WOMEN WHO EAT A LOT OF FAST FOOD MAY TAKE LONGER TO BECOME PREGNANT

EATING FAST FOOD LINKED TO INFERTILITY

Lisa Rapaport reported on a study conducted by the Robinson Research Institute and the University of Adelaide in Australia

that showed the eating fast-food 4 times a week double the rate of infertility in women from 8% to 16%.  Nothing to sneeze at, particularly given the difficulty that some women have at getting pregnant in the first place due to age and factors besides diet.  So fast-food doesn't make women infertile the report will claim; it simply means that eating junk food may cause a delay with some woman in getting pregnant.

Compared to women who generally avoided fast food, women who indulged four or more times a week before they conceived took almost a month longer to become pregnant, the study of 5,598 first-time mothers in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK found.

39% of women conceived in one month of having sex with their partner without contraception, obviously.  

But here's the kicker: 8% experienced infertility and failed to conceive after 12 months of trying.  

Overall, 2,204 women, or 39 percent, conceived within one month of when they began having sex with their partner without contraception and 468, or 8 percent, experienced infertility and failed to conceive after 12 months of trying.

That 8% infertility is just an average, not including an average or subgroup of women eating fast-food.  Fast-food is the advertising euphemism to make junk food palatable.

While women who rarely or never ate fast food had an 8 percent risk of infertility, the risk was 16 percent among women who ate fast food at least four times weekly.

A healthier diet for most folks is to eat lots of polyphenols in their daily diet.  That means lots of plant products, but not just any plant products.  You can't eat grapes all day long and expect to be healthy.  No, I am talking about low-glycemic fruits and vegetables, which turns out to be greens and dark or red colored fruit.  Low-glycemic is the key.  

“Fast foods contain high amounts of saturated fat, sodium, and sometimes sugar,” said lead study author Jessica Grieger of the Robinson Research Institute and the University of Adelaide in Australia.

But just as the study asserts its conclusions, the authors retract it . . . sort of . . . by disclaiming any direct relationship between diet and health.  Oh, brother.  I cannot think of any greater or obvious connection in the world.  People can absorb a lot of unhealthy habits and put on years but might find themselves aging poorly without noticing it.  Or maybe they do notice it, but cannot find a way to stop or a way out of their unhealthy habits.  I would go further to say that male fertility is also connected to eating well.  

Although these dietary components and their relationship to fertility has not been specifically studied in human pregnancies, higher amounts of saturated fatty acids were identified in oocytes (an egg cell in the ovary) of women undergoing assisted reproduction and studies in mice have demonstrated that a high-fat diet had a toxic effect on the ovaries,” Grieger said by email. “We believe that fast food may be one factor mediating infertility through altered ovarian function.”

The Eurekalert concluded that 

. . . while intake of fruit and fast foods affected time to pregnancy, pre-pregnancy intake of green leafy vegetables or fish did not.

Meaning that the vegetables and fish did not disrupt or cause any delay in time to getting pregnant.  

There are other culprits to infertility besides junk food.  Lisa Rapaport's report lists a few from the study. 

The risk increases with age, and can also be exacerbated by smoking, excessive drinking, stress, an unhealthy diet, too much exercise, being overweight or obese or having sexually transmitted infections.

Women in the current study were typically overweight and most of them ate fast food at least twice a week, the study team notes in Human Reproduction. 

There are ways to boost fertility naturally.   

82-YEAR OLD WOMAN WITH DEMENTIA GETS HER MEMORY BACK AFTER CHANGING DIET

Sylvia also began incorporating other health foods, including broccoli, kale, spinach, sunflower seeds, green tea, oats, sweet potatoes and even dark chocolate with a high percentage of cocoa. All of these foods are known to be beneficial for brain health.

Broccoli, kale, spinach, sunflower seeds, and green tea are heavy mineral chelators, meaning that they prevent overload of iron, calcium, and mercury.  Not only do these foods provide that benefit, but you can get the same benefit from IP6.  See the bottom of this post.  Here is the article from Collective Evolution.  h/t Lew Rockwell.

Recently, an 82-year-old woman who suffered from dementia, who couldn’t recognize her own son has miraculously got her memory back after changing her diet.

When his mother’s condition became so severe that for her own safety she had to be kept in the hospital, Mark Hatzer almost came to terms with losing another parent.

Sylvia had lost her memory and parts of her mind, she had even phoned the police once accusing the nurse who was caring for her of kidnap.

A change in diet, which was comprised of high amounts of blueberries and walnuts, has proven to have had a strong impact on Sylvia’s condition that her recipes are now being shared by the Alzheimer’s Society.

Sylvia also began incorporating other health foods, including broccoli, kale, spinach, sunflower seeds, green tea, oats, sweet potatoes and even dark chocolate with a high percentage of cocoa. All of these foods are known to be beneficial for brain health.

Mark and Sylvia devised to diet together after deciding that the medication on its own was not enough, they looked into the research showing that rates of dementia are much lower in Mediterranean countries and copied a lot of their eating habits.

According to Mirror.co.uk“

Mark, whose brother Brent also died in 1977, said: “When my mum was in the hospital she thought it was a hotel–but the worst one she had ever been in.

“She didn’t recognize me and phoned the police as she thought she’d been kidnapped.

“Since my dad and brother died we have always been a very close little family unit, just me and my mum, so for her to not know who I was was devastating.

“We were a double act that went everywhere together. I despaired and never felt so alone as I had no other family to turn to.

“Overnight we went from a happy family to one in crisis.

“When she left the hospital, instead of prescribed medication we thought we’d perhaps try an alternative treatment.

“In certain countries, Alzheimer’s is virtually unheard of because of their diet.

“Everyone knows about fish but there is also blueberries, strawberries, Brazil nuts, and walnuts – these are apparently shaped like a brain to give us a sign that they are good for the brain.”

There were also some cognitive exercises that Mark and his mother would do together like jigsaw puzzles crosswords and meeting people in social situations, Sylvia would also exercise by using a pedaling device outfitted for her chair.

Mark said, “It wasn’t an overnight miracle, but after a couple of months she began remembering things like birthdays and was becoming her old self again, more alert, more engaged..

“People think that once you get a diagnosis your life is at an end. You will have good and bad days, but it doesn’t have to be the end. For an 82-year-old she does very well, she looks 10 years younger and if you met her you would not know she had gone through all of this.

“She had to have help with all sorts of things, now she is turning it around. We are living to the older age in this country, but we are not necessarily living healthier."

THE BODY'S ABILITY TO HEAL IS GREATER THAN ANYONE HAS PERMITTED YOU TO BELIEVE

This story just goes to show how resilient our bodies really are if given the right environment. Most of these types of diseases are often related to diet in the first place so that means that they can indeed be reversed with a proper diet. Sure, some of them are genetic and you might be a carrier of the gene, but that is not a guarantee that it will become active, there are things you can do to minimize the risk. Our health is our greatest wealth. We have to realize that we do have a say in our lives and what our fate is.

We have covered the topic before of how aluminum build up in the brain is directly related to dementia and more specifically Alzheimer’s disease, being able to identify this as a cause is important because recognizing this means we can do our part to limit the exposure and to also detoxify our brains and bodies from this damaging heavy metal.

In an article titled, Strong evidence linking Aluminum to Alzheimer’s, recently published in The Hippocratic Post website, Exley explained that:

“We already know that the aluminum content of brain tissue in late-onset or sporadic Alzheimer’s disease is significantly higher than is found in age-matched controls. So, individuals who develop Alzheimer’s disease in their late sixties and older also accumulate more aluminum in their brain tissue than individuals of the same age without the disease.

Even higher levels of aluminum have been found in the brains of individuals, diagnosed with an early-onset form of sporadic (usually late onset) Alzheimer’s disease, who have experienced an unusually high exposure to aluminum through the environment (e.g. Camelford) or through their workplace. This means that Alzheimer’s disease has a much earlier age of onset, for example, the fifties or early sixties, in individuals who have been exposed to unusually high levels of aluminum in their everyday lives.”

His most recent study, published by the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology in December 2016, titled: Aluminium in brain tissue in familial Alzheimer’s disease, is one of the many studies that he and his team have conducted on the subject of aluminum over the years. However, this study, in particular, is believed to be of significant value, because it is the first time that scientists have measured the level of aluminum in the brain tissue of individuals diagnosed with familial Alzheimer’s disease. (Alzheimer’s disease or AD is considered to be familial if two or more people in a family suffer from the disease.)

According to their paper, the concentrations of aluminum found in brain tissue donated by individuals who died with a diagnosis of familial AD, was the highest level ever measured in human brain tissue.

Professor Exley wrote:

“We now show that some of the highest levels of aluminum ever measured in human brain tissue are found in individuals who have died with a diagnosis of familial Alzheimer’s disease.

The levels of aluminum in brain tissue from individuals with familial Alzheimer’s disease are similar to those recorded in individuals who died of an aluminum-induced encephalopathy while undergoing renal dialysis.”

He explained that:

“Familial Alzheimer’s disease is an early-onset form of the disease with first symptoms occurring as early as 30 or 40 years of age. It is extremely rare, perhaps 2-3% of all cases of Alzheimer’s disease. Its bases are genetic mutations associated with a protein called amyloid-beta, a protein which has been heavily linked with the cause of all forms of Alzheimer’s disease.

Individuals with familial Alzheimer’s disease produce more amyloid beta and the onset of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease are much earlier in life.”

THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS CHANGE IS BY RAISING AWARENESS

As more and more awareness grows involving the true causes of these neurodegenerative brain disorders, the more we can do our part to prevent and even treat them and hopefully, eventually eliminate things such as aluminum and other chemicals in our foods to prevent this disease from happening altogether.

Please share this article with anyone you know who knows someone who is suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s.

Reprinted with permission from Collective Evolution.

44,273 CANADIAN WOMEN MAY HAVE DIED AS A RESULT OF INCREASED WAIT TIMES BETWEEN 1993 AND 2009

Let's start with a quote on Canada's National Health Care System form Mike Kirby.

So that in a sense the way the system is currently structured, the only person who suffers when they're on a waiting list is the patient.  The provincial government doesn't suffer in fact they actually save money with it, the regional health authorities, the hospital CEO's, the doctors don't suffer and so there's not really a union incentive to improve the system.  The only person who suffers is the patient - who's the only person in fact who can't do anything about the situation.  So the incentive that currently exists in the system for dealing with waiting times are all perverse in the sense that they put all the pressure on the one group of people called patients who can't do anything about it.  --Senator Mike Kirby   

Here is the Mises article. 

By Lee Friday

Tom Kent was the senior government policy person in Canada when the Medical Care Act was passed in 1966. He described the government's objective:

The aim of public policy was quite clearly and simply ... to make sure that people could get care when it was needed without regard to other considerations.

Well, that sounds awfully nice, doesn't it?  Not so fast.

After half a century, the government has still not honoured its commitment, and its performance declines with each passing year, despite increased spending. Furthermore, the government made it illegal for citizens to pay private parties for the health care which the government fails to provide.

Nooo.  Not nice at all.  The government fixed it so that a Canadian's only option is their failed system.  They can't even dig into their own pockets to fix their own health.  That's worse than slavery.  That's prison.  

Okay, so a Canadian citizen can't help themselves even if they wanted to, even if they went into debt to do so.  After all, how long can a hospital wait to see a specialist in Canada be?  First, you've got to see a consultant, who then refers you to a specialist.  But from GP to Consultant to Specialist?  

In 2017, it was 21.2 weeks.

WAITING, WAITING, WAITING FOR A DOCTOR

According to a Fraser Institute survey, for medically necessary treatment, the median waiting time for patients in Canada from referral by a general practitioner to consultation with a specialist, and then to the date of actual treatment, was 21.2 weeks in 2017.

These are not benign inconveniences.  These wait times sicken the patient, slow and complicate recovery once treatment from a specialist is even realized; worse, people die in the meantime too.

This year’s [2017] wait time — the longest ever recorded in this survey’s history — is 128% longer than in 1993, when it was just 9.3 weeks.

Research has repeatedly indicated that wait times for medically necessary treatment are not benign inconveniences. Wait times can, and do, have serious consequences such as increased pain, suffering, and mental anguish. In certain instances, they can also result in poorer medical outcomes — transforming potentially reversible illnesses or injuries into chronic, irreversible conditions, or even permanent disabilities.

Or even death!  From a 2014 study by the Fraser Institute:

This is absolutely horrific.  And yet their prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is treated like some messianic youth.  Continue reading . . . .  And if you're loaded with bear by the end, a term the great William L. Anderson has used, then write something.  To whom is the question.  Keep reading. 

Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada have noted that patients in Canada die as a result of waiting lists for universally accessible health care.

Our analysis estimates that between 25,456 and 63,090 (with a middle value of 44,273) Canadian women may have died as a result of increased wait times between 1993 and 2009.

If we conservatively focus on the lower value, we still have an average of about 1,500 women who likely died each year between 1993 and 2009 as a result of increased wait times across Canada.

The Toronto Star published a letter, dated May 12, 2015, addressed to Cancer Care Ontario (CCO), a provincial government agency responsible for funding. The letter was signed by five stem cell transplant directors from across Ontario, clearly frustrated with the lack of government funding (emphasis added):

... the net effect of growing waitlists, patients relapsing and dying while waiting for a transplant, patients getting extra cycles of therapy to try and buy time to get them to a transplant, stress and burnout of transplant team members is a pan-provincial problem.

... Previous estimates by CCO of needed transplant capacity have not taken into account all factors operating, the result being under-capacity, apparently surprising and sudden but which has in fact been anticipated or experienced by transplant centres for several years.

... The transplant programmes require resources that would allow capacity 

... to increase immediately by at least a third to perhaps as much as a half in order to eliminate backlogs and have medically appropriate times to transplant.

POLITICAL AND BUREAUCRATIC INDIFFERENCE 

Politicians and bureaucrats show little concern for the tens of thousands of victims of their failed universal health care scheme. The case of 18-year old Laura Hillier, a mere statistic to the government, is a classic example. Laura was suffering from acute myeloid leukemia, and in desperate need of a stem cell transplant. Multiple matching donors were available, but a hospital transplant bed was NOT available. The Toronto Starreports:

In July [2015], Frances [Laura’s mother] sent letters to Premier Kathleen Wynne and Health Minister Eric Hoskins on behalf of Laura and every other patient subjected to the “cruel, inhumane and potentially deadly” waiting times for stem cell transplants. Neither Wynne nor Hoskins replied, Frances says.

In July, 2015, federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose also refused to comment on the matter when contacted by CTV News.

The silence from Ambrose, Wynne and Hoskins speaks volumes, but sometimes a reply is worse than no reply. In July, 2015, in a statement to CTV News, Shae Greenfield, spokesperson for Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins, said:

It is our expectation that hospitals will prioritize patients based on medical urgency, however those decisions are made by each individual hospital.

This callous remark seems intended to ‘pass the buck’ to hospitals, but the issue is a lack of resources, not prioritization. There are numerous patients who are a priority because their needs are medically urgent, yet they are all stuck on a waiting list. The fault lies not with hospitals, but with the government, which has failed to provide hospitals with the necessary funding to make good on its promise of making “sure that people could get care when it was needed without regard to other considerations.”

Forced by the government to wait, Laura’s condition deteriorated and she died six months later, on January 20, 2016, still waiting for a bed.

From stem cell transplant surgery, to other cancer surgeries, to cataract surgery, to joint replacement surgery, to bariatric surgery, to heart surgery, etc., the health and well-being of many Canadians suffers — and many die — as the government forces them to wait an inordinate amount of time for the care it promised to deliver on a timely basis.

GOVERNMENT FAILURE WAS PREDICTED

Health care expenditures are constantly rising, but this cannot be sustained:

After years of increasing health care spending at an unsustainable pace, it seems as though provincial governments have started to reach their limits over the past 5 years — understanding that a continuation of such increases would result in either reductions in other spending, or higher taxation, higher deficits and debt, or some combination of these three.

Regarding universal health care in Canada, William Gairdner noted that (p. 288):

Ontario’s 1970 Commission on the Healing Arts prophetically warned that “society would not regard as sufficient, the amount of health goods and services that could be produced, even if all society’s resources were devoted to the provision of health care.”

All of society’s resources are not devoted to the provision of health care. Nevertheless, the 1970 prediction appears accurate. It is an undeniable fact that as increasingly more resources (taxes) have been devoted to health care spending, the actual provision of health care has declined, as revealed by longer wait times. The more the government (supposedly) tries to help us, the more it hurts us.

ECONOMIC EFFECTS

Estimated government expenditures for universal health care in Canada in 2016 were about $4,000 per capita. (This does not include private costs for dentists, alternative practitioners (e.g., naturopaths), prescription drugs, private health insurance for non-hospital/physician services, etc.) Additionally, there are unseen costs which fall disproportionately on the backs of the poor.

If we consider the hours of a normal working week, it has been estimated that the cost of ‘waiting’ per patient in Canada was approximately $1,759 in 2016. Even half that amount, say $900, would be felt most severely by the poor when they are unable to work because they are stuck on the government’s waiting list for health care. And remember (Part 1) that the government’s justification for imposing medicare in the first place was that (according to them) “many poorer people just did not get care when it was needed.” Thus, the government has not only reneged on its health care commitment to poor people, but in so doing, it is making poor sick people even poorer.

Many Canadian consumers of so-called universal health care are left wanting, as they have universal access to waiting lists, but not to actual health care. This is a result of the perverse economic incentives embedded within the coercive institution of government versus the positive economic incentives embedded in the free enterprise system, a system from which the provision of health care is outlawed by the monopolistic government. This will be further explored in Part 3.

Following a 23-year career in the Canadian financial industry, Lee Friday has spent many years studying economics, politics, and social issues. He operates a news site at www.LondonNews1.com. 

The above originally appeared at Mises.org.

ARE OUR CHILDREN NOW OWNED BY THE STATE?

H/T Lew Rockwell

Ingram explains that the Pope intervened. 

How so?  He asked that Alfie's parents and hospital officials should work together.  Wow, that's some powerful intervention.    

Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, head of the Pontifical Academy of Life, a Vatican bioethics think tank, said earlier today that Alfie's parents and hospital officials should work together so his life isn't 'reduced to a legal dispute.' 

Actually, he did more than that.  According to Joe Herring, the Pope made some moves to grant Alfie Italian citizenship and then put a military transport helicopter on standby.  This is more of an anti-state action than it is an action on behalf of Alfie and his parents.  One has to ask, how does the Pope have access to military helicopters?  

Italy has conferred citizenship to Alfir, and there is a medical air ambulance standing by at the request of the Pope to fly Alfie to the Vatican's Children's Hospital, Bambino Gesu, where Alfie can be treated. 

The UK Sunday Express explained that 

The Pope personally intervened earlier this month and has today approved of the use of an air ambulance.  Earlier in the week, Italy granted Alfie citizenship. 

But despite the Pope’s intervention, British Court of Appeals ruled that Alfie shall not be taken abroad for treatment.  

A judge has ruled that Alfie will not be allowed to be taken abroad for treatment, but Alfie's parents are challenging the decision in the Court of Appeal.

That ruling asserts the hospital’s authority over the parents'.  What a horrible precedent.  This means that once people are admitted, they have to get permission from the hospital before they leave, and if they don’t get it, a family member has to appeal to the courts to get the hospital to release you; otherwise, you’re, what, a fugitive?  

Ingram continues.

The Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, even granted the boy Italian citizenship and still the medical profession and the courts say, no, we're sorry, we're pulling the plug.  The life-support machine is being turned off.  So this gets to the absolute heart of how much freedom does the individual have.  How much decision-making process do the parents have or are our children now owned by the state?

Ingram answers

It's almost like they broke Alphfie's father today.  Because at the beginning of the day he was saying "Come here and see how my son is a hostage of this hospital."

Oh, my God.

I shouldn't be surprised.  This is standard treatment from hospitals.    

He's a hostage of the National Health Service.  What we are doing is not right but by the end of the day he had changed his tune and said "Everybody go back to your lives and . . . I think the hospital kind of . . . he was threatened . . . that 'you're not going to get anything from us unless you tone it down."

 There was a picture yesterday of Alder Hay Hospital in Northwestern England with 20 uniformed police officers standing outside the door of the hospital to stop Little Alfie from being taken out and to stop protestors from getting in.  Using the police!!! to keep the child in the hospital.  How these parents have been through ever single legal process available to them and I'm guessing that now that the life-support machine has been turned off, now that there is no prospect at all of the young boy going to Italy in the end the father has accepted the inevitable.  Whether he was threatened or not, I don't know.  But what I do know is that when I was involved in this Charlie Gard case last year, I turned up at the hospital, in this case Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, and I was told in no uncertain terms by the PR services for the hospital that what I was doing was damaging the reputation of hospital by doing press reports outside where this little boy was dying.  It's classic of the establishment closing ranks, the state being all powerful.  And frankly, what is happening today, what is happening right now, is a form of state-sponsored euthenasia, and I hate it.

Glad at least that this issue is raised at the cost of blood, sweat, tears, and life of their baby son.  That is some cost.  It is a horrible lesson for the parents to learn as to how much power the state exercises over the citizens who fund it through taxes and yet how little they have to show for their contribution to the state.  Parents are okay with sending their children to state-funded public schools or charter schools that use tax-payer funds.  And most people are still fine with allow the ethics of the state medical system to make decisions on the biology of their child.  The parents should have take their baby out months ago.  Did they not see the writing on the wall?  

A HEALTHY FOOD BASKET COSTS 8% LESS THAN THE UNHEALTHY FOOD BASKET

h/t Economic Policy Journal