructose.
What Ancel Keys, and other researchers have failed to do in their multivariate analysis is control for each of these two variables. If researchers were to more carefully evaluate the risks of heart disease by measuring the levels of fructose, trans and saturated fat, they would most likely find the true answer.
You see, fructose and trans fat are known to increase your LDL levels, or "bad" cholesterol, while lowering your levels of HDL, known as "good" cholesterol, which, of course is the complete opposite of what you need in order to maintain good heart health. It can also cause major clogging of arteries, type 2 diabetes and other serious health problems.
Your body needs some amount of saturated fat to stay healthy. It is virtually impossible to achieve a nutritionally adequate diet that has no saturated fat. What you don’t need, however, are trans fats and fructose in excess of 15 grams per day. Since the average adolescent is now consuming 75 grams of fructose per day, one can begin to understand why we have an obesity and heart disease epidemic.
Contradictory Results SUPPORT Nutritional Diet Typing
Studies also clearly show that despite great compliance to low saturated fat diets, there is a wide difference in biological responses. The question is, what does this mean? Does it mean the studies are flawed? And if so, which ones?
Interestingly enough, perhaps they’re all “right,” because these contradictory results actually support nutritional typing, which predicts that one-third of people will do very well on low saturated fat diets (which supports the studies showing that they work), but another one-third of people need high saturated fat diets to stay healthy.
Healthy Fat Tips to Live By
Remember, you do need a certain amount of healthy fat, while at the same time you’ll want to avoid the unhealthy varieties.
The easiest way to accomplish this is to simply eliminate processed foods, which are high in all things detrimental to your health: sugar, carbs, and dangerous types of fats.
After that, these tips can help ensure you’re eating the right fats for your health:
- Use butter (preferably organic made from raw milk) instead of margarines and vegetable oil spreads. Butter is a healthy whole food that has received an unwarranted bad rap.
- Use coconut oil for cooking. It is far superior to any other cooking oil and is loaded with health benefits. Olive oil can also be used and can be used COLD, drizzled over salad or fish, for example for the best results.
- Focus on healthy whole foods instead of processed junk food.
- To round out your healthy fat intake, be sure to eat raw fats, such as those from avocados, raw dairy products, and olive oil, and also take a high-quality source of animal-based omega-3 fat, such as Cod, Fish, Flax or Krill oil.
Until next time, stay healthy and happy
JD Roma
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