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In the U.S., an estimated 30% of adults have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), the most common chronic liver disease.1 Globally, about 25% of adults are affected.2 These numbers only account for the buildup of excess fat in your liver that is not related to heavy alcohol use. If alcoholic liver disease were also factored in, the prevalence would be even higher.

Further, in people with obesity, up to 90% have NAFLD, as do up to 75% of those who are overweight3 and 50% of people with diabetes.4 Even 10% of U.S. children are suffering from NAFLD.5

Lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, weight and smoking all play important roles in exacerbating (as well as reducing) your chances of developing some form of liver disease. Obesity and other signs of metabolic dysfunction, including high blood pressure, insulin resistance and elevated triglycerides, are also linked to NAFLD.6

Left unchecked, it’s estimated that 100 million people in the U.S. alone will develop NAFLD by 2030.7 There are many steps you can take to reduce your risk, however, so you don’t end up as one of them.

What Is NAFLD?

NAFLD describes excess fat buildup in your liver. Without proper treatment, NAFLD can lead to serious liver problems including nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which causes inflammation and fibrosis, or scarring of the liver. NASH may lead to cirrhosis, which increases the risk of liver cancer, and end-stage liver disease.8

However, NAFLD also increases the risk of other health conditions, including cardiovascular disease, which is the No. 1 cause of death in people with NAFLD.9 NAFLD often has no symptoms, although it may cause fatigue, jaundice, swelling in the legs and abdomen, mental confusion and more.

Your liver, as the largest solid organ in your body, carries out more than 500 essential functions to your health.10 This includes the production of bile, which breaks down fats and carries away waste, converting excess glucose into glycogen, and regulating amino acids in the blood. It’s also important for detoxification, helping to clear your blood of toxins, and regulates blood clotting, among other functions.11

Fortunately, your liver, more than almost any other tissue in your body, has phenomenal regeneration capabilities. Even if 90% of it has been removed, it can regrow to its normal size.12 Along these lines, NAFLD can often be reversed in its early stages via lifestyle changes, like healthy eating and exercising.

NAFLD’s Dietary Connections

The high rates of NAFLD are most likely related to the increased intake of toxic industrially processed seed oils, often referred to as “vegetable oils.” Examples of seed oils high in omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) include soybean, cottonseed, sunflower, rapeseed (canola), corn and safflower.13

Eating seed oils high in the omega-6 PUFA linoleic acid (LA) contributes to low-grade inflammation, oxidative stress, endothelial dysfunction and atherosclerosis.14 As researchers noted in the journal Nutrients, “In addition, a few studies suggested that omega-6 PUFA is related to chronic inflammatory diseases such as obesity, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and cardiovascular disease.”15

In order to avoid LA, you’ll need to avoid eating processed foods, fast foods and most restaurant foods and focus on real food instead. Fatty liver can also be driven by excess sugar when, in addition to seed oils, you are consuming more than 35% of your calories as fat. This is likely why this condition is now found even in young children.

Choline’s Role in NAFLD

Choline, an essential nutrient, is also important for normal liver function and liver health. Choline plays a role in maintaining membrane integrity and managing cholesterol metabolism, including low density lipoproteins (LDL) and very low-density lipoproteins (VLDL), helping to move fat out of your liver.16,17

By enhancing secretion of VLDL in your liver, required to safely transport fat out, choline may protect your liver health.18 Further, choline deficiency may lead to abnormal fat deposits in your liver, causing NAFLD.19

An estimated 90% of the U.S. population is deficient in choline.20 You can increase your intake by consuming more choline-rich foods, such as organic pastured egg yolks, grass fed beef liver, wild-caught Alaskan salmon and krill oil. Arugula is also an excellent source.

In fact, some experts believe NAFLD is largely the result of shunning choline-rich foods like liver and egg yolks, which is then worsened by consuming too much linoleic acid. As noted by Chris Masterjohn, who has a Ph.D. in nutritional science:21

“After studying the relevant literature and tracing it much further back in time than anyone else ever bothers to, I've come to the conclusion that neither fat nor sugar nor booze are the master criminals here. Rather, these mischievous dudes are just the lackeys of the head honcho, choline deficiency. That's right, folks, it's the disappearance of liver and egg yolks from the American diet that takes most of the blame.

More specifically, I currently believe that dietary fat, whether saturated or unsaturated, and anything that the liver likes to turn into fat, like fructose and ethanol, will promote the accumulation of fat as long as we don't get enough choline. Once that fat accumulates, the critical factor igniting an inflammatory fire to this fat is the consumption of too much PUFA (polyunsaturated fat from vegetable and perhaps fish oils).”

Environmental Pollution Plays a Role

Exposure to pollutants that act as endocrine and metabolic disruptors is another contributing factor in rising rates of NAFLD. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs), endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), heavy metals, and micro- and nanoplastics have all been implicated in both the development and progression of NAFLD.22

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide, is one particularly pernicious toxin to your liver. As more and more glyphosate has been sprayed on agricultural lands, parks and backyards, entering our food and water supplies, NAFLD rates have trended upward.23

Further, when researchers from the University of California (UC) San Diego School of Medicine analyzed urine samples from 93 patients who had been diagnosed with NAFLD, those with the more severe form, NASH, had significantly higher residues of glyphosate in their urine.24 This association held true regardless of other factors in liver health, such as body mass index, diabetes status, age or race.

In a UC San Diego news release, lead study author Paul J. Mills, Ph.D., explained “There have been a handful of studies, all of which we cited in our paper, where animals either were or weren’t fed Roundup or glyphosate directly, and they all point to the same thing: the development of liver pathology … The increasing levels [of glyphosate] in people’s urine very much correlates to the consumption of Roundup-treated crops into our diet.”25

Researchers from King’s College London also showed an “ultra-low dose” of glyphosate-based herbicides was damaging.26 After a two-year period, female rats showed signs of liver damage, specifically NAFLD and progression to NASH. The authors noted that glyphosate may bring about toxic effects via different mechanisms, depending on the level of exposure, including possibly mimicking estrogen and interfering with mitochondrial and enzyme function.

PFAS Linked to Fatty Liver

PFAS are endocrine-disrupting chemicals that accumulate in body tissues, such as the liver, and are also known to accelerate metabolic changes that lead to fatty liver. “This bioaccumulation,” researchers wrote in Environmental Health Perspectives, “coupled with the long half-lives of many PFAS, leads to concern about the potential for PFAS to disrupt liver homeostasis should they continue to accumulate in human tissue even if industrial use is abated.”27

The researchers, from the Keck School of Medicine of USC, conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis, yielding 85 rodent studies and 24 epidemiological studies. Four types of PFAS — PFOS, PFOA, perfluorohexanesulfonic acid (PFHxS) and perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA) — accounted for most known human exposure.

The study compared PFAS exposure to indicators of liver injury including serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT), NAFLD, NASH or steatosis, a buildup of fat in the liver. Meta-analysis from the human studies showed that higher ALT levels were associated with exposure to PFOA, PFOS and PFNA.

In addition to promoting liver inflammation and the accumulation of triglycerides, exposure to PFAS may also lead to reduced bioavailability of choline, triggering steatosis due to choline deficiency.28 Grease-resistant to-go containers, papers and wrappers often contain PFAS; this includes fast food containers and wrappers, microwave popcorn bags, pizza boxes and candy wrappers.

You can also be exposed to PFAS via contaminated drinking water and soil, as well as via exposure to consumer products that contain PFAS, including nonstick cookware, stain resistant clothing and upholstery, cleaning products and personal care products.

Tips for Liver Health

The single most important step to protecting your liver health is lowering your seed oil content as much as possible. Please review the comprehensive article and video on LA I posted earlier this year. Limiting alcohol and environmental pollutants like glyphosate and PFAS are also important, but be sure to add in choline-rich foods like pastured egg yolks, which are known to support liver health.

Vitamin B12 and folic acid may also be protective and have been found to decrease the progression of NASH.29 Niacinamide, also known as nicotinamide (NAM), is another option. It’s a precursor to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), a vital signaling molecule that’s believed to play an important role in longevity. However, supplementation with NAM has also been found to decrease oxidative stress and prevent fatty liver.30

N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a precursor needed for glutathione biosynthesis, is another liver-supportive agent to be aware of. NAC is used as an antidote for acetaminophen toxicity,31 which causes liver damage by depleting glutathione. Research published in Hepatitis Monthly has shown NAC supplementation helps improve liver function in patients with NAFLD.32 Adding 5 to 15 grams per day of the amino acid glycine would also be useful.

Another option is milk thistle, which contains silymarin and silybin, antioxidants that are known to help protect your liver from toxins and even help regenerate liver cells.33 Supplements should always be used in combination with living a healthy lifestyle, including eating right and exercising. If you’re overweight, losing 7% to 10% of your body weight can improve NAFLD, including lowering liver fat content, liver inflammation and fibrosis.34

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Editor's Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published May 3, 2018.

According to some estimates, as many as 90% of the population have experienced some form of traumatic brain injury (TBI), be it from a car accident, slip and fall incident or simply hitting your head on a cabinet. Unfortunately, most go undiagnosed and untreated, and the accumulation of low-grade concussions over time has been shown to raise your risk for neurological dysfunction later in life. This includes not only Alzheimer's but also Parkinson's disease.1,2

Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder in which neurons in dopamine-producing cells within a region of your brain known as the substantia nigra, which is required for normal movement, begin to weaken and die.

Symptoms, which typically progress over time, include tremors, slow movement, rigid limbs, stooped posture, an inability to move, reduced facial expressions and a shuffling gait. The condition can also cause depression, dementia, speech impairments, personality changes and sexual difficulties.

Concussion Linked to Increased Risk of Parkinson's Disease

According to research published in the journal Neurology,3 even a single concussion could increase your risk for this degenerative brain disease. Here, "concussion" was defined as loss of consciousness for up to 30 minutes or alteration of consciousness and/or amnesia for up to 24 hours.

Medical records of nearly 326,000 U.S. military veterans ranging in age from 31 to 65 were evaluated in this retrospective cohort study, showing that a TBI resulting in loss of consciousness raised the risk of Parkinson's by 56%.

Veterans who experienced more serious TBIs (classified as moderate-to-severe) were 83% more likely to develop Parkinson's. Overall, all-severity TBI (i.e., TBIs of any severity classification) was associated with a 71% increased risk. Those with one or more TBIs in their past also received a diagnosis of Parkinson's on average two years earlier compared to those who had never had a TBI.

Lead author Dr. Raquel Gardner,4 staff neurologist at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center and assistant professor in the department of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) told Reuters:5

"This is not the first study to show that even mild traumatic brain injury increases the risk for Parkinson's disease.6 But we were able to study every single veteran across the U.S. who had been diagnosed at a Veterans Affairs hospital, so this is the highest level of evidence we have so far that this association is real …

While on an individual level the actual amount of risk is pretty low, on a population level this could translate into a lot of people being affected [with Parkinson's]."

Implications for General Population

Coauthor Dr. Kristine Yaffe, professor of psychiatry, neurology and epidemiology at UCSF and the VA, added that these findings have "important implications for the general population" as most of the TBIs veterans suffered actually occurred during their civilian life, not during active service. As of yet, the exact mechanism behind the TBI-Parkinson's link is unknown. According to Gardner:7,8

"We don't have brain autopsies, so we don't know what the underlying biology is. But in Parkinson's you see abnormal protein accumulation, and there's some evidence that TBI is linked to deposits of these abnormal proteins … The TBI might directly trigger changes in the brain that weren't there before.

The other possibility is that maybe there was a process already happening in the brain and the person might have gotten Parkinson's disease [anyway] many years later. But the brain injury made the symptoms come on sooner and the diagnosis come sooner. We need more studies to unravel the biology behind what's going on here."

That said, the authors stressed that TBI in no way assured the development of Parkinson's. Ninety-nine percent of veterans with TBIs did not develop Parkinson's, so individual risk is still very low, even with a TBI. The disease is also strongly dependent on lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise. As noted by Gardner, "If anyone is worried, do a little bit better to live more healthily."9

Telltale Signs of TBI

Oftentimes the head injury doesn't seem severe enough to have caused TBI, which is why symptoms are often overlooked. Common telltale signs of head trauma — which need to be addressed — include:

• Poor concentration and foggy thinking
• Impaired word recall
• Mood changes, irritability and emotional dysregulation
• Lowered ability to focus and follow through on mental tasks
• Sleep problems or hypersomnolence

Whenever you experience an injury to your head, regardless of how severe it appears to be, it's important to pay careful attention to any psychological changes that might occur over the coming week or two. Signs such as those mentioned above are indications that your nervous system is on high alert due to an inflammatory cascade, which presents itself as psychological and cognitive downstream effects.

Adults injured at home will be able to self-reflect and notice psychological and neurological changes. Children on the other hand may not be able to do this, and need to be carefully monitored by their parents for changes in behavior and function. If you notice a change in your child within the days or weeks following a head injury, a more comprehensive medical evaluation and workup is strongly recommended to avoid long-term repercussions.

How to Prevent TBIs

There are a number of commonsense strategies that will help prevent the occurrence of a TBI in the first place. This includes the following:10

• Always wear your seat belt when driving or riding in a car, and never drive while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. This includes many prescription drugs that may alter your ability to drive safely, such as opioid pain killers, which are now responsible for more fatal car crashes than drunken driving.

Also make sure your child is properly buckled into a child safety seat while driving. Infants should be kept in a rear-facing seat that has been properly secured in the back seat, not the front passenger seat. Children aged 2 to 5 should be in a forward-facing seat in the back seat until they exceed the height or weight limit for the seat.

Ages 5 to 9 should ride in a front-facing booster seat in the back seat. Never drive with a child aged 12 or under in the front passenger seat, as deployment of the air bag may cause severe injury or death to undersized passengers.

• Wear a helmet when:

◦ Riding a bicycle, motorcycle or any other motorized vehicle, including off-roading with an all-terrain vehicle

◦ Playing contact sports

◦ Skating or skateboarding

◦ Playing baseball or softball

◦ Horseback riding

◦ Skiing or snowboarding

• Safeguard the elderly in your home by:

◦ Removing tripping hazards such as throw rugs and clutter

◦ Using nonslip mats in bathtub and shower

◦ Installing grab bars next to your toilet, tub and shower, and handrails along both sides of stairways

◦ Improving lighting

◦ Maintaining a regular physical activity program to maintain or improve strength and balance

• Safeguard children in your home by:

◦ Installing window guards

◦ Using safety gates at top and bottom of stairs

◦ Using nonskid bathmats and nonslip mats in tub and shower

◦ Never leave your child unattended in a highchair

• Make sure your child's playground has shock-absorbing material such as hardwood mulch or sand in key areas where falls are likely to occur

Long-Term Effects of Accumulative TBIs Download Interview Transcript | Video Link

Long-term, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, i.e., the accumulation of low-grade concussions over time, accelerates the process of dementia. If you are genetically predisposed to Alzheimer's by having one or two ApoE4 alleles and suffer a TBI, your risk of Alzheimer's increases at least tenfold.

Stacked with an inflammatory diet and other lifestyle factors such as lack of exercise and not fasting (which promotes neuroregeneration), the process of neurological degeneration is further exacerbated and accelerated.

In his book, "The Concussion Repair Manual," Dr. Dan Engle, provides comprehensive guidance on how to recover from TBIs. I recently interviewed him about this, and if you missed it, you may want to review it now. Engle discusses a variety of healing strategies in his book, including nutritional components that optimize brain function and help repair neurological function in case of injury. I'll review some of these at the end of this article.

The Importance of Omega-3 Fats

Among the most important nutrients for brain health are the animal-based omega-3 fats docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). The department of surgery at Oregon Health & Science University now advocates use of omega-3 supplements presurgery, because outcomes are so much better. Animal-based omega-3 has also been shown to protect your brain against damage associated with dementia.

Omega 3 fats affect cellular health and DNA chiefly by how they influence your cell membranes. It is these cell membranes that are critical in switching your genes on and off, because cell membranes contain receptors that respond to hormones and other agents, and these are affected by the fatty acids on their surface.

Your cell membranes contain EPA, DHA and phospholipids, and all help to shuttle molecules into and out of your cells. So, having adequate fatty acids in your system is crucial to keeping your cell membranes working properly.

DHA is especially important, as it is a structural component of every cell in your body that helps regulate communication within the cell and between cells, and has a profound influence on mitochondrial health. It's particularly crucial for your brain, as more than 90% of the omega-3 fat found in brain tissue is DHA.

There are actually specific transporters for DHA in your blood-brain barrier that shuttle these molecules in a very precise way into the cell membranes where they belong.

The Omega-3 Index Test Is an Important Health Screen

I believe the omega-3 index test can be an enormously important health screen — regardless of whether you've already had a TBI or not, as optimizing your omega-3 level can help cushion the effects of a future head injury. As with vitamin D, getting your level tested is really the best way to customize your dosage to ensure sufficiency, because requirements for omega-3 will vary depending on your lifestyle.

Your intake of fatty fish, for example, and your level of physical activity will play a role. Athletes tend to burn off their omega-3 quite rapidly, as the DHA gets burned as fuel rather than being used as a structural component of their cell membranes. Hence they will need higher dosages.

Seafood is your best source of DHA and EPA. However, it's important to realize that not all fish contain these fats. Tilapia, for example, contains neither. The fish needs to be harvested from cold water, as this is where the fish richest in omega-3 fats are found. Some of your best options for clean fats are wild-caught Alaskan salmon, sardines and anchovies.

An excellent alternative, if you do not want to eat fatty fish, is to take a krill oil supplement. I firmly believe krill oil is superior to fish oil. Although both contain EPA and DHA, krill oil is bound to phospholipids that allow these omega-3 fats to travel more efficiently through your bloodstream. Hence, it's more bioavailable.

TBI Treatment Aids

Other helpful interventions for TBIs, which are discussed at depth in Engle's book, include the following:

Curcumin — Curcumin, one of the most well studied bioactive ingredients in turmeric, has been shown to have over 160 potentially therapeutic activities. Many of curcumin's benefits are attributed to its ability to quench inflammation, which is a hallmark of most chronic diseases. Importantly, it has the ability to cross your blood-brain barrier and exhibits potent neuroprotective properties, suggesting it may be useful for neurodegenerative disorders.

Researchers at the University of California recently demonstrated it may have long-term effects on your cognitive function by protecting against brain inflammation.11 Curcumin has also been shown to enhance neurogenesis and improve cognition by increasing levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).12 Reduced levels of BDNF have in fact been linked to Alzheimer's disease, and correlate with the level of motor impairment in patients with Parkinson's.13

Hyperbaric oxygen — By saturating your tissues with oxygen, the oxygen is able to get into all of the neuroreparative mechanisms in your entire neurologic system. It accelerates all wound repair processes, be it in peripheral vasculature or in central vasculature, around the nervous system, brain and spinal cord.

An alternative for home use would be Exercising with Oxygen Therapy (EWOT). It's not as effective as hyperbaric oxygen treatment for neurological recovery because you're not saturating the tissues with oxygen, just your blood, but you can still benefit if you have a low partial pressure of oxygen (low oxygen in your blood).

Low-light laser therapy (LLLT), also known as photobiomodulation, which can be done using either lasers or light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

"There are a lot of different studies that show light is beneficial," Engle says. "When we're talking about neurologic recovery or building adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production, driving mitochondrial function, there are certain wavelengths that seem to be optimal for that.

Most of the wavelengths for neurologic recovery are going to be in the near-infrared (810 to 830 nanometers) and far-infrared spectrum. There are some handheld devices that can be used." Red light in the 660-nanometer frequency is also beneficial, and many technologies will combine red with near- and far-infrared.

Pulsed electromagnetic field therapy (PEMF) — Engle explains, "If we're optimizing voltage and frequency into the cell, then there are going to be energy thresholds below which disease happens, and above which optimized function happens. PEMF tends to raise the voltage and the energy in the cell, in the system globally, to improve physiologic function.

I use a combination of both low-voltage systems and high-voltage systems. There's a low-voltage system called a Bio Electromagnetic Energy Regulation (BEMER). There's a high-voltage system called the Pulse. I found benefits in both … There's also a subset of pulsed frequencies called transcranial magnetic stimulation, which is more based in magnetic impulse to the brain."

Transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) — TDCS provides a more global stimulation, so while some patients experience good results, others do not, due to lack of specificity. According to Engle, if it's going to work, you'll notice results quickly. If no benefit is noticed in the first few sessions, move on to some other therapy.

Electroencephalography (EEG) and neurofeedback are similar technologies of varying complexity.

"You go into master your ability in real time to see where your brainwave patterns are firing, and then to lock into the necessary thought modalities and internal states to be able to consistently access an alpha state," Engle explains. Alpha states are indicative of calmness and centeredness.

"If I can access that and find that place within myself, then I'm starting to generate my own sense of personal empowerment." The Evoke system is an easy one to use. It involves watching a movie for 20 to 30 minutes. Your focused attention will keep the movie playing. When your attention drifts, it slows down and loses volume.

Cannabidiol (CBD) oil — "CBD is up there with fish oil for neuroreparative support," Engle says. "Cannabis has two primary therapeutic components; one is tetrahydrocannabidiol (THC) and one is CBD. THC has a psychoactive component. CBD has a neuro-reparative component.

There seems to be an upregulation effect or an enhanced effect if there's a little bit of THC with CBD. The CBD to THC ratio will be like 20-to-1. We've consistently seen benefit in the neurologic system, whether it was stroke recovery, concussion recovery or seizure and epilepsy support … There seems to be this neurologic repair effect.

The CBD receptors are globally affiliated with neurologic function throughout the entire brain. When we're engaging and stimulating those receptors, we see the neurochemical cascade toward repair, regardless of the input, but particularly with concussion. That's why during the acute phase, if somebody has an injury that is significant, I say, first and foremost, do [these] things:

1) Lifestyle management. Get quiet. Float if you can.

2) Take fish oil, take CBD, vitamin D and melatonin, particularly if there are issues with sleep. Boost the antioxidants."

CBD may actually be a really potent stimulator of nuclear factor-like 2 (Nrf2) pathway, which stimulates the hermetic production of antioxidants in your body.

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In May 2023, researchers from the University of Helsinki linked a strain of Desulfovibrio bacteria as a causative agent of Parkinson's disease.1 Researchers hope this breakthrough will enable screening for and removal of the bacteria from the gut and potentially prevent the disease.2

Parkinson's disease causes unintended or uncontrollable movements that result from brain damage, the mechanism of which has not yet been confirmed. People notice that symptoms begin gradually and then worsen over time. These movements occur because the cells that make dopamine,3 a neurochemical that helps coordinate movements, stop working or die.

Although it's known as a movement disorder and the primary symptoms include slowness and stiffness with walking and balance, it also triggers other symptoms such as depression, memory problems and constipation. While the condition is not curable, some treatment options may offer relief.4

Because the symptoms can differ from person to person, the treatments must also be customized. Medications are primarily used, but a surgical brain implant delivering mild electric current has offered symptom relief for some people. This is also known as deep brain stimulation. Other experimental treatments include stem cell transplants, neuron repair treatments and gene therapies or gene-targeted treatments.5

Harmful Bacteria Are a Possible Cause of Parkinson's Disease

Evidence from the featured study suggests that with testing and removal of the harmful bacteria, doctors may be able to prevent Parkinson's disease, or halt its progression. The key feature in pathology is the aggregation of the neuronal protein alpha-synuclein.6 Past research has suggested these aggregations could be induced in the gut by pathogenic microbes, which have been associated with Parkinson's disease.

The researchers used fecal samples of 10 patients with Parkinson's and fecal samples from their healthy spouses to look for Desulfovibrio species of bacteria. Isolated strains were fed to nematodes to fuse the alpha-synuclein with a yellow fluorescent protein. These were then used in an animal model and compared against a control bacterial strain.

The goal was to determine how the different strains of bacteria contributed to the progression of Parkinson's disease. The researchers found that the strains of bacteria isolated from patients with Parkinson's disease caused aggregation of the protein associated with Parkinson's.

They also noted that different strains of the same bacteria from healthy individuals did not cause aggregation to the same degree. Commenting on the results of the study, Per Saris from the department of microbiology at the University of Helsinki said:7

"Our findings make it possible to screen for the carriers of these harmful Desulfovibrio bacteria. Consequently, they can be targeted by measures to remove these strains from the gut, potentially alleviating and slowing the symptoms of patients with Parkinson's disease.

Once the Desulfovibrio bacteria are eliminated from the gut, α-synuclein aggregates are no longer formed in intestinal cells, from which they travel towards the brain via the vagus nerve like prion proteins."

In addition to this bacteria, researchers have also found exposure to the widely used chemical trichloroethylene (TCE) is also linked to Parkinson's disease.8 One study evaluated more than 340,000 service members stationed at Camp Lejeune and Camp Pendleton. When the data were compared, it showed a 70% higher risk of developing Parkinson's for servicemen stationed at Camp Lejeune between 1975 and 1985.

The risk factor was exposure to TCE in the water supply that had reached limits 70 times higher than the EPA deemed safe. Gary Miller is a neurotoxicologist studying Parkinson's disease at Columbia University. He was not involved in the study, but commented that researchers had suspicions that TCE was linked to a higher risk of Parkinson's disease and these results were "very compelling."

TCE has been used since the 1920s in liquid or vapor form. It was an inhaled surgical anesthetic and an ingredient in several types of cleaning products. One of the researchers commented that the chemical is still used in the U.S. and worldwide and "production has been increasing over the past several years."

The chemical breaks down slowly in the environment and is found in one-third of U.S. drinking water. As Ray Dorsey, a neurologist from the University of Rochester commented, "Almost everyone reading your story likely lives near a site contaminated with TCE."

Gut Brain Link in Parkinson's Disease

According to the Parkinson's Foundation,9 there are 1 million people in the U.S. who are living with Parkinson's Disease, 90,000 are diagnosed with the disease each year and the incidence of the disease increases with age. A 2018 study10 published in the Journal of Parkinson's disease demonstrated an association between the development of Parkinson's and your gut microbiome.

This study also focused on alpha-synuclein pathology and, as other studies, found it plays a role in the development of familial and sporadic cases of Parkinson's disease. Because the symptoms are only apparent after brain cells have already been affected, it is difficult to slow the progression of the disease.

Researchers have been looking for ways to detect the condition earlier and the results of the featured study may help positively impact prevention and treatment. Alpha-synuclein is a presynaptic protein linked neural pathologically and genetically to Parkinson's disease.11

While it may contribute to symptoms, these cells are toxic to cellular homeostasis and trigger neuronal death, which affects synaptic function. Secreted alpha-synuclein may also have negative effects on neighboring cells, seeding aggregation and contributing to progression. Researchers want to identify pathways that are involved in the transfer of protein from the brain to the gut where it's found in people with Parkinson's disease.

Importance of Autophagy in Parkinson's Disease

Some of the aspects12 of the disease include suppressing the autosomal-lysomal autophagy system, which is a systematic degradation of your body's functional components due to cell destruction and is characterized by the loss of dopamine-transmitting neurons in a section of the midbrain. By activating autophagy, you can begin repairing the dysfunctional mechanism.

Researchers believe neurodegenerative diseases may be successfully addressed by activating autophagy. The term literally means "self-eating" and refers to the process of eliminating damaged cells by digesting them. In essence, it helps clean out old and damaged cells and encourages the growth of new healthy cells, which is foundational to cellular rejuvenation and longevity.

In a paper13 published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, researchers explain the pathway is involved in a variety of human health conditions, including metabolic disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, cancer and infectious diseases. In 2012,14 researchers noted that dysregulation of autophagy has been observed in the brains of patients with Parkinson's disease as well as in animal models.

Scientists also recognize that autophagy plays a pivotal role in maintaining neurological health. Two major features15 of Parkinson's disease pathology are the impairment of autophagy that allows alpha-synuclein accumulation and subsequent degeneration of dopaminergic neurons.

Several studies have examined the potential for measuring autophagy biomarkers for early detection of the disease. A 2019 paper16 in Current Medicinal Chemistry acknowledges that defects in autophagy, microautophagy, macroautophagy and chaperone-mediated autophagy pathways result in the accumulation of protein aggregates.

These are common features in several neurodegenerative disorders, including Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's. They concluded that in the development of new interventions, researchers need a deeper understanding of the autophagy defects in Parkinson's disease and should also account for the multifactorial nature of the disease process.

Alzheimer's and the Gut Connection

Alzheimer's continues to be a leading cause of death in the U.S. According to the Alzheimer's Association,17 1 in 3 seniors dies with Alzheimer's or another type of dementia and, according to the CDC,18 it is the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S.

While a cure has remained elusive, researchers have made the connection between the gut microbiome and brain health, suggesting the bacteria in the intestines influences brain function and can even promote neurodegeneration.19

In one study20 of 89 people between 65 and 85 years of age, researchers used PET imaging to measure amyloid deposits in the brain and they also measured lipopolysaccharide and short-chain fatty acids. Lipopolysaccharide (LPSs) are dead bacteria, or more specifically, the cell walls of dead bacteria.

Since your immune system perceives LPSs as living bacteria, it mounts an immune defense and raises the inflammatory profile. LPSs have been found in amyloid plaques in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. The study revealed high levels of LPSs and the short chain fatty acids acetate and valerate were also associated with large amyloid deposits in the brain.

Butyrate, another short-chain fatty acid, appeared to have a protective effect as high levels were associated with less amyloid. As in the featured study, which demonstrated specific strains of gut bacteria are associated with the development of Parkinson's disease, this study also demonstrated bacterial products in the intestinal microbiota influence the number of amyloid plaques in the brain.

"Our results are indisputable: Certain bacterial products of the intestinal microbiota are correlated with the quantity of amyloid plaques in the brain," explains Moira Marizzoni, a study author with the Fatebenefratelli Center in Brescia, Italy.21

Another study22 published in March 2023, identified 10 bacterial types that were associated with a higher likelihood of developing Alzheimer's disease. As with the harmful bacteria identified with a higher likelihood of Parkinson's disease, researchers hope this finding will also lead to new treatments that help to lower a person's risk of developing the disease and potentially slowing the progression.

Optimize Your Gut Microbiome

In the Parkinson's study, researchers found harmful strains of Desulfovibrio were associated with the development of Parkinson's disease and in the Alzheimer's study, the team found individuals with Alzheimer's had a reduced microbial diversity and had 10 bacteria overrepresented and other microbes decreased.

As research teams continue to find stronger connections between gut microbiota and neurological health, it only makes sense to optimize your gut bacteria to protect you from these and other health conditions. By reseeding your gut with beneficial bacteria, you help keep populations of pathogenic microbes and fungi in check and keep them from taking over.

One of the easiest ways to optimize your gut is to regularly eat traditionally fermented and cultured foods. This is indisputably the most effective and least expensive way to make a significant impact on your gut microbiome. Healthy choices include cultured grass fed organic milk products such as kefir and yogurt, natto and all kinds of fermented vegetables.

I'm not a big supporter of taking many supplements since I believe the majority of your nutrition should come from food, yet probiotics are the exception if you don't eat fermented foods on a regular basis. Spore-based probiotics, or sporebiotics, can be particularly helpful when you're taking antibiotics and they're an excellent complement to regular probiotics.

Antibiotics indiscriminately kill your gut bacteria, both good and bad.23 This is why secondary infections and lowered immune function are common side effects of taking antibiotics.24 Chronic low-dose exposure through food also takes a toll on your gut microbiome, which can result in chronic ill health and increased risk of drug resistance.

In addition to seeding your gut with beneficial bacteria and supporting those bacteria with prebiotic fiber, it's also important to avoid things that disrupt or kill your microbiome. These include:

• Antibiotics, unless absolutely necessary
• Conventionally raised meats and other animal products, as these animals are routinely fed low-dose antibiotics, plus genetically engineered and/or glyphosate-treated grains
• Processed foods (as the excessive sugars feed pathogenic bacteria)
• Chlorinated and/or fluoridated water
• Antibacterial soap and products containing triclosan

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At a time when organic farmers are going out of business and being gobbled up by corporate agribusinesses by the hundreds,1 draft regulation2,3,4 currently under consideration would legalize factory farm conditions for organic chickens, thereby pushing even more of the smaller organic farmers out.

While the proposed rule claims to protect and improve “animal welfare,” all it will accomplish is the further destruction of independent organic farmers who do things right and therefore cannot compete with “organic” mega-corporations that can sell their foods at far lower prices because they cheat on the organic standards.

There Are Two Kinds of Organic

According to U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, in 2019, nine organic-certified corporate-owned confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Texas produced 1.5 times more “organic” milk than all 530 family-owned organic dairy farms in Wisconsin combined.5

As of 2021, there are 13 corporate dairies in Texas with organic certification, and they’re producing 2.8 times more “organic” milk than the remaining 407 organic family farms in Wisconsin.6 In those two years, 123 family farms went out of business in Wisconsin, as did hundreds more in other states.

When small organic farms go out of business, it’s not just that family that loses something. Consumers also lose. They lose access to authentic organic milk that meets their environmental expectations, and they’re deceived, because they think the higher price they pay provides economic justice and reward for farmers who are doing things right.

Meanwhile, most of the organic milk available comes from CAFOs that have anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 cows, with a density of five to 10 cows per acre, that roam in desert conditions.7 The scene on these factory farms is as far from idyllic farm life as you can get.

Unlike on a family farm, these CAFO cows don’t graze on grass in pasture. Rather, pasture grass is cut and then fed to the cows, as shown below. When actual pasture size is considered, the effective stocking level can be as high as 20 cows per acre, whereas family farms typically provide 1 acre per cow.8

Industry Watchdog Issues Warning

According to the Organic Trade Association (OTA), the regulation is “the first significant movement on organic animal welfare in years.” The Humane Society Legislative Fund has also hailed the proposed rules as “a landmark federal regulation.”9

Mark Kastel, executive director of OrganicEye, an organic industry watchdog, vehemently disagrees, saying that rather than strengthening the organic label, the new regulations will undermine it further by permanently codifying practices that violate the spirit of organics, and even the current letter of the law.

Organic companies have been acquired by conventional producers that slowly but surely have eroded organic standards through willful violations and lobbying.

“Organics was supposed to be the antidote to the ‘get big or get out’ draconian agribusiness domination of our food supply,” Kastel writes.10 Instead, organic companies have been acquired by conventional producers that slowly but surely have eroded organic standards through willful violations and lobbying.

As a result, 90% of “organic” eggs now come from gigantic confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) owned by the largest suppliers of conventional eggs, and most certified organic chicken comes from companies that raise birds in near-total confinement and feed them imported grains that may or may not be truly organic, as organic grain fraud is now commonplace.

Legalizing Violations of the Organic Spirit

In a letter to members, Kastel writes:11

“For most of the last decade and a half, stakeholders in the organic industry have alleged that the largest egg companies in the United States have been operating mammoth livestock factories, with the USDA illegally granting organic certification.

In 2022, the agency released a new draft rule which they purport will bring these operations into compliance, assure a level playing field for competitors, and meet consumer expectations ...

Other than family-scale farms producing certified organic eggs, the majority of production takes place on commercial operations — commonly with 20,000-30,000 birds per building — with some of the largest conventional egg marketers in the country operating certified organic houses with as many as 200,000 chickens per building and over a million birds on individual ‘farms’ ...

The industry’s most vocal watchdog, OrganicEye, has vociferously criticized the proposed regulations as a giveaway to corporate agribusiness interests, codifying the continuing violations of the spirit and letter of the law by failing to assure that organically managed animals have legitimate access to the outdoors and are able to exhibit their natural instinctual behaviors, both requirements of the current statute and regulations.”

Proposed Standards Hardly Enshrine Animal Welfare

According to OrganicEye’s analysis, the proposed new organic rule would allow organic poultry farmers to stack birds in multitiered aviaries stretching from floor to ceiling, providing as little as 1 square foot of space per animal, and that’s including outdoor porches, which have limited access.

The following image was provided by OrganicEye as an example of what this “organic” CAFO setup looks like.

Outdoor requirements aren’t any better — just 1 to 2 square feet depending on the weight of the birds. For comparison, farmers who are part of the Organic Valley cooperative must provide at least 5 square feet per hen, and European organic regulations require 43 square feet per bird.12

The draft rule also allows egg-laying hens to be confined for the first 16 to 21 weeks of their life. After this much time spent in indoor confinement, many chickens are too frightened to ever venture outside. They’ve basically been trained not to roam. The situation is even worse for broiler chickens, which can be confined until just one or two weeks before their scheduled slaughter.

What’s more, the new rules would allow for half the outdoor area to be covered in either concrete or gravel. “How are the birds going to engage in their natural instinctual behavior — foraging, eating grass, scratching and pecking for bugs and worms — on concrete?” Kastel asks.

Proposed Rule Fulfills Corporate Lobbyists Wish-List

As noted by OrganicEye, these “anemic requirements” are “straight from the wish list of corporate lobbyists.”13 Indeed, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack himself is a former million-dollar-a-year agribusiness lobbyist who was named BIO Governor of the Year in 2001 by the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) “for his support of the industry's economic growth and agricultural biotechnology research.”14

So, Vilsack is hardly a champion for true organic farming, and the USDA’s failure to uphold the integrity of the organic standards under his stewardship15 highlights his corporate Big-Ag, biotech biases, as does his choice of members to the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB).

The NOSB is supposed to be a highly-diversified body of industry stakeholders, including organic farmers and consumer advocates, but contrary to that charter, at least 80% of current board members are now affiliated with the industry’s most powerful lobbying group, the OTA.16,17 According to Kastel:18

“The OTA has spent years, and invested untold corporate dues, in honing the persona that it is a tax-exempt nonprofit group working in the interest of the public when, in fact, it is a ruthless industry lobby group that has crossed swords with the nonprofit community on virtually every controversial issue before the NOSB.”

Several still independently-owned organic brands, such as Nature’s Path, Nutiva and Dr. Bronner’s, have resigned their memberships in the OTA in protest of its Big Ag bias.19

Under Vilsack, the NOSB was also stripped of its ability to set its own agenda. It’s supposed to work independently, but as small organic farmers have been bought up by large conventional ag conglomerates,20 the corporate dominance over the NOSB has also grown and organic standards have been watered down to benefit the largest of these corporate “organic” producers.

An Affront to Organic Consumers

OrganicEye describes the proposed rules as “an affront to consumers who are willing to pay a premium to support truly humane treatment of animals and to secure nutrient-dense and more flavorful food for their families.”21 Kastel adds:

“It’s Orwellian doublespeak, intentionally misleading the public, for the USDA to claim that these proposed rules are going to improve the status quo of factory farm production currently dominating organic livestock, or that they represent the expectations of consumers.”

OrganicEye board president Jim Gerritsen, a certified organic farmer in Maine, also stated:

“While USDA should be codifying the improved welfare of livestock, and increasing organic integrity, this misguided proposed rule sadly does neither. Rather, it enshrines the very practices which have allowed industrial factory farms to move in, take over, and push out hard-working organic family farms.”

A Call to Action

OrganicEye is now renewing its call to the USDA to enforce current organic regulations and is urging organic consumers and supporters to appeal to President Biden to intervene and stop this latest “giveaway to corporate lobbyists.”

Organic regulations already mandate outdoor access for all livestock, including pasture access for grass fed cows and other ruminants. Importantly, organically raised animals must, by law, have the opportunity to express their natural instinctual behaviors.

The problem is these rules are not being enforced, and the answer to nonenforcement is not new regulations that simply codify the violations and abuses that are already taking place on industrial-scale “organic farms.”

OrganicEye has created a proxy letter you can download here. Simply print it out, sign it, add any personal comments on the back, and mail it to OrganicEye. They will deliver the letters to Biden’s office. As noted in that letter:

“A new approach needs to be developed as an alternative to the tens of millions of dollars currently spent on annual inspections. The vast preponderance of documented fraud — what we assume is only the tip of the iceberg — is being discovered by OrganicEye and others outside of the certification/inspection process.

Resources should be focused on hiring experienced agriculturalists/forensic accountants for more comprehensive/periodic audits (punctuated with liberal unannounced inspections and testing).

The department needs to prioritize listening to the NGO community rather than corporate lobbyists who have been appointed to key leadership positions at the USDA and on the NOSB.”

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Editor's Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published July 24, 2018.

What's the optimal food for your newborn baby? Common sense would tell you that a mother's breast milk is as optimal as infant nutrition could possibly get, yet that fact — indisputable as it may seem — is something that makers of infant formula have spent decades' trying to sweep under the carpet.1 Following the development of manufactured infant formula, mothers were told breastfeeding was unnecessary.

Formula offered greater freedom for busy moms, and the promotion of the obnoxious idea that breastfeeding in public is shameful fueled the transition, making more moms defer to the bottle rather than their breast. For years, women could even be fined for "public indecency" if caught breastfeeding in public. In 2018, Utah became the last state to enact laws protecting the rights of breastfeeding mothers by permitting nursing in public.2

As of April 2018, all 50 states must provide workplace protection for nursing mothers, however many suffer discrimination for needing time to express milk. In terms of nutrition, moms have, and still are, told there's "no difference" between bottle feeding and breastfeeding, yet nothing could be further from the truth.

There is very little similarity between the two, from a nutritional perspective. Unfortunately, marketing materials have a way of giving mothers the false idea that formula may actually provide better nutrition.

Now, even the pro-breastfeeding slogan "breast is best" has been usurped and turned into "fed is best"3 — meaning, as long as your baby is well-fed, it doesn't matter if it's breast milk or formula. A recent bioethical argument in the journal Pediatrics even advises pediatricians it's time to stop referring to breastfeeding as something "natural."4 How did we get so off course? You might as well argue against the naturalness of urination.

Only 4 in 10 Infants Are Exclusively Breastfed for 6 Months

According to a January 2, 2018, report5 by the World Health Organization (WHO) on infant nutrition, between 2011 and 2016, a mere 40% of infants under the age of 6 months were being exclusively breastfed, worldwide. Only 33 countries have breastfeeding rates higher than 50%, while 68 nations have rates below 50%.

Thanks to growing awareness of the science behind the "breast is best" slogan, breastfeeding rates in the U.S. have risen dramatically in recent decades, from a low of 24% in 19716 to 81.1% in 2016.7

The global goal is to get 70% of infants exclusively breastfed for the first six months by 2030, and to achieve that, the World Health Assembly, which is the decision-making body of the WHO, introduced a nonbinding resolution in early 2018 to encourage breastfeeding and stress the health benefits of breastfeeding.

The resolution stressed that decades of research show breast milk is the healthiest choice, and urged governments to rein in inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

US Government Backs Formula Makers

In a move that shocked the world, the U.S. delegates opposed the resolution, demanding that language calling on governments to "protect, promote and support breastfeeding" be deleted.8 They also wanted to erase a passage calling on policymakers to restrict promotion of foods that can have adverse effects on the health of young children.

The global delegation was even more shocked when the Americans started threatening countries with sanctions lest they reject the resolution. It was even suggested that the U.S. might cut its financial support to the WHO. As reported by The New York Times:9

"Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs. The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced …

'We were shocked because we didn't understand how such a small matter like breast-feeding could provoke such a dramatic response,' said the Ecuadorean official … [A]t least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation …

'We were astonished, appalled and also saddened,' said Patti Rundall, the policy director of the British advocacy group Baby Milk Action … 'What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on the best way to protect infant and young child health,' she said.

In the end, the Americans' efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them …

The final resolution10 preserved most of the original wording, though American negotiators did get language removed that called on the WHO to provide technical support to member states seeking to halt 'inappropriate promotion of foods for infants and young children.'

The United States also insisted that the words 'evidence-based' accompany references to long-established initiatives that promote breastfeeding, which critics described as a ploy that could be used to undermine programs that provide parents with feeding advice and support."

A Mother's Choice

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) denied the agency had anything to do with the threats leveled at Ecuador, telling The New York Times the DHHS had sought to modify the original draft resolution11 because it "placed unnecessary hurdles for mothers seeking to provide nutrition to their children."

According to the DHHS, women may not be able to breastfeed for a variety of reasons and "These women should have the choice and access to alternatives for the health of their babies, and not be stigmatized for the ways in which they are able to do so." This is an incredibly weak rebuttal, as encouraging breastfeeding and promoting its health benefits in no way diminishes a woman's right or ability to opt for formula if she finds she cannot breastfeed.

Formula makers have also tried to distance themselves from the embarrassment. Still, while witnesses at the assembly meeting claim they saw no evidence of formula makers trying to wield their influence, there's no denying they've spent a lot of money lobbying to protect their market share, which means minimizing the importance of breastfeeding.

According to a MapLight analysis,12 the three leading formula companies, Abbott Laboratories, Nestle and Reckitt Benckiser, have spent $60.7 million lobbying lawmakers in the U.S. over the past decade.

Lucy Sullivan, director of 1,000 Days, a mother and infant nutrition advocacy group, told The Atlantic,13 "What this battle in Geneva showed us is that we have a U.S. government that is strongly aligned with the interests of the infant-formula industry and dairy industry, and are willing to play hardball."

As is customary, the DHHS held stakeholder listening sessions with various industry groups prior to the World Health Assembly meeting, where the dairy, grocery and infant formula groups all had their say about the proposed resolution.

What surprised everyone was "how forcefully the U.S. delegates acted on the trade groups' opposition," The Atlantic writes.14 While it may have been more aggressive than usual, as you will see below, the U.S. has an embarrassing history of pushing the use of infant formula over breast milk.

Health Benefits of Mother's Milk

From a nutritional science point of view, there's simply no dispute that breast milk is the optimal food for newborns and young infants.15,16 Breastfeeding also has a number of health benefits for the mother, and it's the least expensive alternative. Below is a summary of some of the key health benefits for mother and child.

Infant formula, on the other hand, has been linked to an increased risk of infant death. In her paper, "Marketing Breast Milk Substitutes: Problems and Perils Throughout the World," published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood in 2012, June Brady starts out by highlighting the U.S. government's shameful lack of support of proper infant nutrition, choosing instead to cater to the formula makers' right to profit. She writes, in part:17

"21 May, 1981 the WHO International Code of Marketing Breast Milk Substitutes … was passed by 118 votes to 1, the U.S. casting the sole negative vote.

The Code arose out of concern that the dramatic increase in mortality, malnutrition and diarrhea in very young infants in the developing world was associated with aggressive marketing of formula. The Code prohibited any advertising of baby formula, bottles or teats and gifts to mothers or 'bribery' of health workers.

Despite successes, it has been weakened over the years by the seemingly inexhaustible resources of the global pharmaceutical industry … Currently, suboptimal breastfeeding is associated with over a million deaths each year and 10 percent of the global disease burden in children.

All health workers need to recognize inappropriate advertising of formula, to report violations of the Code and to support efforts to promote breastfeeding: the most effective way of preventing child mortality throughout the world."

Benefits for the baby Benefits for the mother Natural immunity — Breastfeeding initially provides passive immunity as antibodies from the mother are passed through breast milk to the infant.

Researchers have also found breast milk has a unique capacity to stimulate the infant's immune system with long-term positive effects.18 Quicker recovery from childbirth — The release of oxytocin during breastfeeding helps the uterus return to a normal size and reduces postpartum bleeding.19 Reduction of blindness in preemies — Retinopathy of prematurity causes blindness in 10% of severe cases occurring in premature infants.

More than half of children born before 30 weeks' gestation are affected and the condition blinds 50,000 children worldwide.

An analysis suggests the incidence of severe disease, and thus blindness, could be reduced by 90% if all premature infants were fed breast milk.20

The researchers theorize the effect may be from the antioxidant and immune protective properties found in breast milk. Reduced rates of breast and ovarian cancer — Breastfeeding may cut the risk of breast cancer in women who have had children21 and women were 63% less likely to develop ovarian cancer when they breastfed for 13 months or more.22

The risk of ovarian cancer appeared to decline with each passing month as women who breastfed for 31 months or more had a 91% lower risk of ovarian cancer than women who breastfed less than 10 months. Reduction in sudden infant death syndrome — In one study, breastfeeding reduced the risk of sudden infant death syndrome in children by 50% at all ages through infancy.23 Faster weight loss after childbirth — During pregnancy your body automatically stores extra fat to provide food for your baby.

Producing milk burns approximately 450 extra calories each day, which helps mobilize visceral fat stores. Improved cognitive development — Babies breastfed for nine or more months exhibit greater cognitive development than those who have not been breastfed,24 and researchers found babies exclusively breastfed exhibit enhanced brain growth through age 2.25 Reduced risk of cardiovascular disease — Women who breastfeed have a 10% lower risk of heart disease and stroke,26 and the longer a mom breastfeeds, the greater the reduction in risk.

Women who have normal blood pressure during pregnancy and breastfeed for at least 6 months are also at lower risk for heart disease years later, compared to those who never breastfeed.27 Reduced risk of allergies — In one study of over 1,200 mothers and babies, exclusive breastfeeding prevented the development of allergic diseases and asthma.28 Reduced risk of postpartum depression — The release of prolactin and oxytocin while breastfeeding produces a peaceful and nurturing sensation.

Women who breastfeed enjoy a reduced risk of developing postpartum depression in the first four months of their infant's life.29 Skin-to-skin contact — Evidence shows newborns placed in skin-to-skin contact with their mothers immediately after birth move in a physiologically stable way from being in the womb to their early newborn moments.30

Mothers also exhibit an increase in maternal bonding and behavior after experiencing skin-to-skin contact directly after birth.

These benefits only continue to grow in the weeks following delivery.

Infants are less likely to cry, more likely to maintain their body temperature, and have more stable heart rate, respiratory rate and blood pressure during skin-to-skin contact.31 Bonding — The close interaction during breastfeeding is just one way mothers experience a greater bond with their infant, which may extend years beyond infancy32 and impact parenting. Protect and nourish gut microbiome — Breast milk contains complex sugars needed to feed beneficial gut bacteria known to influence how a child's body burns and stores fat.33

In one recent study,34 infants who were exclusively breastfed had the highest levels of beneficial bacteria in their guts at the age of 3 and 12 months.

Infants who were exclusively formula-fed had the least variety of bacteria, and had nearly double the risk of becoming overweight compared to exclusively breastfed babies.

Those fed a mix of breastmilk and formula were at lower risk than those exclusively formula-fed, but they still had a 60% greater risk of becoming overweight than exclusively breastfed babies. Lower mortality rates — The Lancet series35 on breastfeeding also notes the lives of 20,000 mothers can be saved by implementing universal breastfeeding, largely due to the cancer protection breastfeeding affords. Promotes proper jaw alignment, lowering risk of speech impediments and likelihood of needing orthodontic work later in life — All of these issues are more common among bottle fed babies, as bottle feeding causes jaw misalignment and malformed palate. Reduced risk of death, higher intelligence, lower health care costs and improved economic future — According to a series of studies on breastfeeding published in The Lancet in 2016:36

"Breastmilk makes the world healthier, smarter, and more equal …

The deaths of 823,000 children … each year could be averted through universal breastfeeding, along with economic savings of US$300 billion.

The Series confirms the benefits of breastfeeding in fewer infections, increased intelligence, probable protection against overweight and diabetes, and cancer prevention for mothers.

The Series represents the most in-depth analysis done so far into the health and economic benefits that breastfeeding can produce." Most Commercial Infant Formulas Are Loaded With Sugar

According to Nemours,37 "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates formula companies to ensure they provide all the necessary nutrients (including vitamin D) in their formulas. Still, commercial formulas can't completely match breast milk's exact composition. Why? Because milk is a living substance made by each mother for her individual infant, a process that can't be duplicated in a factory."

While this may sound as though the FDA regulates, approves and assures nutritional quality and safety of baby formula, this is not the case. The truth is, FDA does not approve and regulate infant formula at all.38 It does specify the nutrients that must be present in formula, but added ingredients and overall safety are left entirely in the manufacturers' hands. The required nutrients are also not based on a comparison with actual mother's milk.

Importantly, the last thing an infant needs is sugar, yet baby formulas contain shocking amounts. I've written numerous articles about the dangers of sugar consumption, including its ability to trigger glycation, disturb your metabolism, elevate blood pressure and triglycerides, cause weight gain, heart disease and liver damage, and even deplete your body of vitamins and minerals.

Breast milk does contain sugars, but they bear absolutely no resemblance to processed corn-based sugars. For example, breast milk contains about 150 different oligosaccharides — complex chains of sugars that are completely unique to human milk. These sugars are indigestible, and their primary purpose is to nourish healthy gut microbes, thereby optimizing your child's gut health and strengthening his or her immune system.

Infant formulas have also been found to contain all sorts of hazardous contaminants. Most recently, soy-based infant formula was found to be contaminated with glyphosate.39 Soy-based formula is dangerous for a number of different reasons, and now you can add glyphosate contamination to that list.

In an article for GreenMedInfo,40 Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., discusses new evidence suggesting glyphosate not only disrupts your gut microbiome but also impairs peristalsis — a feature that is exceedingly common in children with autism. It may also inhibit bile acid release by impairing gallbladder contraction, and many autistic children have very pale stool, suggestive of low bile acid levels.

Thirdly, many autistic kids have undigested particles in their stool, which suggests a lack of digestive enzymes. And, indeed, glyphosate affects your digestive enzymes, particularly trypsin, pepsin and lipase. In all, the evidence implicating glyphosate as a significant cause or contributor to autism is mounting.

How Does Formula Compare to Breast Milk?

On Dr. Bill Sears' website,41 you can find a chart comparing the composition of breast milk and commercial infant formula, along with an article42 in which he offers more detailed specifics on differences between individual nutrients.

The Weston A. Price Foundation has also published an excellent article on this topic, which contains the following summary. For a more in-depth understanding of what makes breast milk so superior to formula, I encourage you to read the full article:43

"Infant formula is primarily composed of sugar or lactose, dried skim milk and refined vegetable oil which can include genetically modified components … Soy-based formula is made of soy protein, sugar and refined oils.

Breast milk from a well-nourished mother is composed of hundreds of substances — over one hundred fats alone. Infant formula contains double the amount of protein that breast milk does, which promotes insulin resistance and adiposity …

Additives to infant formula, such as iron, DHA, ARA and laboratory-made folic acid are all problematic. Heat damages the protein in formulas forming advanced glycation end products as well as compromising the nutritional value."

Indeed, research44 published in 2011 found that when infants were switched from breast milk to commercial formula within the first year of life, their levels of advanced glycation end products (AGES) doubled, reaching levels found in diabetics. Many also had elevated insulin levels. AGES are formed during the processing of the formula, which uses high heat. They're basically sugar molecules that attach to and damage proteins in your body.

Not only do AGES build up in your body over time, leading to oxidation and speeding up the aging process, but they also promote inflammation, which in turn is linked to a number of chronic diseases, including diabetes and heart disease. According to this study, infant formulas processed with high heat may contain 100 times more AGEs than breast milk.

Do You Need Help Breastfeeding?

While not all women will make the decision to breastfeed, the majority is able to produce more than adequate supplies of milk to breastfeed successfully. Since mothers are unable to measure the amount of milk being consumed by their baby, some believe they aren't producing enough. However, when formula supplementation is used, it reduces your supply as the supply of milk is dependent upon the demand. In other words, the more your baby nurses, the more milk your body produces.

Nursing mothers need to stay well-hydrated, drink plenty of water and seek optimal nutrition to supply the energy needed to produce milk. The first weeks and months are crucial to the process of establishing a strong milk supply. Your baby's sucking instinct will be very strong directly after birth, so begin nursing as soon as possible.

Lactation consultants encourage you to place your baby to breast in the delivery room. This also helps release oxytocin to reduce postpartum bleeding and begin the process of returning the uterus to normal size.

The first milk produced is called colostrum, a thick, golden-yellow fluid that is gentle to your baby's stomach and full of beneficial antibodies. Over the coming days and weeks your milk gradually changes color and consistency. Newborns need to nurse at least once every two hours for approximately 15 minutes on each side, but they don't adhere to a strict schedule.

When you accommodate feedings to the needs of your infant, you'll find frequent feeding stimulates your breasts to produce increasing amounts of milk to keep up with the demand as your baby grows.

You may want to begin planning for successful breastfeeding before your baby is even born by taking a breastfeeding class while you're pregnant. La Leche League45 is a terrific resource to contact for help whether you want to prepare beforehand or find you're having trouble breastfeeding once your baby is born.

Also find out whether your hospital of choice offers breastfeeding classes and lactation consultants who can help you. If it doesn't, you may want to select a hospital that offers greater support.

Healthy Options for Mothers Who Cannot Breastfeed Video Link

Last but not least, if for whatever reason you cannot, or decide not to breastfeed, consider making your own baby formula using organic grass fed raw milk. In the video above, Sarah Pope — who runs The Healthy Home Economist website and is a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation's board of directors — discusses the differences between different kinds of milk, such as cow's milk and goat's milk, and why cow's milk is actually preferable.

She then demonstrates how to make two different formulas, including a meat-based formula for infants with milk allergy. For written instructions of the recipes presented in this video, as well as a list of nutrition facts that compares these homemade formulas to breast milk, see the "Homemade Baby Formula" page46 on the Weston A. Price Foundation's site. However, a couple of caveats are in order:

1. Fermented cod liver oil is a recommended ingredient in Pope's recipes, which may be dangerous for babies. Laboratory testing has revealed the product tends to be prone to rancidity, may contain added vegetable oils, and lack vitamin K2 and CoQ10.

The concentration of vitamins A and D can also vary significantly from one batch to another, as cod liver oil is not regulated or standardized.47 Unless you can verify the purity of the cod liver oil, I'd recommend using wild-caught Alaskan Salmon oil or krill oil instead.

2. The Weston A. Price Foundation's baby formula recipe suggests butter oil is optional, but Dr. Price himself recommended always pairing cod liver oil with butter oil, which contains vitamin K2 (MK-4). I recommend tweaking the recipe by making butter oil a requirement if you're using a certified pure fermented cod liver oil.

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Mustard greens are a nutrient-dense source of vitamins and minerals, but their bitter flavor makes them unpalatable to many. To remedy the problem, Tom Adams, cofounder and CEO of Pairwise, told Wired, "We basically created a new category of salad."1

The agricultural biotechnology company, founded in 2017, had raised $90 million by 2021, and $115 million total,2 "to bring new varieties of fruits and vegetables to market."3 Its first product, Conscious Greens Purple Power Baby Greens Blend, is also the first CRISPR-edited food available to U.S. consumers.4

Gene-Edited Mustard Greens Coming to US Stores

Pairwise scientists used the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR, or Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat, to edit mustard greens’ DNA, removing a gene that gives them their pungent flavor.

The greens are first being rolled out in restaurants and other locations in St. Louis, Springfield, Massachusetts, and the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, before heading to U.S. grocery stores — beginning in the Pacific Northwest.5

Pairwise is careful to describe itself as a "pioneering food startup,"6 trying to distance itself from its true biotechnology roots. It describes the gene-edited greens as:

"... [A] mix of colorful Superfood leafy greens with a unique, fresh flavor and up to double the nutrition of romaine. Using CRISPR technologies to improve taste and nutrition in produce, Conscious Greens are field-grown Superfood greens that eat like lettuce, offering a versatile new option for chefs and salad lovers alike."

The company has also built a glossy PR campaign to make their motives seem altruistic and necessary to improve Americans’ diets. In a news release, Haven Baker, Pairwise co-founder and chief business officer, stated:7

"We’re proud to be bringing the first CRISPR food product to the U.S. We set out to solve an important problem — that most lettuce isn’t very nutritious, and other types of greens are too bitter or too hard to eat.

Using CRISPR, we’ve been able to improve new types of nutritious greens to make them more desirable for consumers, and we did it in a quarter of the time of traditional breeding methods. Launching Conscious Greens through this exciting partnership with PFG [Performance Food Group], is a major milestone in achieving our mission to build a healthier world through better fruits and vegetables."

But are CRISPR foods really better — or do they pose unknown, and potentially serious, risks to the environment and the people who eat them? Further, it’s not going to stop here. Pairwise is already working on using CRISPR to create blackberries with no seeds and cherries without pits.8

The idea that genetic modification is going to compel people to eat mustard greens when they otherwise wouldn’t is also highly questionable. So the company’s claims that its gene-edited products will boost American’s nutritional intake are likely to fall flat.

Is CRISPR Really an Exact Science?

CRISPR is being increasingly used to tinker with natural foods. In addition to altering taste, CRISPR is being used to extend shelf life and create foods that resist certain bacteria and viruses.9

Whereas genetic engineering involves the introduction of foreign genes, CRISPR involves manipulating or editing existing DNA. It’s said to be "exceptionally precise." In an interview with Yale Insights, Dr. Gregory Licholai, a biotech entrepreneur, explained CRISPR this way:10

"So as you probably know, our book of life is made of DNA. DNA itself is many millions of base-pairs, which is like a language. And within that language, there are certain regions which code for genes, and those genes are incredibly important because those genes go on to make up everything about us.

There’s 40,000 proteins that become outputs of those genes and they are involved in our health, our wellbeing, and any defect in those genes becomes problematic and causes disease.

What was previously attempted with gene editing was to manipulate genetic information in blocks, basically in big pieces. It’s kind of like trying to edit a book by only being able to rip out a page at a time and transfer a page at a time, without really being able to control the actual words. The power of this technology: it literally comes down to the individual letters.

So the precision is far better than anything that has happened before. The excitement in the scientific community is being able to go in and very precisely make changes in DNA of actual genes that you can actually turn off bad genes or you can potentially repair genes that have got mutations in them where the code is written incorrectly."

But CRISPR isn’t always an exact science. As is often the case when it comes to tinkering with genetics, gene editing has led to unexpected side effects, including enlarged tongues and extra vertebrae in animals.11,12

Further, when researchers at the U.K.’s Wellcome Sanger Institute systematically studied mutations from CRISPR-Cas9 in mouse and human cells, large genetic rearrangements were observed, including DNA deletions and insertions, near the target site. The DNA deletions could end up activating genes that should stay "off," such as cancer-causing genes, as well as silencing those that should be "on."13

Risks of Humans Manipulating the Genetic Code

In 2022, researchers with Boston Children’s Hospital revealed that using CRISPR in human cell lines increased the risk of large rearrangements of DNA, which could increase cancer risk. Such rearrangements occurred up to 6% of the time.14,15 In a news release Boston Children’s Hospital explained:16

"CRISPR seems to exacerbate a natural process known as retrotransposition, in which DNA sequences known as "mobile elements" or "jumping genes" replicate themselves and move from one location in the genome to another. Similar to CRISPR, these mobile elements use enzymes to create a double-stranded break in DNA where they insert themselves.

Retrotransposition is often harmless — in fact, over the course of evolution, mobile elements have come to make up approximately a third of our genome. (Some scientists believe they are actually ancient viruses.) But mobile elements have also been linked to disease, including cancer. When the breaks they create in DNA aren’t repaired, mismatched ends of DNA can join, leading to rearrangements."

In another warning, researchers attempted to use CRISPR-Cas9 to repair a mutation linked to hereditary blindness in human embryos.17 But when they did, it led to "genetic havoc" in about half of the cells, triggering them to lose entire chromosomes.18

"We’re often used to hearing about papers where CRISPR is very successful," Nicole Kaplan, a geneticist at New York University, told The New York Times. "But with the amount of power we hold ... [it is crucial] ... to understand consequences we didn’t intend."19 What’s more, Licholai said, is that genes edited with CRISPR may be transferred to other organisms and become part of the environment:

"One of the biggest risks of CRISPR is what’s called gene drive, or genetic drive. What that means is that because you’re actually manipulating genes and those genes get incorporated into the genome, into the encyclopedia, basically, that sits within cells, potentially those genes can then be transferred on to other organisms.

And once they’re transferred on to other organisms, once they become part of the cycle, then those genes are in the environment.

That’s probably the biggest fear of CRISPR. Humans manipulating the genetic code, and those manipulations get passed on generation to generation to generation. We think we know what we’re doing, we think we’re measuring exactly what changes we’re doing to the genes, but there’s always the possibility that either we miss something or our technology can’t pick up on other changes that have been made that haven’t been directed by us.

And the fear then is that those changes lead to antibiotic resistance or other mutations that go out into the population and would be very difficult to control. Basically creating incurable diseases or other potential mutations that we wouldn’t really have control over."

USDA Is Testing Gene-Edited Insects

Even though the unintended consequences of gene editing are unknown and potentially devastating, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is working with a U.S. company to test gene-edited insects in greenhouses. The insects, spotted wing drosophila, cause damage to many fruit crops. The project uses CRISPR to add genes to kill female drosophila while sterilizing males.20

Glassy winged sharpshooters, which spread bacteria that devastates vineyards, are also being targeted with CRISPR.21 A carbohydrate in the insects’ mouth allows the targeted bacteria to stick. Researchers intend to insert genes into sharpshooters’ mouths to make them a nonstick surface, causing bacteria to slide off.22

"Chemicals can only travel so far before they degrade in the environment," Jason Delborne, North Carolina State University professor of science, policy and society, told MIT Technology Review. "If you introduce a gene-edited organism that can move through the environment, you have the potential to change or transform environments across a huge spatial and temporal scale."23

And therein lies the problem. Once released into the environment, there’s no turning back — and no way of knowing what other changes could occur from this genetic manipulation, at a worldwide scale.

FDA Says Gene-Edited Beef Is ‘Low Risk’

The FDA announced in March 2022 that Recombinetics’ gene-edited cattle received a low-risk determination for marketing products, including food, made from their meat. "This is the FDA’s first low-risk determination for enforcement discretion for an IGA [intentional genomic alteration] in an animal for food use," the FDA reported.24

The animals’ genes were modified to make their coats shorter and slicker. The genetic modification to their coats is intended to help them better withstand heat stress, allowing them to gain more weight and increase the efficiency of meat production25 — but at what cost? While a lengthy approval process is typically necessary for gene-edited animals to enter the food market, the FDA streamlined the process for gene-edited cattle, allowing them to skirt the regular approval process.

The agency stated the gene-edited beef cattle do not raise any safety concerns because the gene modifications result in the same genetic makeup seen in so-called "slick coat" cattle, which are conventionally bred.26

But in 2019, Brazil stopped its plans to allow a herd of Recombinetics’ gene-edited cattle after unexpected DNA changes were uncovered. As with the FDA, Brazilian regulators had determined that Recombinetics could proceed without any special oversight, since their gene-editing involved modifying cattle with a naturally occurring trait.

In this case, instead of altering the cattle’s coats, Recombinetics was editing the cattle to be hornless — until something went wrong. A piece of bacterial DNA used to deliver the desired gene had become pasted into a cow’s genome, essentially rendering it "part bacteria."27

Regardless, in 2022, Recombinetics stated its gene-edited meat products would be available to "select customers in the global market soon" while general consumers would be able to purchase gene-edited meat in as few as two years.28

Gene-Edited Foods Aren’t Labeled

Because regulators don’t consider gene-edited foods to be genetically modified organisms (GMOs), they don’t have to be labeled. However, 75% of Americans want gene-edited foods to carry a label.29 As gene-edited foods become more common in the marketplace, if you’d like to avoid them, choose organic foods, which cannot be gene edited at this time.

You can also get to know a local farmer who has no intention of using this technology, and grow as much of your own food as possible. This way, you’ll have full control over what is, and isn’t, in your food supply.

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Within weeks of the pandemic outbreak, it had become apparent that the standard practice of putting COVID-19 patients on mechanical ventilation was a death sentence.1

By early April 2020, many doctors were already questioning their use, as data2 showed 76.4% of COVID-19 patients (aged 18 to 65) in New York City who were placed on ventilators died. Among patients over age 65 who were vented, the mortality rate was a whopping 97.2%.

If you were older than 65, you were 26 times more likely to survive if you were NOT placed on a vent.3 A small study from Wuhan, China, put the ratio of deaths at 86%,4 and in Texas, 84.9% of patients died after more than 96 hours on a ventilator.5

In a widely-shared YouTube video6 (above) posted March 31, 2020, Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell, a critical care specialist at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York, warned that “we must change what we are doing if we want to save as many lives as possible.” Sidell was adamant that doctors were “treating the wrong disease” and that putting COVID patients on mechanical ventilation was all wrong.

“We are operating under a medical paradigm that is untrue,” Sidell said. “I fear that this misguided treatment will lead to a tremendous amount of harm to a great number of people in a very short time … This method being widely adopted at this very moment at every hospital in the country … is actually doing more harm than good.”

Why Were COVID Patients Put on Vents?

The recommendation to place COVID patients on mechanical ventilation as a first-line response came from the World Health Organization,7 which in early March 2020 published a COVID-19 provider guidance8 document to health care workers, based on experiences and recommendations from doctors in China.

According to the WHO, treatment needed to be rapidly escalated to mechanical ventilation. Ideally, patients should be placed on it immediately.9 What escaped the public was the primary reason why. Venting COVID patients wasn’t recommended because it increased survival; rather, it was to protect health care workers by isolating the virus inside the mechanical vent machine.

Using less invasive positive air pressure machines could result in the spread of infectious aerosols, the WHO warned. In other words, they put patients to death to “save” staff and other, presumably non-COVID, patients. That ventilation and sedation were used to protect hospital staff was highlighted by The Wall Street Journal in a December 20, 2020, article,10 which noted:

“Last spring, doctors put patients on ventilators partly to limit contagion at a time when it was less clear how the virus spread, when protective masks and gowns were in short supply.

Doctors could have employed other kinds of breathing support devices that don’t require risky sedation, but early reports suggested patients using them could spray dangerous amounts of virus into the air, said Theodore Iwashyna, a critical-care physician at University of Michigan and Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals in Ann Arbor, Mich.

At the time, he said, doctors and nurses feared the virus would spread through hospitals. ‘We were intubating sick patients very early. Not for the patients’ benefit, but in order to control the epidemic and to save other patients,’ Dr. Iwashyna said. ‘That felt awful.’”

As dryly noted by James Lyons-Weiler in a January 23, 2023, Substack article,11 “euthanizing humans is illegal. Especially for the benefit of other patients. It should feel awful.”

Fauci Knew Vents Did More Harm Than Good

Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, in a mid-June 2022 lecture (above), admitted that placing patients on mechanical ventilation did more harm than good.

“We very, very readily would put people on mechanical ventilation, when we found out, through clinical experience, it might have been better just to make sure we positioned them properly in the prone or supine position, and not necessarily to intubate someone so readily, which might have actually caused more harm than good. We learned that as we got more experience.”

Yet government treatment guidelines, to this day, include invasive mechanical ventilation.12 If the White House Coronavirus Task Force knew in the summer of 2022 that venting patients caused more harm than good, why didn’t they instruct hospitals to stop using it? Or at bare minimum, strongly advise against it?

And why did the government continue to financially incentivize the use of mechanical ventilation after they’d realized how bad it was? While many hospitals did cut down on their use of mechanical ventilation toward the end of 2020 and beyond, it still hasn’t been entirely replaced with noninvasive strategies shown to be far more effective.13

Many ‘COVID Patients’ Didn’t Have COVID

The matter becomes even more perverse when you consider that many “COVID cases” were patients who merely tested positive using faulty PCR testing. They didn’t have COVID but were vented anyway, thanks to the baseless theory that you could have COVID-19 and be infectious without symptoms.

Hospitals also received massive financial incentives to diagnose patients with COVID — whether they had it or not — and to put them on a vent. They also received bonuses for using toxic remdesivir, and they were paid for each COVID death as well. The entire system was set up to reward hospitals for misdiagnosing, mistreating and ultimately killing patients.

China also benefited from the WHO’s misguided advice. While the U.S. clamored for more ventilators, Chinese hospitals started relying on them less and instead they were being exported in huge quantities.14

How Many COVID Patients Were Killed by WHO’s Bad Advice?

Just how many COVID-19 patients were killed by being placed on mechanical ventilation in the spring of 2020? That’s a question attorney and author Michael P. Senger tries to answer in his May 25, 2023, article “The Great COVID Ventilator Death Coverup.”15 He writes, in part:

“... the establishment is trying to argue that while ventilators were overused in spring 2020, doing more harm than good ... the ventilators themselves did not kill anyone.16 An astonishing argument, even by the abysmal standards of the COVID era.

But, since everyone supporting this narrative is arguing that there were no ventilator deaths in spring 2020, all we have to do is prove there were a significant number of ventilator deaths and what’s left of the establishment’s credibility on the initial months of COVID falls apart.

In addition to the anecdotal evidence ... several unsettling data points have long strongly suggested that there weren’t just some ventilator deaths in spring 2020, but rather a pretty frightening number of them ...

The CDC reports17 that 18,679 patients died with COVID in New York City hospitals throughout spring 2020. And, according to the sample in JAMA,18 just over half of those who died with COVID in NYC hospitals were put on ventilators. Accordingly, around 10,000 patients died with COVID in NYC hospitals after being put on ventilators in spring 2020 ...

Additionally, as Jessica Hockett has documented19 in meticulous detail through multiple methods, New York City experienced a sharp, breathtaking mortality event just after its lockdown and response to COVID began, which was unlike that experienced anywhere else or at any other time.

Given its singularity, this horrifying mortality event, quite simply, cannot be attributed to natural causes. Jumping off Hockett’s work, below is a chart of weekly all-cause hospital inpatient mortality from January 2018 through April 2023, split between patients ages 65+ (blue line) and patients under 65 (red line).

This spike in inpatient hospital mortality in New York City in spring 2020, especially among young people, is unparalleled in any other time period, even as COVID deaths supposedly began to climb again in 2021.”

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

Inpatient Mortality Around the US, 2020 Through Present

Senger goes on to show the same all-cause mortality graphs for hospital inpatients for each of the largest cities in the U.S.: Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. All show massive spikes in hospital deaths, especially among the elderly (65 and older), around the same time periods as NYC. He also produced charts for deaths on the state level, as follow:20

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

A Strawman Argument

Senger continues:21

“A couple of points on these charts. First, while the spike in mortality in the NYC area in spring 2020, especially among young people, is without parallel, it’s not the only one we see.

These spikes in mortality among young people are conspicuous because it’s long been known that COVID’s infection fatality rate (IFR) is extremely skewed toward the elderly. This, for example, is the most widely-cited data on COVID’s IFR by age:22

Thus, these spikes in mortality among young people cannot be attributed to COVID. Most notably, a significant spike in mortality appears among all age groups in California at the end of 2020 ...

One possibility is that, while the use of ventilators was generally scaled back, hospitals in California may have still been engaging in broad intubation or other iatrogenic practices by the end of 2020 ...

Even more strangely, Texas experienced a surge in deaths among young people in summer 2021 that was not accompanied by a corresponding increase in mortality among the elderly; this, frankly, may have had nothing to do with COVID.

That said, the fact remains that the New York area experienced a uniquely sharp, awful mortality event in spring 2020 which is not adequately explained by any of these other factors.

And doctors were under significant pressure to put patients on ventilators in spring 2020, even if it was merely unconscious; politicians had purchased tens of thousands of ventilators at exorbitant prices, and hospitals did receive more funding if patients were placed on ventilators.

Coupled with the above anecdotes about patients being placed on ventilators for extended periods to protect staff — and the fact that over 10,000 patients in New York City died after being intubated — it’s clear that a horrifying number of patients were likely killed by mechanical ventilators.

Yet astonishingly, despite all these facts, the establishment is arguing that no patients were killed by ventilators in spring 2020. This, to me, is the kind of implausible, overly-defensive argument one makes when they’re panicked.

Across America, tens of thousands of patients were placed on ventilators in spring 2020; given the vast majority of those patients died, it simply begs credulity that none of them were killed by ventilators.

When a deadly procedure is applied to tens of thousands of patients, even a baseline level of human error would imply that the procedure was applied to at least some fraction of those patients by mistake.

The establishment has responded with subsequent studies23 claiming to show that ‘early intubation’ actually reduced the time patients spent on ventilators, and thus didn’t kill any of them. But this is a straw-man argument ...

[T]he issue isn’t whether patients were intubated ‘early’ or ‘late’ relative to any symptoms they might have shown — the issue is whether patients were placed on ventilators who should have never been on them to begin with, or otherwise kept on them too long.”

A Morally Indefensible Coverup

Senger points out that, in speaking with other attorneys, most agree that hospitals face virtually no risk of litigation over ventilator deaths, for the simple reason that everyone perceived COVID to be a global emergency, and during emergencies, you just do the best you can with what you have and what you know.

“Regardless of how much harm was done, it’s simply too difficult to prove that the procedure violated the emergency standard of care given the information coming from China at the time,” he writes.

Even so, “the situation is morally inexcusable,” Senger says, adding that we do need to get to the bottom of how and why these patients died. I agree. While Senger wants the truth to understand what happened and to honor the diseased, I would add that we need the truth in order to avoid making the same mistake again, because there will be a next time.

The WHO Must Be Held to Account

The WHO must be held accountable for its unethical recommendation to sacrifice suspected COVID patients by using ventilation as an infection mitigation strategy — especially considering they’re now trying to get unilateral power and authority to make pandemic decisions without local input.

Showing how the WHO’s recommendation to put patients on mechanical ventilation resulted in needless death among people who weren’t at great risk of dying from COVID is perhaps one of the most powerful talking points a country can use to argue for independence and rejection of the WHO’s pandemic treaty.

They simply cannot be trusted to make sound medical decisions for the whole world. No one is. We need to allow local medical experts to make the calls in situations like this, and to collaborate and share information between themselves. The top-down one-size-fits-all medical paradigm that the WHO wants to implement is nothing short of disastrous, and the COVID pandemic response proves it.

Also, let’s not forget that the misuse of mechanical ventilation created the appearance that COVID was exceptionally deadly, regardless of your age, which in turn helped promote acceptance of the experimental COVID shots that are now a leading cause of frequent sickness, chronic disability and excess deaths. Of course, that’s also being covered up.

In the final analysis, the WHO’s handling of the COVID pandemic will undoubtedly go down as the worst in medical history. Can we really trust them to make better decisions in the future?

I think not, which is why we must do everything in our power to prevent the U.S. from signing the pandemic treaty. Better yet, we need to exit the WHO entirely. To that end, I urge you to contact your local House representatives and Senators and urge them to:

1. Support the No WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty Without Senate Approval Act24,25,26,27,28
2. Withhold funding for the WHO
3. Support U.S. withdrawal from the WHO

 Comments (131)

Editor's Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published December 31, 2018.

Many modern drugs are derived from purified and concentrated plant compounds (although compared to 20 years ago, few drug companies expend time and money looking at medicinal plant chemistry these days). Rosy periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus), for example, a perennial plant native to Madagascar, is the basis for a number of commonly used cancer drugs that have been in use since the 1960s.1

Of the 70 different alkaloids found in periwinkle, the two primary compounds used in anticancer drugs are the powerful vinca alkaloids2 vinblastine and vincristine.3 Alkaloids are nitrogen-containing compounds shown to be very important for human health. Within the family of alkaloids, there are those with antiparasitic, antidiabetic, anticancer, antihypertensive and/or antiasthma properties, just to name a few. Others benefit your mood.

Even the humble daffodil contains a valuable alkaloid with anticancer properties called haemanthamine. This alkaloid inhibits the protein production cancer cells depend on to grow and flourish. Berberine is yet another powerful alkaloid found in plants such as goldenseal, goldthread, Oregon grape root and barberry. These plants have traditionally been used in the treatment of Type 2 diabetes, gastrointestinal infections, liver problems and a number of other health conditions.

Berberine is particularly beneficial for mitochondrial function and is a powerful activator of AMPK, a metabolic master switch. Interestingly, glyphosate — the most widely used herbicide in the world — robs the plant of the ability to make these important medicinal compounds.

Vinca Alkaloids Are Powerful Cancer Fighters

Aside from vinblastine and vincristine, two others known for their cancer-fighting powers are vinorelbine and vindesine.4 All but vindesine have been approved for use in the U.S., and vincristine and vinblastine are included in the World Health Organization's list of essential medicines.5

A synthetic vinca alkaloid called vinflunine, developed in 2008, has since been approved in Europe for the treatment of certain types of bladder cancer. It's also being investigated for the use against other malignancies. Other medicinal applications include the treatment of diabetes and hypertension (high blood pressure). Their cytotoxic effects have gained the greatest attention, however. As explained in a 2013 paper in the International Journal of Preventive Medicine:6

"The main mechanisms of vinca alkaloid cytotoxicity is due to their interactions with tubulin and disruption of microtubule function … directly causing metaphase arrest … [T]he vinca alkaloids and other antimicrotubule agents also have an effect on both nonmalignant and malignant cells in the non-mitotic cell cycle, because microtubules are involved in many non-mitotic functions …

The vinca alkaloids and other microtubule disrupting agents have power to inhibit malignant angiogenesis in vitro. For example, [vinblastine] with concentrations range from 0.1 to 1.0 pmol/L blocked endothelial proliferation, chemotaxis and spreading on fibronectin, all essential steps in angiogenesis, but other normal fibroblasts and lymphoid tumors were unaffected at these minute concentrations.

In combination with antibodies against vascular endothelial growth factor, low doses of [vinblastine] increased antitumor response considerably, even in tumors resistant to direct cytotoxic effects of the drug. Vinca alkaloids inhibit cell proliferation by binding to microtubules, which can cause a mitotic block and apoptosis …

Side effects of [vinblastine] consist of toxicity to white blood cells, nausea, vomiting, constipation, dyspnea, chest or tumor pain, wheezing and fever. It is also rarely associated with antidiuretic hormone secretion."

Historical Overview

Vinca alkaloids are the second most-used class of cancer drugs today. They've also been used the longest. Vinca alkaloids were originally discovered by two Canadian scientists, Robert Noble and Charles Beer, in the 1950s.7

During that time, Gordon Svoboda, a medical researcher at Eli Lilly, also added periwinkle to his list of research subjects, having heard reports of its use for diabetes during World War II. In 1958, Gordon discovered extract from the plant also performed remarkably well in anticancer tests.

That same year, Noble and Beer presented their own anticancer findings at a research symposium at the New York Academy of Sciences. Notably, the two teams (Eli Lilly and Noble/Beer) concluded that since periwinkle extract lowered white blood cell counts, it might be useful against leukemia — a disease characterized by white blood cell proliferation.

Beer was responsible for isolating vinblastine, which he named. Eventually, Eli Lilly and Noble/Beer established a joint research collaboration, which led to the development of two chemotherapy drugs. Vincristine gained approval as a chemotherapeutic agent by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1961. Vinblastine gained FDA approval in 1963. Many other countries around the world approved the two drugs shortly thereafter.

Vinca Alkaloids in Conventional Cancer Treatment

Vinblastine is an integral part of anticancer regimens against testicular cancer, Hodgkin and Non-Hodgkin lymphomas, breast cancer and germ cell tumors. Vinorelbine has been shown to have "significant antitumor activity" in those with breast cancer, and is also used in bone cancer treatments, and is approved for the initial treatment of advanced lung cancer in the U.S.

Vincristine, meanwhile, is approved for the treatment of acute leukemia, rhabdomyosarcoma, neuroblastoma, Wilm's tumor, Hodgkin's disease and other lymphomas, as well as several nonmalignant blood disorders, including refractory autoimmune thrombocytopenia, hemolytic uremic syndrome and thrombotic thrombocytopenia purpura.

Common side effects for vincristine include peripheral neuropathy, suppressed activity of bone marrow, constipation, nervous system toxicity, nausea and vomiting.

As you can see, toxicity is an issue. While the toxicological profile of each alkaloid is different, all vinca alkaloids have peripheral neurotoxicity — vincristine being the most potent. As noted in the featured paper on vinca alkaloids, this neurotoxicity is "related to axonal degeneration and decreasing of axonal transport, most likely caused by a drug-induced perturbation of microtubule function."

The only ways to counteract these toxic effects are to either lower the dose, decrease the frequency of drug administration, or to discontinue use altogether. "Although a number of antidotes, including thiamine, vitamin B12, folinic acid, pyridoxine and neuroactive agents, have been applied, these treatments have not been obviously shown to be effective," the authors note.

All vinca alkaloids, but vincristine8 and vinblastine in particular, also have notable toxicity on the gastrointestinal tract, as noted in a recent study.9 All of them can also cause severe tissue damage, and are associated with acute heart problems, as well as lung and blood toxicity. The featured paper also specifies that vaccinations should not be administered while on a vinca alkaloid drug, as they weaken your immune system.

Your Lifestyle Choices Can Offer Potent Cancer Prevention

While anticancer drugs have their place, it's important to remember that the lifestyle choices you make on a daily basis will influence your overall cancer risk in the first place. The good news is there's a lot you can do to lower your risk. In fact, I believe you can virtually eliminate your risk of cancer and chronic disease, and radically improve your chances of recovering from cancer if you currently have it, by addressing foundational lifestyle factors.

The following — starting with diet-related pointers, followed by other lifestyle recommendations — is by no means an exhaustive list.

There are many other strategies that can be useful as well, and several really great books have been written just on the topic of natural cancer prevention, including "Waking the Warrior Goddess: Dr. Christine Horner's Program to Protect Against and Fight Breast Cancer" by Dr. Christine Horner, "The Cancer Revolution: A Groundbreaking Program to Reverse and Prevent Cancer" by Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy and "The Healing Platform: Build Your Own Cure!" by Annie Brandt.

Another excellent book for those who want to understand more about the role of diet and the metabolic underpinnings of cancer is "Tripping Over the Truth: The Return of the Metabolic Theory of Cancer Illuminates a New and Hopeful Path to a Cure" by Travis Christofferson.

Eat real food, ideally organic or biodynamic; avoid processed foods and sugars, especially processed fructose — All forms of sugar are detrimental to health in general and promote cancer. Processed fructose, however, is one of the most harmful and should be avoided as much as possible.

Reduce nonfiber carbs but have large volumes of fresh organic veggies along with high amounts of healthy fats from avocados, raw butter, seeds, nuts and raw cacao nibs. Consider adding cancer-fighting whole foods such as broccoli and fermented foods, and drinking a pint to a quart of organic green vegetable juice daily.

Eating certified organic or biodynamic foods will help you avoid genetically engineered foods and ingredients, which are typically loaded with glyphosate, a suspected carcinogen that also has antibiotic activity and has been shown to harm health in a number of different ways.

Implement a cyclical ketogenic diet — In my book, "Fat for Fuel," I describe a metabolic mitochondrial therapy program that I believe is a core foundation for a healthy life. Most people simply eat far too many processed foods, net carbs and too few healthy fats, and too many unhealthy fats, which results in gaining and retaining extra body fat and becoming increasingly insulin resistant.

Most also eat too much protein for optimal health and, while exercise cannot compensate for the damage done by a high-carb, low-fat diet, most do not get enough physical movement either. These factors set in motion metabolic and biological cascades that deteriorate your health and "predispose" you to cancer and other chronic diseases.

Oncologists in Turkey are also using a stacked ketogenic treatment protocol that has been proven effective even in many stage 4 cancer patients.

By using metabolic support strategies such as ketogenic diet and fasting, a minimal dose of chemotherapy can be used, thereby eliminating many side effects and risks of treatment, while actually improving outcomes.

Limit protein — Newer research has emphasized the importance of the mTOR pathway. When activated, cancer growth is accelerated. To quiet this pathway, I believe it may be wise to limit your protein to 1 gram of protein per kilogram of lean body mass, or roughly one-half gram of protein per pound of lean body weight. Replace excess protein with high quality fats such as eggs from organic free-range hens, high quality meats, avocados and coconut oil.

Avoid unfermented soy products — Unfermented soy is high in plant estrogens, or phytoestrogens, also known as isoflavones. In some studies, soy appears to work in concert with human estrogen to increase breast cell proliferation, which increases the chances for mutations and cancerous cells.

Optimize your omega-3 level — Omega-3 deficiency is a common underlying factor for cancer,10 so make sure you get plenty of high quality animal-based omega-3 fats. I recommend getting an omega-3 index test done annually. For optimal health and disease prevention, your index should be above 8%.

Use curcumin — This is the active ingredient in turmeric and in high concentrations can be very useful adjunct in the treatment of cancer. For example, it has demonstrated major therapeutic potential in preventing breast cancer metastasis.11

Avoid drinking alcohol — At minimum, limit your alcoholic drinks to one per day.

Avoid charring your meats and steer clear of all processed meats — Charcoal or flame broiled meat is linked with increased breast cancer risk. Acrylamide — a carcinogen created when starchy foods are baked, roasted or fried — has been found to increase cancer risk as well. I recommend eating at least one-third of your food raw. Avoid frying or charbroiling; boil, poach or steam your foods instead.

Processed meats of all kinds also contain acrylamide, along with nitrites that may form harmful N-nitroso compounds in your body. The evidence against processed meat is so strong, it was, as a group, classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2015.

Stop eating at least three hours before bedtime — Compelling evidence suggests that fueling the mitochondria in your cells at a time when they don't need it leads to the production of reactive oxygen species (free radicals) that damage mitochondrial and eventually nuclear DNA. There is also evidence to indicate that cancer cells uniformly have damaged mitochondria, so the last thing you want to do is eat before you go to bed.

Water fasting — Multiday water fasting, even when you do not have a weight or insulin problem, provides powerful metabolic benefits that help lower your disease risk. Importantly, fasting radically improves your body's ability to digest damaged cells (autophagy) and increases stem cells.

Optimize your gut microbiome — Optimizing your gut flora will reduce inflammation and strengthen your immune response, both of which are important for cancer prevention. Researchers have found a microbe-dependent mechanism through which some cancers mount an inflammatory response that fuels their development and growth.

So, inhibiting inflammatory cytokines may also slow cancer progression and improve the response to chemotherapy. Adding naturally fermented food to your daily diet is an easy way to prevent cancer or speed recovery. You can always add a high quality probiotic supplement as well, but naturally fermented foods are best.

Make sure you're not iodine deficient — There's compelling evidence linking iodine deficiency with certain forms of cancer. Dr. David Brownstein,12 author of "Iodine: Why You Need it, Why You Can't Live Without it," is a proponent of iodine for breast cancer. It actually has potent anticancer properties and has been shown to cause cell death in breast and thyroid cancer cells.

For more information, I recommend reading his book. One caveat: While I believe the bulk of what he states is spot on, I'm not convinced his dosage recommendations are ideal. I believe they may in fact be five or six times higher than optimal. So, do your homework before starting iodine loading.

Improve your insulin and leptin receptor sensitivity — The best way to do this is by avoiding sugar and grains and restricting carbs primarily to fiber-rich vegetables. Exercise will also help normalize your insulin and leptin sensitivity.

Maintain a healthy body weight — This will come naturally when you begin eating right for your nutritional type and exercising. It's important to lose excess body fat because fat produces estrogen.

Optimize your vitamin D level — Vitamin D influences virtually every cell in your body and is one of nature's most potent cancer fighters. Vitamin D is actually able to enter cancer cells and trigger apoptosis (cell death). For general health and disease prevention, you should ideally maintain a vitamin D level of 60 to 80 ng/ml year-round. Vitamin D also works synergistically with every cancer treatment I'm aware of, with no adverse effects.

Get plenty of restorative sleep — Make sure you are getting enough restorative sleep. Poor sleep can interfere with your melatonin production, which is associated with an increased risk of insulin resistance and weight gain, both of which contribute to cancer's virility.

The link between lack of sleep and cancer is so strong that the World Health Organization, since 2007, has tagged shift work as a "probable human carcinogen" because it causes circadian disruption.13 As a general rule, adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep each night.

Exercise regularly — Researchers and cancer organizations increasingly recommend making regular exercise a priority in order to reduce your risk of cancer, and help improve cancer outcomes. One of the primary reasons exercise works to lower your cancer risk is because it drives your insulin levels down, and controlling your insulin levels is one of the most powerful ways to reduce your cancer risks.

Research has also found evidence suggesting exercise can help trigger apoptosis (programmed cell death) in cancer cells. Studies have also found that the number of tumors decrease along with body fat, which may be an additional factor.

This is because exercise helps lower your estrogen levels, which explains why exercise appears to be particularly potent against breast cancer.

Finally, exercise increases mitochondrial biogenesis, which is essential to fight cancer. Ideally, your exercise program should include balance, strength, flexibility, high intensity interval training (HIIT).

Limit electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure — In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified cellphones as a Group 2B "possible carcinogen,"14 and the evidence supporting the theory that EMF radiation from wireless technologies can trigger abnormal cell growth and cancer15 just keeps growing and getting stronger.

Among the latest evidence are two government-funded animal studies16 that linked cellphone radiation to brain and heart tumors, as well as DNA and cellular damage. These findings are further supported by a lifetime exposure study17 by the highly respected Ramazzini Institute in Italy, which also found a clear link between cellphone radiation and these types of tumors.18,19,20

A core problem is the fact that EMF triggers potent oxidant stress, which is at the heart of not only cancer but most chronic diseases. To learn more, including how to lower your EMF exposure, not only from cellphones and wireless technologies but also from standard household wiring, see "Cellphones Strongly Linked to Cancer — New Study Reproduces Government Findings."

Avoid BPA, phthalates and other xenoestrogens — These are estrogen-like compounds that have been linked to increased breast cancer risk.

Avoid synthetic hormone replacement therapy, especially if you have risk factors for breast cancer — Breast cancer is an estrogen-related cancer, and according to a study21 published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, breast cancer rates for women dropped in tandem with decreased use of hormone replacement therapy.

Similar risks also exist for younger women who use oral contraceptives. Birth control pills, which also comprise synthetic hormones, have been linked to cervical and breast cancers.

If you are experiencing excessive menopausal symptoms, consider bioidentical hormone replacement therapy instead, which uses hormones that are molecularly identical to the ones your body produces and do not wreak havoc on your system. This is a much safer alternative.

Implement stress-reduction strategies — Stress from all causes is a major contributor to disease. Even the CDC states that 85% of disease is driven by emotional factors. It is likely that stress and unresolved emotional issues may be more important than the physical ones, so make sure this is addressed.

My favorite tool for resolving emotional challenges is Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). Other helpful strategies include meditation, mindfulness practice, prayer and yoga, just to name a few.

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N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a precursor for glutathione biosynthesis, is a common dietary supplement that could hold a secret to treating tumors resistant to conventional cancer drugs. Researchers with the Department of Biomedicine of the University of Basel in Switzerland, found NAC restores the sensitivity of breast cancer cells to treatment.1

NAC is already valued in the medical field for helping increase glutathione in the body, which prevents liver damage in cases of acetaminophen (Tylenol) overdose. It also reduces acetaldehyde toxicity,2 which causes many hangover symptoms. But, it seems, NAC is living up to its reputation as an “old drug with new tricks,” as the featured study suggests it may significantly improve treatment of advanced breast cancer.

NAC May Help Fight Resistant Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, with more than 2.2 million cases developing annually.3 Among women with recurring disease, survival rates have barely improved in the last two decades. “Most recurring metastatic cancers are either drug resistant or will become resistant to therapy,” researchers wrote in Cell Reports Medicine. “Thus, drug resistance is a substantial hurdle in the long-lasting cure of patients.”4

About 70% of breast cancers have mutations in genes that affect the PI3K signaling pathway.5 The overactivation of PI3K promotes tumor development, which is why the drug alpelisib (brand name Piqray) — a PI3Kα-selective inhibitor — is often used to treat it. Resistance to the drug, however, is a serious problem.

“Unfortunately, it turned out that the success of the medication is severely limited by resistance,” researcher Mohamed Bentires-Alj said in a University of Basel news release. “Hence, we urgently need to find out more about how resistance arises.”6

The team found mutations that turn off production of a protein called NF1, which suppresses tumor growth, were involved in cancers resistant to alpelisib. “The absence of NF1 is the elephant in the room; it throws everything into disarray within the cell and hinders successful treatment,” Bentires-Alj said.7

With NF1 lost, the team found cells produce less energy via their mitochondria and rely more on other energy production pathways. NAC, an antioxidant, affects energy metabolism similarly, so the researchers expected it would have similar effects in cancer cells as NF1 loss. Instead, the opposite happened.

NAC unexpectedly restored — and increased — alpelisib’s effectiveness in previously resistant cancer cells. NF1 loss is also often involved in other cases of drug resistance, including in skin, ovarian, endometrial, lung and bladder cancers, so it’s possible NAC could be useful for treatment of multiple drug-resistant cancers.8

“As N-acetylcysteine is a safe and widespread additive, this result is highly relevant for clinical research,” says Bentires-Alj. The team plans to conduct further trials in breast cancer patients to see if NAC improves treatment of resistant cases.9 The study concluded:10

“NF1 loss is a resistance-enhancing event in PI3Kα inhibition. This suggests that patients with tumors lacking NF1 are likely to develop resistance to PI3Kα inhibition. Furthermore, we discovered that NAC treatment circumvents resistance to PI3Kα inhibition, likely by dampening glycolytic activity and mTOR signaling, and may be an attractive strategy to be tested in patients with NF1 loss-evoked resistance.”

NAC’s Anticancer Effects

NAC, a form of the amino acid cysteine, has long been regarded as a preventive and therapeutic tool in conditions that involve glutathione depletion. It’s been found to be safe “even at very high doses and for long-term treatments,” according to University of Genoa researchers in a Carcinogenesis review.11

The study pointed out that NAC has the potential to prevent DNA damage, cancer and other mutation-related diseases, noting its “impressive array of mechanisms and protective effects towards DNA damage and carcinogenesis.” This includes:12

Nucleophilicity

Antioxidant activity

Modulation of metabolism

Effects in mitochondria

Decrease of the biologically effective dose of carcinogens

Modulation of DNA repair

Inhibition of genotoxicity and cell transformation

Modulation of gene expression and signal transduction pathways

Regulation of cell survival and apoptosis

Anti-inflammatory activity

Anti-angiogenetic activity

Immunological effects

Inhibition of progression to malignancy

Influence on cell cycle progression

Inhibition of preneoplastic and neoplastic lesions

Inhibition of invasion and metastasis

Protection toward adverse effects of other chemopreventive agents or chemotherapeutical agents

A number of studies support NAC’s anticancer potential. In a study on mice, the combination of a ketogenic with NAC significantly reduced tumor growth in anaplastic thyroid cancer, an aggressive and often deadly form of the disease.13 Another study found NAC inhibits the growth, adhesion, migration and invasion of human bladder cancer cells.14

Similar effects have been observed in breast cancer cells, with NAC reducing proliferation and increasing apoptosis, or cell death.15 When combined with bromelain, NAC also significantly inhibited proliferation and survival of gastrointestinal cancer cells.16

Is NAC a Fountain of Youth?

Beyond its role as a cancer fighter, NAC may help ward off premature aging with its longevity-enhancing effects. Specifically, a combination of NAC and glycine, known as GlyNAC, improved “deficits associated with premature aging” in people with HIV.17 This included improvements to oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, inflammation, endothelial dysfunction, insulin resistance, genotoxicity, strength and cognition.18

A subsequent pilot trial in older humans found similar results, with GlyNAC supplementation for 24 weeks correcting glutathione deficiency and improving multiple measures of health, including:19

Mitochondrial dysfunction

Oxidative stress

Inflammation

Endothelial dysfunction

Insulin resistance

Genomic damage

Cognition

Strength

Gait speed

Exercise capacity

Body fat levels

Waist circumference

The researchers concluded, “Supplementing GlyNAC in aging humans could be a simple and viable method to promote health and warrants additional investigation.”20 GlyNAC supplementation also improved four of nine hallmarks of aging known to contribute to age-related disorders. This includes:21

1. Mitochondrial dysfunction
2. Inflammation
3. Insulin resistance
4. Genomic damage

NAC’s Neuroprotective Effects and Stroke Benefits

People with hereditary cystatin C amyloid angiopathy (HCCAA), a rare genetic disorder,22 have an average life expectancy of just 30 years, and most die within five years of their first stroke,23 so reducing their incidence could prove to be essential to increasing survival.

NAC may help prevent strokes in the population by preventing the formation of amyloid-producing proteins, which promote amyloid deposits linked to strokes.24

Researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) conducted the study, noting NAC could also have potential for Alzheimer’s disease because the process of protein deposition that occurs in HCCAA is similar to what occurs in Alzheimer’s, although at an accelerated pace in HCCAA.

NAC Shows Promise for Psychiatric and Neurological Disorders

NAC also shows particular promise in the treatment of mental health disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder,25 depression26 and substance use disorders.27

It’s known to modulate pathophysiological processes — such as oxidative stress, neuroinflammation and dysregulation of glutamate and dopamine neurotransmitter systems — that contribute to psychiatric and neurological disorders.28 According to a systematic review published in Neuroscience & Behavioral Reviews:29

“In this systematic review we find favorable evidence for the use of NAC in several psychiatric and neurological disorders, particularly autism, Alzheimer's disease, cocaine and cannabis addiction, bipolar disorder, depression, trichotillomania, nail biting, skin picking, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, drug-induced neuropathy and progressive myoclonic epilepsy.

Disorders such as anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and mild traumatic brain injury have preliminary evidence and require larger confirmatory studies … Overall, NAC treatment appears to be safe and tolerable.”

Was NAC Targeted Because It Fights COVID-19?

Among NAC’s many benefits is the ability to reduce viral replication of certain viruses, including the influenza virus.30 During the pandemic, NAC emerged as a tool for preventing and treating COVID-19, including the hypercoagulation that can result in stroke and/or blood clots31 that impair the ability to exchange oxygen in the lungs. As noted in the FASEB Journal in 2020:32

“Based on a broad range of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory mechanisms … the oral administration of NAC is likely to attenuate the risk of developing COVID-19, as it was previously demonstrated for influenza and influenza-like illnesses.

Moreover, high-dose intravenous NAC may be expected to play an adjuvant role in the treatment of severe COVID-19 cases and in the control of its lethal complications … including pulmonary and cardiovascular adverse events."

Another literature analysis33 concluded glutathione deficiency may be associated with COVID-19 severity, leading the author to conclude that NAC may be useful both for its prevention and treatment.

Not long after several scientists had called attention to NAC’s benefits against COVID, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suddenly cracked down on the supplement, claiming it was excluded from the definition of a dietary supplement because it was approved as a new drug in 196334 — before it was marketed as a dietary supplement or as a food.

Retailers, including Amazon, pulled supplements containing NAC from their shelves in response, as the FDA’s move meant NAC could no longer legally be marketed as a supplement, even though there were no fewer than 1,170 NAC-containing products in the National Institutes of Health's Dietary Supplement Label Database at the time.35

Draft guidance released by the FDA in April 2022,36 however, included verbiage suggesting the FDA would not be enforcing their policy that NAC cannot be marketed as a dietary supplement, even though it was technically still illegal to do so. In August 2022, following the FDA’s release of its final guidance, Amazon “quietly notified” supplement makers that it was resuming the sale of NAC dietary supplements.37

Fortunately, research into NAC’s potential anticancer and other disease-reducing effects is ongoing. And if you’re intrigued by NAC’s health-boosting potential and are interested in supplementing with NAC, it’s inexpensive and, for now, widely available.

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