How To Detox From Fluoride

article by: Margie King, Health Coach

In today's world, fluoride is hard to avoid completely. Here's how to detox your body. 

Adding fluoride to the water supplies has been called murder on a grand scale. But whether or not your town adds it to your drinking water, you're probably ingesting this toxin every day. 

You're exposed to fluoride if you take prescription drugs like Prozac, swim in pools, or sit in hot tubs.  It's in conventional produce like lettuce, and commercial bread and bakery products.  It may be in beverages like iced tea, wine, and beer made with municipal water, or in infant formula.  And of course it's in toothpaste.  It may even sneak into your food from Teflon coated pots and pans. 

In addition to increasing the risk of death, fluoride also calcifies the pineal gland andhardens the arteries.  And it increases the risk of hypothyroidism.

Minimizing your exposure to fluoride is important.  But in today's world, this toxin is hard to avoid completely. That's why it's critical to detox your body from fluoride. 

Iodine Flushes Out Fluoride

Cleansing your system of fluoride is not the same as getting rid of mercury or arsenic.  Fluoride is not a heavy metal.  It's a halide in the same family as bromine and chlorine. Fluoride, bromine, chlorine, and perchlorate all bind to iodine receptors in the body and displace iodine. 

Perchlorate is a man-made molecule combining oxygen and chlorine.  It's used for rocket fuel and industrial processes and contaminates our water supplies.  

According to Dr. Mark Sircus, the only effective way to detox from perchlorate, fluoride or other halides is with iodine.[i]  Chelation and other methods for heavy metal detox may not be as effective.  

Loading the body with iodine displaces fluoride from cell receptors and flushes the fluoride out of the body in urine. 

Your body can't make iodine.  You have to get it from food or supplements.  And unfortunately it's estimated that as many as 74% of Americans are deficient in this crucial element.   

The best dietary source of iodine is seaweed.  Sea vegetables like wakame, nori, kombu (kelp), arame, and dulse are the richest edible sources of iodine.  Just one tablespoon of dried dulse flakes contains about 750 mcg of iodine.  The government's daily recommended amount is about 150 mcg.

Other good iodine sources include seafood (salmon, lobster, scallops, cod and shrimp).  Cranberries, yogurt, potatoes, strawberries, and navy beans also contain iodine but in much lower amounts.

You can also find seaweed supplements like kelp tablets at most health food stores. 

Iodine supplements are also widely available.  Iodoral^® tablets contain 5 mg of iodine, and 7.5 mg of potassium iodide.  A typical dose is 6.25mg or 12.5 milligrams of combined iodine and iodide.

Detoxing from fluoride using iodine may trigger symptoms like headaches, agitation, and palpitations as fluoride is released.  To minimize those effects, it's important to work with a natural health specialist.  According to Dr. David Brownstein in his book "Iodine: Why Your Need It, Why You Can't Live Without It" an iodine detox should include a nutritional plan as well as unrefined sea salt, selenium, vitamin C, and a vitamin B complex. 

At the same time, as with any cleanse, your liver will need additional support.  Liver cleansing foods include garlic, turmeric, flaxseeds, milk thistle, lemons, limes, and avocados.

And always drink plenty of water when detoxing.  Divide your weight by two and drink that number of ounces of fluoride-free water each day to help flush the toxins.  

Even though iodine may be the best way to detox from fluoride, studies show that other methods may help reverse the damage done by fluoride in the body. 

Curcumin Fights Fluoride Toxicity

In a study published in Pharmacognosy Magazine, curcumin was found to protect against the brain-damaging effects of fluoride.[ii]

Other studies show curcumin, the active ingredient in the spice turmeric, also protects the kidneys against fluoride toxicity.[iii]  And curcumin has been shown to prevent DNA damage from fluoride in human lymphocytes.[iv]

Tamarind Moves Fluoride Out of Bones

Tamarind is an African spice commonly used in Ayurvedic medicine. In a recent randomized, diet control study, Indian researchers studied the effect of tamarind in 30 subjects living in an area with high natural fluoride levels.  After two weeks, the group supplementing with tamarind had a significant increase in fluoride excreted through their urine. The researchers concluded that tamarind mobilized fluoride from bone and carried it out in urine.    

In another study, Indian schoolboys ate 10 grams of tamarind every day.  After 18 days, their excretion of fluoride was significantly increased.  The researchers concluded that tamarind could delay fluorosis by improving excretion of fluoride in the urine.

Tamarind is a tropical tree.  Its pulp, bark, and leaves can be used to make a tincture or tea.  Leaves, flowers, fruit, and seeds are used to make curries, lentils, salads, stews and soups.

Animal studies also show benefits of nutrition against fluoride:

• Blackberry juice counters the oxidative damage of fluoride and also repairs the effects of fluoride liver toxicity.
• Quercetin protects heart against fluoride oxidative stress
• Selenium and zinc protect against kidney damage from fluoride

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E-Motion—How Your Emotional Baggage May Be Sabotaging Your Health, and What to Do About It

by Dr Mercola

Your thoughts and emotions, many of which are driven by subconscious beliefs and long-forgotten experiences, are a powerful force that can aid or degenerate your health.

The featured documentary, E-Motion,1 asks, “If your subconscious mind is 1,000 times more powerful than your conscious mind, what controls it?”

The answer to this and other related questions is expounded upon by a number of individuals featured in this film, including Sonia Choquette, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Dr. Dr. Bradley Nelson, Don Tolman, and others.

Emotions as Energy in Motion

E-Motion and Faster Healing

According to Dr. Nelson, when you feel an emotion, what you’re really sensing is the vibration of a particular energy. Similarly, Tolman suggests thinking of emotion as “energy movement.”

Each emotion has its own vibratory signature, and when intense emotions are felt, they can become trapped in your body, much like a ball of energy.

These “balls of energy” can become lodged just about anywhere in your body, where they can then cause disruptions in your body’s energy system, which underlies your physical system much like an invisible matrix.

Your body is both biochemical and biophysical, and disruptions in your field of energy will eventually result in physical dysfunction. It’s interesting to note that certain emotions are known to be associated with pain in certain regions of your body, even though science cannot give an explanation for why.

For example, those suffering from depression will often experience chest pains, even when there’s nothing physically wrong with their heart. Extreme grief can also have a devastating impact—not for nothing is the saying that someone “died from a broken heart.” In the days after losing a loved one, your risk of suffering a heart attack shoots up by 21 times!

Your Body Is Pure Energy...

Thinking of your body as a conglomerate of densely packed energies rather than material cells will also help you understand that an important factor in the root cause of disease is really inharmonious activity at the energetic, subatomic level.

Stress is one major factor that can produce significant amounts of chaos at this underlying energetic level, which is likely why removing stress has such a positive influence on health.

The American Medical Association (AMA) states 80 percent of all health problems are stress related, and even the conservative Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has stated that 85 percent of all diseases appear to have an emotional element.

The classic definition of stress is “any real or imagined threat, and your body’s response to it.” Research has shown that your body’s natural stress response can have a significant impact on everything from immune function and brain chemistry, to blood sugar levels, hormonal balance, and much more.

For example, researchers2 have found that ruminating on a stressful incident will increase the levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation, in your body.

And, as noted in the film, the emotions associated with living in a “state of emergency” all the time—which is what happens when you’re chronically stressed—are anger, aggression, hatred, fear, prejudice, anxiety, insecurity, hopelessness, and other negative states that feed the energetic chaos that manifests as physical pain and disease.

All of these emotions, which we consider to be part of our conscious reality, are derived or produced by stress chemicals.

Now, if your emotions allow you to “see” your conscious mind, where do you look to observe your subconscious mind? Dr. Dispenza says your body is your subconscious mind.

So your subconscious is actually nowhere near as hidden as you might think... Your subconscious is speaking to you loud and clear all the time. To “hear” what it’s saying, all you have to do is notice what’s going on in your body.

The Rise of Mind-Body Medicine

Your body cannot tell the difference between an actual experience that triggers an emotional response, and an emotion fabricated through thought process alone—such as when worrying about something negative that might occur but has not actually happened, or conversely, thinking about something positive and pleasant.

The fact that you can activate your body’s stress response (which produces chemicals that can make you sick) simply by thinking means that you wield tremendous power over your physical state in every moment. Moreover, it means that you can literally manifest disease, or healing, by thinking.

In recent years, there’s been an upwelling of mind-body therapies that take this interrelatedness between your emotions and physical health into account.3 The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is, I believe, among the most effective.

Clinical trials have confirmed that EFT is able to rapidly reduce the emotional impact of memories and incidents that trigger emotional distress. Once the distress is reduced or removed, your body can often rebalance itself and heal more or less automatically.

Popular cigarettes found to contain toxic metals: Lead, Cadmium, Arsenic and Aluminum

Heavy metals lab test results for American Spirit, Marlboro, Pall Mall, Camel and Winston cigarettes

The big story here is that there is significant lead in all the cigarettes we tested.

In fact, there's more lead in cigarettes than the lead we found in most brands of rice protein in our widely-publicized research from last year. This is especially concerning because cigarette smoke is inhaled into the lungs, providing a direct pathway into the bloodstream.

Our tests focused on the heavy metals concentrations of the tobacco leaf in each cigarette. We were not able to account for the ability of cigarette filters to remove toxic heavy metals from the inhalation stream, but it is logical and reasonable to assume that cigarette filters may remove some portion of heavy metals from the inhaled smoke. We are actively looking for a way to test the concentration of heavy metals removed by filtration vs. those that are inhaled by the smoker.

The numbers you see here represent the concentrations of heavy metals in the cigarette itself, and these numbers are accurate within plus or minus 10%.

Lead found in popular cigarettes and rolling papers

Numbers represent parts per billion. Divide by 1,000 to get parts per million.

American Spirit (Mellow) 308
American Spirit (Full Bodied) 466
Camel (Filtered) 606
Camel (Blue) 415
Pall Mall (Red) 511
Pall Mall (Blue) 526
Marlboro (Filtered) 496
Marlboro (Gold) 483
Newport 439
Winston (Gold) 421
Winston (Red) 472

Rolling papers: (Notice how these numbers are significantly lower? Rolling papers are significantly cleaner than cigarettes.)
Bob Marley Hemp Rolling Papers 189
300's Raw Hemp Rolling Paper 142
Top Rolling Papers 76

Cadmium found in popular cigarettes and rolling papers

Numbers represent parts per billion. Divide by 1,000 to get parts per million.

American Spirit (Mellow) 1086
American Spirit (Full Bodied) 1432
Camel (Filtered) 1152
Camel (Blue) 998
Pall Mall (Red) 917
Pall Mall (Blue) 927
Marlboro (Filtered) 935
Marlboro (Gold) 1041
Newport 1032
Winston (Gold) 966
Winston (Red) 1089

Rolling papers: (Notice how these numbers are significantly lower? Rolling papers are significantly cleaner than cigarettes.)
Bob Marley Hemp Rolling Papers 4
300's Raw Hemp Rolling Paper 14
Top Rolling Papers 22

Arsenic found in popular cigarettes and rolling papers

Numbers represent parts per billion. Divide by 1,000 to get parts per million.

American Spirit (Mellow) 226
American Spirit (Full Bodied) 337
Camel (Filtered) 294
Camel (Blue) 249
Pall Mall (Red) 339
Pall Mall (Blue) 222
Marlboro (Filtered) 321
Marlboro (Gold) 329
Newport 238
Winston (Gold) 174
Winston (Red) 216

Rolling papers: (Notice how these numbers are significantly lower? Rolling papers are significantly cleaner than cigarettes.)
Bob Marley Hemp Rolling Papers 0
300's Raw Hemp Rolling Paper 15
Top Rolling Papers 43

Aluminum found in popular cigarettes and rolling papers

Numbers represent parts per billion. Divide by 1,000 to get parts per million.

American Spirit (Mellow) 125717
American Spirit (Full Bodied) 246938
Camel (Filtered) 257907
Camel (Blue) 210734
Pall Mall (Red) 249931
Pall Mall (Blue) 228245
Marlboro (Filtered) 227508
Marlboro (Gold) 230400
Newport 225380
Winston (Gold) 186413
Winston (Red) 244375

Rolling papers: (Notice how these numbers are significantly lower? Rolling papers are significantly cleaner than cigarettes.)
Bob Marley Hemp Rolling Papers 68870
300's Raw Hemp Rolling Paper 14384
Top Rolling Papers 37676

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/048877_cigarettes_heavy_metals_lab_test_results.html#ixzz3TWsifyAe

Study: Many herbal supplements aren't what the label says

By Mary Esch, Associated PressFebruary 3, 2015

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Bottles of Walmart-brand echinacea, an herb said to ward off colds, were found to contain no echinacea at all. GNC-brand bottles of St. John's wort, touted as a cure for depression, held rice, garlic and a tropical houseplant, but not a trace of the herb.

In fact, DNA testing on hundreds of bottles of store-brand herbal supplements sold as treatments for everything from memory loss to prostate trouble found that four out of five contained none of the herbs on the label. Instead, they were packed with cheap fillers such as wheat, rice, beans or houseplants.

Based on the testing commissioned by his office, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Tuesday he has sent letters to the four major store chains involved — GNC, Target, Walmart and Walgreens — demanding that they immediately stop selling adulterated or mislabeled dietary supplements.

Schneiderman said the supplements pose serious risks. People who have allergies or are taking certain medications can suffer dangerous reactions from herbal concoctions that contain substances not listed on the label, he said.

"This investigation makes one thing abundantly clear: The old adage 'buyer beware' may be especially true for consumers of herbal supplements," the attorney general said.

The herbal supplement industry criticized the method used to analyze the samples and raised questions about the reliability of the findings.

Walmart's vice president of Health & Wellness, Carmen Bauza, said testing by Walmart suppliers hasn't revealed any issues with the relevant products, but the company will comply with the attorney general's request to stop selling them in New York.

"We take this matter very seriously and will be conducting side-by-side analysis because we are 100 percent committed to providing our customers safe products," Bauza said.

Walgreen pledged to cooperate with the attorney general, who asked the store chains for detailed information on production and quality control.

"We take these issues very seriously and as a precautionary measure, we are in the process of removing these products from our shelves as we review this matter further," Walgreen spokesman James Graham said.

GNC said it, too, will cooperate, but spokeswoman Laura Brophy said: "We stand by the quality, purity and potency of all ingredients listed on the labels of our private-label products."

Target said it can't comment without reviewing the full report.

Nutritionist David Schardt of the Center for Science in the Public Interest said the tests show that the supplement industry is in urgent need of reform, and until that happens, consumers should stop wasting their money.

A 2013 Canadian government study estimated there are 65,000 dietary supplements on the market, consumed by more than 150 million Americans. The nonprofit American Botanical Council estimated 2013 sales of herbal supplements in the U.S. at $6 billion.

The Food and Drug Administration requires companies to verify their products are safe and properly labeled. But supplements are exempt from the FDA's strict approval process for prescription drugs.

Schneiderman said tests found no echinacea or any other plant material in bottles of Walmart's Spring Valley Echinacea. He said no ginseng was found in 20 tests of GNC's Herbal Plus Ginseng, which is taken to boost energy.

Other supplements tested included garlic, which is said to boost immunity and prevent heart disease; ginkgo biloba, often touted as a memory-booster; and saw palmetto, promoted as a prostate treatment.

DNA tests found such substances as rice, beans, pine, citrus, asparagus, primrose, wheat, houseplant, wild carrot and unidentified non-plant material — none of which were mentioned on the label.

The store chain with the poorest showing was Walmart, where only 4 percent of the products tested showed DNA from the plants listed on the labels.

The investigation looked at six herbal supplements sold at stores across the state. Testing was performed by an expert in DNA technology, James Schulte II of Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York.

The DNA tests were done on three to four samples of each supplement purchased. Each sample was tested five times. Overall, 390 tests involving 78 samples were conducted.

Steve Mister, president and CEO of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a dietary supplement trade group, criticized the testing procedure and accused Schneiderman of engaging in a "self-serving publicity stunt under the guise of protecting public health."

"Processing during manufacturing of botanical supplements can remove or damage DNA," Mister said. As a result, he said, DNA analysis "may be the wrong test for these kinds of products."

Michael McGuffin, president of the American Herbal Products Association, said identification of an herb through DNA testing must be confirmed through other means, such as chromatography or microscopy.

But Arthur Grollman, a physician and pharmacology professor at Stony Brook University, called the study "a well-controlled, scientifically based documentation of the outrageous degree of adulteration in the herbal supplement industry."

Fresh Lemongrass Fields in Israel become Mecca for Cancer Patients

by Allison Kaplan Sommer

A drink with as little as one gram of lemon grass contains enough citral to prompt cancer cells to commit suicide in the test tube according to new Israeli research. At first, Benny Zabidov, an Israeli agriculturalist who grows greenhouses …

A drink with as little as one gram of lemon grass contains enough citral to prompt cancer cells to commit suicide in the test tube according to new Israeli research.

At first, Benny Zabidov, an Israeli agriculturalist who grows greenhouses full of lush spices on a pastoral farm in Kfar Yedidya in the Sharon region, couldn’t understand why so many cancer patients from around the country were showing up on his doorstep asking for fresh lemon grass.

It turned out that their doctors had sent them.

“They had been told to drink eight glasses of hot water with fresh lemon grass steeped in it on the days that they went for their radiation and chemotherapy treatments,” Zabidov told ISRAEL21c. “And this is the place you go to in Israel for fresh lemon grass.”

It all began when researchers at Ben Gurion University of the Negev discovered last year that the lemon aroma in herbs like lemon grass kills cancer cells in vitro, while leaving healthy cells unharmed.

The research team was led by Dr. Rivka Ofir and Prof. Yakov Weinstein, incumbent of the Albert Katz Chair in Cell-Differentiation and Malignant Diseases, from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at BGU.

Citral is the key component that gives the lemony aroma and taste in several herbal plants such as lemon grass (Cymbopogon citratus), melissa (Melissa officinalis) and verbena (Verbena officinalis.)

According to Ofir, the study found that citral causes cancer cells to “commit suicide: using apoptosis, a mechanism called programmed cell death.” A drink with as little as one gram of lemon grass contains enough citral to prompt the cancer cells to commit suicide in the test tube.

The BGU investigators checked the influence of the citral on cancerous cells by adding them to both cancerous cells and normal cells that were grown in a petri dish. The quantity added in the concentrate was equivalent to the amount contained in a cup of regular tea using one gram of lemon herbs in hot water. While the citral killed the cancerous cells, the normal cells remained unharmed.

The findings were published in the scientific journal Planta Medica, which highlights research on alternative and herbal remedies. Shortly afterwards, the discovery was featured in the popular Israeli press.

Why does it work? Nobody knows for certain, but the BGU scientists have a theory.

“In each cell in our body, there is a genetic program which causes programmed cell death. When something goes wrong, the cells divide with no control and become cancer cells. In normal cells, when the cell discovers that the control system is not operating correctly – for example, when it recognizes that a cell contains faulty genetic material following cell division – it triggers cell death,” explains Weinstein. “This research may explain the medical benefit of these herbs.”

The success of their research led them to the conclusion that herbs containing citral may be consumed as a preventative measure against certain cancerous cells.

As they learned of the BGU findings in the press, many physicians in Israel began to believe that while the research certainly needed to be explored further, in the meantime it would be advisable for their patients, who were looking for any possible tool to fight their condition, to try to harness the cancer-destroying properties of citral.

That’s why Zabidov’s farm – the only major grower of fresh lemon grass in Israel – has become a pilgrimage destination for these patients. Luckily, they found themselves in sympathetic hands. Zabidov greets visitors with a large kettle of aromatic lemon grass tea, a plate of cookies, and a supportive attitude.

“My father died of cancer, and my wife’s sister died young because of cancer,” said Zabidov. “So I understand what they are dealing with. And I may not know anything about medicine, but I’m a good listener. And so they tell me about their expensive painful treatments and what they’ve been through. I would never tell them to stop being treated, but it’s great that they are exploring alternatives and drinking the lemon grass tea as well.”

Zabidov knew from a young age that agriculture was his calling. At age 14, he enrolled in the Kfar Hayarok Agricultural high school. After his army service, he joined an idealistic group which headed south, in the Arava desert region, to found a new moshav (agricultural settlement) called Tsofar.

“We were very successful; we raised fruits and vegetables, and,” he notes with a smile, “We raised some very nice children.”

On a trip to Europe in the mid-80s, he began to become interested in herbs. Israel, at the time, was nothing like the trend-conscious cuisine-oriented country it is today, and the only spices being grown commercially were basics like parsley, dill, and coriander.

Wandering in the Paris market, looking at the variety of herbs and spices, Zabidov realized that there was a great export potential in this niche. He brought samples back home with him, “which was technically illegal,” he says with a guilty smile, to see how they would grow in his desert greenhouses. Soon, he was growing basil, oregano, tarragon, chives, sage, marjoram and melissa, and mint just to name a few.

His business began to outgrow his desert facilities, and so he decided to move north, settling in the moshav of Kfar Yedidya, an hour and a half north of Tel Aviv. He is now selling “several hundred kilos” of lemon grass per week, and has signed with a distributor to package and put it in health food stores.

Zabidov has taken it upon himself to learn more about the properties of citral, and help his customers learn more, and has invited medical experts to his farm to give lectures about how the citral works and why.

He also felt a responsibility to know what to tell his customers about its use. “When I realized what was happening, I picked up the phone and called Dr. Weinstein at Ben-Gurion University, because these people were asking me exactly the best way to consume the citral. He said to put the loose grass in hot water, and drink about eight glasses each day.”

Zabidov is pleased by the findings, not simply because it means business for his farm, but because it might influence his own health.

Even before the news of its benefits were demonstrated, he and his family had been drinking lemon grass in hot water for years, “just because it tastes good.”