Intermittent Fasting Finally Becoming Mainstream Health Recommendation

By Dr. Mercola

It is nice to see the intermittent fasting approach that I have recommended for some time now is starting to catch on. This is no surprise to me as it is one of the most powerful interventions I know of to move your body into fat burning mode and have your hunger nearly magically disappear. It is a powerful tool to help you keep a healthy weight.
In a new diet book, The Fast Diet: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting, Dr. Michael Mosley¹ suggests the best way to lose weight is to eat normally for five days a week, and fast for two. On fasting days, he recommends cutting your food down to ¼ of your normal daily calories, or about 600 calories for men and about 500 for women, along with plenty of water and tea.
Dr. Mosley himself claims to have lost 19 pounds in two months by following this recommendation. I lost about seven pounds when I implemented the approach last year, but the most amazing aspect is not the weight loss, it’s the absence of hunger and sugar cravings once you are fat adapted. Your desire to eat unhealthy foods seems to disappear; at least that was my experience.
I prefer to think of intermittent fasting as a lifestyle rather than a diet. It’s a way of living and eating that can help you live a longer, healthier life. I promoted the health benefits of intermittent fasting well before it hit the mainstream, and have been experimenting with different types of scheduled eating in my own life for the past two years. I currently restrict my eating to a 6-7 hour window each day.
In the featured BBC interview,² Dr. Mosley also points out the importance of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) — especially in conjunction with fasting — and how sheer inactivity is actually more detrimental to your health than lack of formal exercise. He recommends getting up every 15-20 minutes if you have a desk job, to avoid the health hazards associated with prolonged sitting. For more helpful tips and recommendations, please see my recent article Sitting Less May be Key for Maximum Longevity, in which I discuss this issue.
HIIT, which is a foundational part of my Peak Fitness Program, is another aspect of optimal health that I’ve been trying to drill into my readers since the mid-2000’s, when the science behind it was showing signs of being really solid. Now the mainstream is finally starting to catch up on this as well, and proof that it really does work as advertised is becoming increasingly evident as people are trying it out.

Read more: http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2013/01/18/intermittent-fasting-approach.aspx?e_cid=20130118_DNL_art_1&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20130118

Delusions of the radical left: Prohibition doesn't work for alcohol or marijuana, but it will somehow work for guns

(NaturalNews) If only I could lobotomize myself with a large vehicle battery, a bottle of Jack Daniels and a pair of heavy duty jumper cables, I might be able to cognitively function at the same convoluted level as the radical left. Over the last decade or so, the radical left has reminded us again and again that prohibition doesn't work for marijuana -- nor for alcohol -- and they celebrated the decriminalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington.

But these same people now insist that firearms prohibition will somehow, magically, see the end of violent crime in America. Gun prohibition will be highly effective, they say to each other. So let's ban the guns!

But hold on a second. Before taking such sweeping actions, would it make sense to first ask the commonsense question: Can gun prohibition even work? What are the likely consequences of any attempt to prohibit private firearms ownership?

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038708_gun_prohibition_economics_cause_and_effect.html#ixzz2IDtVZHtA

Worms Produce Another Kind of Gold for Farmers

By Dr. Mercola

We’re living in an era where the largest food producers in the United States operate more like factories than farms, complete with industrial farming practices that produce obscene amounts of waste and threaten to completely deplete what was once rich and fertile soil.
With each harvest, the land is stripped of vital nutrients plants need to grow, and so synthetic fertilizers and other chemicals are added back into the land out of necessity.

The Problem with Synthetic and Other Toxic Fertilizers

There are problems with trying to synthetically fertilize the land, as restoring soil to its original grandeur – a complex ecosystem teeming with microbes and nutrients – is not as simple as adding back in various concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK, a common synthetic fertilizer).
Aside from often leading to imbalances in the soil that can harm plant growth, synthetic fertilizers contribute to environmental contamination, and there is even concern that the natural deposits of phosphorus and potassium – two elements necessary for plants to grow – are being rapidly depleted.¹
Sewage sludge, or “biosolids” – as they’re referred to with a PR spin – is another type of fertilizer that began being “recycled” into food crops when, ironically, it was realized that dumping them into rivers, lakes and bays was an environmental disaster. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states that about 50 percent of all biosolids are recycled to land.² This sludge is what’s leftover after sewage is treated and processed.
Your first thought may be the “yuck factor” of human waste being used to fertilize your food, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. Every time a paintbrush gets rinsed, an old bottle of medications flushed, or solvents are hosed off a factory floor, it ends up in the sewage system. So it’s not surprising that a past analysis of sewage sludge by the Environmental Working Group found:³

• Over 100 synthetic organic compounds including phthalates, toluene, and chlorobenzene
• Dioxins in sludge from 179 out of 208 systems (80%)
• 42 different pesticides – at least one in almost every sample, with an average of almost 2 pesticides per survey sample
• Nine heavy metals, often at high concentrations

 Read more: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/01/17/vermicompost-improves-plant-growth.aspx?e_cid=20130117_DNL_art_2&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20130117

The Many Health Benefits of Avocado

By Dr. Mercola

You probably know that avocados are an excellent source of healthful fats, but this whole food may also have other unique health benefits.
To learn more, the Hass Avocado Board (HAB) is supporting clinical research to investigate various health effects of avocado consumption, particularly its benefits for cardiovascular disease, weight management, diabetes, and its ability to enhance your body’s absorption of nutrients.
The first of these HAB-supported studies was published in November, 2012.¹ The small UCLA-led pilot study found that eating one-half of a fresh medium Hass avocado with a hamburger (made with 90 percent lean beef) significantly inhibited the production of the inflammatory compound Interleukin-6 (IL-6), compared to eating a burger without fresh avocado.
According to lead author David Heber, MD, PhD, the findings offer “promising clues” about avocado’s ability to benefit vascular function and heart health. As reported by Medical News Today:²

“The researchers observed a significant peak (approximately a 70 percent increase), of IL-6 four hours after the plain burger was eaten, but less effect on IL-6 (approximately a 40 percent increase) over the same time period when fresh avocado was eaten with the burger.

Additionally, the study found that when fresh Hass avocado was eaten with the burger it did not increase triglyceride levels beyond what was observed after eating the burger alone, despite the extra calories and fat from the fresh avocado...

The pilot study also reported that the difference in peripheral arterial blood flow (the movement of blood to different parts of the body, as measured by PAT), a predictor of vascular health, after eating the hamburger meal compared to the hamburger-fresh avocado meal was approaching statistical significance...

PAT scores significantly decreased (signifying reduced blood flow) only after the plain burger was eaten (approximately a 27 percent drop, on average) compared to a burger with fresh avocado (approximately a 4 percent drop, on average, signifying less reduction in blood flow).”

Avocados – A Real “Super Food”

Avocados, which are actually classified as a fruit, are rich in monounsaturated fat that is easily burned for energy. Personally, I eat a whole avocado virtually every day, which I usually put in my salad. This increases my healthy fat and calorie intake without seriously increasing my protein or carbohydrate intake. (See Nutrition Facts Panel below.) It is also very high in potassium and will help balance your vitally important potassium to sodium ratio.
As I’ve mentioned before, eliminating grain carbs is one of the best ways to support your health and maintain your weight, but when you cut down on carbs, you need to increase your intake of healthy fats. Avocados are an excellent source, along with organic raw butter, coconut oil, and organic pastured eggs, just to name a few.

Read more: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/01/17/avocado-benefits.aspx?e_cid=20130117_DNL_art_1&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20130117

Oskar the Blind Kitten on the Day We Found Him (and fell in love with him)!

Here's The Real U.S. Unemployment Rate

NEW YORK – The real unemployment rate for December 2012 is closer to 23 percent, not the 7.8 percent reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, according to economist John Williams.
Williams, author of the Shadow Government Statistics website, argues that the federal government manipulates the reporting of key economic data for political purposes, using methodologies that tend to mask bad news.

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In the BLS news release Jan. 4, the unemployment rate for December 2012 was reported to have remained unchanged at 7.8 percent.
Williams recreates a ShadowStats Alternative unemployment rate reflecting methodology that includes the “long-term discouraged workers” that the Bureau of Labor Statistics removed in 1994 under the Clinton administration.
The BLS publishes six levels of unemployment, but only the headline U3 unemployment rate gets the press. The headline number does not count “discouraged” unemployed workers who have not looked for work in the past four weeks because they believe no jobs are available.
Get Jerome Corsi’s scorching new exposé of the ACLU, “Bad Samaritans: The ACLU’s Relentless Campaign to Erase Faith From the Public Square,” from WND’s Superstore
Williams has demonstrated that it takes an expert to truly decipher BLS unemployment statistics. For instance, in Table A-15, titled “Alternative measures of labor underutilization,” the BLS reports what is known as “U6 unemployment.”

 

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/heres-the-real-unemployment-rate/#FaFtgXSjVMW3LDM0.99

20 Year Old Is Still A 'Toddler' Due To Rare Medical Condition

Brooke Greenberg may be 20 years old, but she remains forever trapped inside the body and mind of a toddler, due to a mystery medical condition that has baffled medical experts for years.
"From age one to four, Brooke changed. She got a little bit bigger," explained her father, Howard, during the family's appearance on Thursday's "Katie" with Katie Couric. "But age four, four to five, she stopped."

Since then, Brooke's height and weight of 16 pounds and 20 inches have remained a constant. She wears diapers, is pushed in a stroller, gets fed through a feeding tube due to a too-small esophagus, and communicates like an infant would, estimates her mother Melanie.

Read more: http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/toddler-20-years-old-forever-young-due-baffling-175300753.html