Stop the ban of supplements!

by on November 3, 2011

Please read the important information below and take action by clicking on the link listed below.

This link within the article below will allow you to contact your US Senators and Representatives.

This is the most serious message I’ve ever had to write to you.Why? Because the FDA has issued new rules that, if enacted, will enable them to ban many of the supplements you are now taking.Think I’m exaggerating? Then please listen to the full story …Back in the early 1990s, the FDA tried to make many supplements illegal. Consumers were so alarmed by the FDA’s bullying that they staged a massive revolt. The result was that Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). That law protected supplements from the FDA unless the FDA could prove a supplement wasn’t safe.There was, however, a loophole in the 1994 law. The FDA was given the authority to regulate new ingredients introduced afterOctober 15, 1994.So what happened? Nothing at first. For 17 years, the FDA took no action, gave no guidance, and launched no enforcement of these “New Dietary Ingredients.”And that’s been a good thing. Because for 17 years, the dietary supplement industry has enjoyed tremendous innovation. These innovations have allowed us to extract and concentrate the most effective natural ingredients. As a result, millions of consumers have benefitted. They’ve protected their hearts and arteries … found relief from their joint pain … boosted their memory … and more.And during this time, supplements have enjoyed a remarkable safety record. Statistics show that supplements are safer than prescription drugs, cosmetics, medical devices, and even food!

According to the Poison Control Centers, there were zero deaths due to supplements in 2008. In 2009, there was one.

Meanwhile, pathogens like E. coli in food kill at least 2,000 people each year. Acetaminophen in drugs like Tylenol kills 450 people every year. And more powerful prescription drugs kill many more. Even the FDA now says Vioxx likely killed over 26,000 people before they finally took it off the market!

Supplements the FDA Wants to Ban

But now the FDA wants to act like the last 17 years never happened. The agency has drafted a proposal to regulate what it calls New Dietary Ingredients. If this proposal is implemented, some of the most effective nutrients you take will be pulled from the market. Nutrients like resveratrol … ubiquinol CoQ10 … bacopa … strontium … and more.

But that’s not all. Under these guidelines, the FDA can define almost anything as a “new” dietary ingredient. For example:

  • If a supplement includes more of an ingredient than was used 17 years ago — even something like vitamin C — it’s “new.”
  • If an ingredient uses a different extraction process — like baking or fermentation — it’s “new.”
  • If a supplement uses an ingredient at a different “life stage” — such as using ripe rather than non-ripe apples — it’s “new.”
  • If a supplement duplicates an ingredient in a laboratory rather than extracting it from the food — even though it’s chemically identical — it’s “new.”
  • And if a probiotic formula includes a strain of bacteria that wasn’t found in yogurt 17 years ago, it’s “new.”

So what would happen to all these “new” ingredients? The manufacturers would have to take them off the market until they could prove the ingredients are safe — even if those ingredients have been safely used for 17 years!

Why It’s Nearly Impossible to Comply

What kind of proof is the FDA demanding? According to the guidelines, many companies would have to conduct animal studies using a dosage that’s 1,000 times the typical dose.

I’m not kidding you. It’s right there in black and white on the FDA’s website. The FDA wants vitamin makers to do studies for a full year, at 1,000 times the typical dose.

So a fish-oil manufacturer would have to conduct a one-year study where animals are force-fed the human equivalent of 240,000 milligrams of fish oil each and every day! This outlandish dose would injure the animals and give the FDA an excuse to outlaw the product.

But wait, it gets even better. If one fish-oil manufacturer performs such a study and it passes, it doesn’t mean the other fish-oil makers can use the same data. No sir. They are still required to go out and do their own studies before they’re allowed to sell their product.

And these studies are very expensive. A study like the one above typically costs about $100,000-$200,000 to perform. Multiply that by several ingredients in several products, and you get an idea of the cost.

Say a company carries 6 products containing 6 ingredients each. It would cost between $3.6 and $7.2 million in studies before that company could even offer the products for sale. For a larger company offering 50 products or more, the costs would be astronomical.

Few supplement makers will be able to afford these studies, and many will be put out of business. And the ones that remain would still be at the mercy of the FDA’s whim. That’s because there are no requirements for the FDA to approve anything. They can approve or reject anything they want. And in the past, they have rejected the majority of ingredients submitted to them.

That means most of the nutrients you buy today will be pulled from the market and never return. Those that do return will be a lot more expensive — or may only be available as prescription drugs!

A Blatant Abuse of Power

This is a blatant abuse of power. What the FDA is doing here is performing an end-run around the existing law. According to the law, the FDA has to prove a dietary supplement is unsafe for it to be taken off the market. These new guidelines turn that on its head. They are clearly not what Congress intended.

Fortunately, these FDA guidelines have not yet been finalized. All federal agencies are required to give the public an opportunity to comment on a draft before it is made final. In this case, the FDA has given interested parties until December 1st to comment on the draft. That means there’s a small window of opportunity for you to voice your disapproval.

Frankly, I wouldn’t bother commenting to the FDA. The process is cumbersome, and those unelected bureaucrats don’t care what you think anyway.

What You Can Do

The best way to defeat these new rules is to talk to the people you do elect — your congressman and your two U.S. senators. They have the power to reign in the FDA — and they have done so in the past when enough voters complained.

Back in the 1970s, the FDA tried to require “warning labels” on vitamins. Angry voters called and wrote letters, and Congress responded with the Proxmire Amendments which limited the FDA’s power.

Then in the 1990s, the FDA went on the warpath again. When voters complained, Congress passed the Dietary Health Supplement Education Act, which once again limited the FDA’s power.

But like a monster killed in a horror movie, the FDA keeps coming back. And so once again, it’s time for us to step up and call the folks who rely on our votes.

Here’s what you need to do:

Go to http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml and look up the phone numbers of your U.S. Senators and your Representative (congressman). Then give them a call.

Don’t be shy and don’t worry. No one is going to bite you, no one is going to argue with you, and no one is going to quiz you to see how well you know the issues. The job of the staffers who answer is to listen politely and to relay what you say to their boss. So please do call. And please be polite and respectful of the staffers’ time.

Here are some talking points to use when you call:

  • Hello, my name is [name] and I am a constituent of [name of Senator or Representative].
  • I am very concerned about the new FDA draft guidance on dietary supplements and new dietary ingredients.
  • [Feel free to tell them about the supplements you take and/or the benefits you get from those supplements. Then feel free to make as many of the following points as you like:]

1.   Supplements have an unrivaled safety record. Statistics show they’re safer than drugs, safer than medical devices, safer than cosmetics, and even safer than food.

2.   The FDA cannot define New Dietary Ingredients so broadly. According to these guidelines, almost everything is a New Dietary Ingredient. This will strangle innovation and deprive consumers of the supplements they depend on for their health.

3.   The FDA did nothing about new dietary ingredients for 17 years. Now they want to wipe out 17 years’ worth of innovation and 17 years’ worth of benefits to the consumer.

4.   When the Dietary Health Supplement Education Act was passed, Congress intended a simple notification process for new dietary ingredients. The FDA is turning this into a pre-approval scheme, which goes against the intent of the law.

5.   The FDA already has ample regulatory authority to take action against a product if it’s unsafe. They don’t need to have this pre-approval power, too.

6.   These could be disastrous to public health. At a time when preventative measures are even more important to health care costs, the FDA is limiting access to preventative health care.

7.   The cost of complying with these guidelines would be astronomical. Experts estimate that the studies required would cost between $100,000 and $200,000 per ingredient notification. That adds up to millions of dollars per supplement company. Smaller companies would not be able to afford this and would go out of business.

The economy is already hurting and we have high unemployment. Experts estimate that this could cost the economy tens of billions of dollars and result in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.

8.   The government’s resources are already stretched. We have record budget deficits and record debt. Why enact more regulations when there are no safety issues here?

  • I request that Congress direct the FDA to carefully review their draft guidance. If they do not amend the guidance to reflect my concerns, I request that Congress call hearings at the end of the review process. I also call on Congress to write legislation that would “grandfather” all supplements currently on the market.
  • Thank you for your time.

After the phone call, send a letter to your senators and reps, making the same points. Make sure the letter is in your own words (form letters tend not to work as well). You can find the e-mail and physical addresses at the same website, http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml.

Then send the same letter to President Obama. (His address and phone number are on the website, too.)

Please, please, please don’t make the mistake of thinking that the FDA won’t take your supplements away. Similar regulations were passed in other countries, and the result was disastrous. Many supplements were taken off the market forever. In some instances, the entire supplement industry was decimated. Don’t let that happen here.

Take action now! You only have a small window of opportunity to make your voice heard. Get started by going to http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml.

Sincerely,

Garret W. Wood
President

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Gastrointestinal Parasites

by on July 28, 2011

Gastrointestinal Parasites

Gastrointestinal Parasites:

If you are ill, they could be why

Gastrointestinal Parasites, from my experience as a a professional nurse and biofeedback practitioner, set your body up for disease.  What I’m talking about are little creatures hanging around in your bowel, laying eggs and eventually taking little trips to other parts  of your body to make you sick.  cute bugsThey may be in the form of worms (large or small), fungus, bacteria or any of their distant relatives.  What they want from you is a nice place to live and their fair share of your food while they make you sick.

Most people are totally unaware that they are sharing their bodies with them and are astounded when I do a scan that shows they have a tape worm along with various other worms.  The big question people have is where in the world do you get parasites?  Well, pets are a prime source since they are low to the ground and lick many things including themselves.  So by licking you, they could leave these minute critters or eggs.  Many other things we touch could be infected as humans pass them along without good hand washing and the list could go on and on.

Once you are infected gastrointestinal parasites can leave a path of destruction that causes a ripple effect to every place in the body.  Their ultimate gift to you is to create disease wherever they are.

When we do not get rid of gastrointestinal parasites where they live in the bowel,  we begin to develop health problems.  As time goes on, there can be generations and generations of them in the bowel.  For example the original parasite lays eggs.  Those eggs hatch and  become adults who lay their own eggs.  This cycle is repeated over and over unless something interferes.  Their special hide out is in the deep crevices of the bowel where they live a life of luxury and are hard to get to.

Do you experience gas or bloating?

When gastrointestinal parasites are present, the bowel becomes confused and begins to do weird things…

For starters, the bowel  has just the right balance or what is called “PH” when it is healthy, that is a balance between being acid and alkaline.  It is supposed to be more acid than the the tissues outside the bowel. On the outside of the bowel, the body functions as more alkaline while the inside of the bowel should be acid. This prevents poisons from spilling into the body from the bowel.  When there are more and more parasites growing inside the bowel, the “ph” in the bowel rises higher and higher until it has the same “ph” as the body  and from here the parasites and the poisons that the parasites give off are pulled into the body from the bowel, rather than being passed out of the bowel in our bowel movements.  Once they are outside of the bowel they can move freely into  the lymph and blood systems around the bowel, and from there move throughout the body to any organs they choose.

What are their favorite foods?

Eating a poor diet that includes lots of sugar products and wheat products that are rich in gluten along with and not taking in enough minerals is just the train ticket for parasites and toxins to seep into the organs around the gut and start a disease process.  This is where you see Candida, (a fungus), growing and where Celiac disease (that is the sensitivity to gluten in wheat) start appearing.  Fungus grow too, if we consume excessive amounts of alcohol.  A body with a lot of fungus will cause food and alcohol cravings.

So what is the connection of  Gluten to gastrointestinal parasites?

Gluten is the glue in wheat and grains and when we eat gluten products such as breads, it wells up in our guts and releases morphine, a substance that makes us feel good.  That morphine, similar to an injection doctors give for pain, gives us a high sense of comfort and satisfaction like when we are full, after we eat foods made up of gluten.  That’s why we crave more and more gluten foods such as breads and pastries with high wheat content.  This is fine until the gastrointestinal parasites are introduced into our digestive system.  If you has a sensitivity or intolerance to gluten it will make that sensitivity. The more parasites you have in your gut, the more acid it gets and the parasites love it.  When the acid gets to a certain level the parasites start seeping out into the rest of the body.  As they do, they run into the Celiac gene and wake it up, and move onto the  nervous system, so your body is soon trapped into a state of chronic fatigue that  you can’t get out of.  From  there they just continue through your body making you ill.

gastrointestinalparasitesGastrointestinal Parasites: Are they causing your body to attack itself?

Many people are ill from gastrointestinal parasites because the body begins to attack itself or “self attack”.  This is known as an Auto Immune Attack. Auto immune disease is one of the top ranking causes of illness in our society accounting for 25% of deaths where cancer and heart disease account for 25 and 50% respectively.

The gut lining plays a big role here.  The gut lining is covered with “square sugars” much like patio stones or a driveway that’s lined with interlocking stones.  It turns out that many food poisoning bugs are also coated in these “square sugars” (or patio stones).  So when your immune system sends out antibodies (proteins which function to  help remove “foreigners”  such as viruses or parasites), against the food poisoning which has the same square sugar make-up, it can set up an attack against your own body because it can’t tell who the square sugar “patio stones” belong to,  so it takes both the good and the bad down. This is the auto immune disease we are talking about, where in the fight against an invader (gastrointestinal parasite) in our body, such as a worm or fungus or bacteria, part of our own body attacks itself.

If we can clean up the gastrointestinal parasites in the gut, we can eliminate almost all of the illnesses that are occurring. In addition we can reduce the ability of the heart to deteriorate and the ability for cancers to grow in a body which can occur after a food poisoning bug.  By treating gastrointestinal parasites and healing the food poisoning they create, we can have a profound effect on many organ systems in the body, such as our nervous system, our lymph system , our endocrine system (adrenals, thyroid, etc.) as well as having an effect on our mood control.

Wait, what do you mean by “mood control”?

Well, another “curse” of gastrointestinal parasites is that they can affect the serotonin and dopamine levels in the gut.  Serotonin, a chemical that’s always present in our body and has many functions, but in this case it has to do with our moods.  Serotonin is found among other places in the body, in the lymph nodes of the gut lining. When we’re happy and content our serotonin levels are high. When we’re pessimistic and unhappy our serotonin levels are low.  Serotonin makes our gut “happy”.  In addition to Serotonin, Dopamine is found in the gut lining and is a substance we associate with pleasure and it plays a key role in our concentration and decision making ability. Dopamine is also at the root of our internal mental reward system that motivates us to accomplish goals. When dopamine levels are low, our brain’s reward system stops working and we no longer feel a sense of satisfaction when we accomplish a goal.  That feeling of not caring whether things get done or not.  Additionally, low dopamine levels lead to poor concentration and difficulty making decisions.

When our serotonin and dopamine levels are low after prolonged chronic infestations of parasites, it is difficult to be motivated to get well.  Last, but not least, these two substances are important in helping the bowels to move forward and move the poisons or gastrointestinal parasites out of the body through our bowel movements.

Worms (gastrointestinal parasites) tend to use a lot of dopamine so there is less to help the bowel movement and less to help us to be motivated to do things.  If you’ve ever noticed having a tight neck or tight shoulder muscles it may be due to parasite infestation using up the dopamine instead of allowing the dopamine to be converted to the hormones that it needs to do its work such as adrenal hormone, thyroid hormone or pineal hormone. This has a negative effect on your entire body and even though the infection or infestation of gastrointestinal parasites is in the gut, the spill over effect can come to the brain and may interrupt sleeping patterns or it may interrupt the normal function of body organs.

It is important to look at your body as a whole and see if you are noticing negative changes.  How are you feeling?  Does your digestion work well.  Are you fatigued and irritable?  Gastrointestinal parasites could be at the bottom of that.

In my practice I  have noticed in asthma clients that a high parasite count often goes hand in hand with asthma or breathing problems.   As parasites give off their toxins, these toxins can be absorbed into the lung causing difficulty in breathing.  A good parasite cleanse often  makes a noticeable difference.

How do you know if you have gastrointestinal parasites?

The following symptoms may be a big clue as to whether you have gastrointestinal parasites.

  • Diarrhea
  • Gas or bloating
  • Nausea or vomiting
  • Stomach pain or tenderness
  • Fatigue or weakness
  • Weight loss
  • Passing a worm in your stool
  • Asthma, difficult breathing
  • Anxiety
  • Panic Attacks

What to do about gastrointestinal parasites?  There are a couple of options if you want help.  One idea is to visit a Doctor and have a lot of tests and get a prescription to treat the symptoms.  However, parasites often move under the radar in medical  testing and are not picked up in those tests.  Medical testing could include blood and urine tests, stool examination, X-rays, ultrasound studies and, uncommonly,  taking fluid from the bowel, Ouch!  Other tests may be required, depending on the parasite and the disease.

A much simpler and less expensive thing to do is get a quantum biofeedback scan, never having to leave your home.  As a professional nurse and biofeedback expert for nearly ten years, I  frequently evaluate the status of parasites in one’s body with a simple biofeedback distance scan.  You will get good information from this scan and save yourself a lot of money.  To find out how to get a scan for gastrointestinal parasites go to my site at: http://www.futuristicwellness.com/wellness-services

 

What else needs to be done for gastrointestinal parasites

I believe a good starting place is a trip  to your local health food store or look on line for a good 21 day gastrointestinal parasite cleanse.  Doctors who practice natural medicine usually sell cleanses as well.

Look at what you are eating.  Does it include lots of vegetables and natural foods like garlic.  Health food stores carry a variety of bowel support items such as black walnut, grapefruit extract and pumpkin seeds.  These would be helpful in conjunction with the cleanse.  Supplements like zinc, beta carotene, selenium along with vitamins A, C, & E give extra support to  the body.  I can often see if those would be helpful after doing a scan.

Using green algae salt is helpful and making a stir fry with rice pasta,  using olive oil and garlic along with various vegetables is great.  Since I often see a deficiency in sulfur in clients with gastrointestinal parasites, MSM (methylsulfonylmethane) or other sulfur  products may be helpful.

Use foods that will create natural bacteria in your bowel such as yogurt.  Drink plenty of water.

Bottom line, never think that gastrointestinal parasites are a simple little thing, they can have a profound effect on your entire body.

See how you can get a biofeedback scan for gastrointestinal parasites to get on your road to health while saving yourself a lot of money http://www.futuristicwellness.com/wellness-services

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Exposure to Radiation

April 21, 2011

Exposure to Radiation: “you should be worried!”  We would have to be blind and deaf to not know about radiation exposure right now.  Today’s  local newspaper article relates that “three weeks into the crisis in Japan, minute traces of radioactive dust have circled the globe”.  It further says, “fallout from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant [...]

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