SATURATED FATS ARE GOOD FOR YOU

This video was originally posted at Dr. Mercola's website.

Nina Teicholz's book, The Big Fat Surprise, is available at Amazon. 

Here is Nina Teicholz interviewed by ABC News. 

ABC News | More ABC News Videos

OBAMACARE PENALTIES & EXEMPTIONS

This story originally appeared at Yahoo News.

MIAMI (AP) — Federal officials have capped the amount of money scofflaws will be forced to pay if they don't buy insurance this year at $2,448 per person and $12,240 for a family of five.

The amount is equal to the national average annual premium for a bronze level health plan. But only those with an income above about a quarter of a million dollars would benefit from the cap. Those making less would still have to pay as much as 1 percent of their annual income.

The penalty for the first year starts at $95 per adult or $47.50 per child under 18. The penalty for not buying insurance increases to 2 percent of income or $325, whichever is higher, for 2015. The fines are due when people file their 2014 taxes.

The figures, released late Thursday, are important because the White House has only provided theoretical caps in the past. Conservative lawmakers and groups that are critical of the Affordable Care Act encouraged consumers to skip buying insurance, arguing it would be cheaper to pay a $95 penalty, but often failed to mention the 1 percent clause.

The uninsured will owe 1/12th of the annual payment for each month they or their dependents don't have either coverage or an exemption, according to the IRS.

Federal researchers predict that about 4 million people, including dependents, could be hit with fines by 2016. The Congressional Budget Office had previously projected 6 million would pay fines, but dropped the estimate because more people will be exempt from the law, partly due to changes in regulations.

More than 8 million people signed up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act and many Americans already had insurance through their employers and were not affected by the fine.

If someone is due a tax refund, the IRS can deduct the penalty from the refund. Otherwise, the IRS will let people know what's owed or hold back the amount of the penalty fee from future tax refunds, but there are no liens or criminal penalties for failing to pay.

Some residents, including prison inmates, are exempt from the penalties and others can file for hardship conditions. If people don't earn enough money to have to file a federal tax form, they don't have to buy coverage. The threshold for filing a federal tax return is $10,150.

Premium prices vary widely based on age, gender and zip code so the premium for a bronze plan in South Florida could be much different than the cost of a bronze plan in Kansas.

EXEMPTIONS?

Yes.  There are ways to avoid the penalties.  You have to apply for a "Hardship Exemption."  According to government’s “Application for Exemption from the Shared Responsibility Payment for Individuals who Experience Hardships,” you can request a hardship exemption if:

• You were homeless.
• You were evicted in the past 6 months or were facing eviction or foreclosure.
• You received a shut-off notice from a utility
• You recently experienced domestic violence.
• You recently experienced the death of a close family member.
• You experienced a fire, flood, or other natural human-caused disaster that caused substantial damage to your property.
• You filed for bankruptcy in the last 6 months.
• You had medical expenses you couldn’t pay in the last 24 months.
• You experienced unexpected increases in necessary expenses due to caring for an ill, disabled, or aging family member.
• You expect to claim a child as a tax dependent who’s been denied coverage in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and another person is required by court order to give medical support to the child.
• As a result of an eligibility appeals decision, you’re eligible either for: 1) enrollment in a qualified health plan (QHP) through the Marketplace, 2) lower costs on your monthly premiums, or 3) cost-sharing reductions for a time period when you weren’t enrolled in a QHP through the Marketplace.
• You were determined ineligible for Medicaid because your state didn’t expand eligibility for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
• You received a notice saying that your current health insurance plan is being cancelled, and you consider the other plans available unaffordable.
• You experienced another hardship in obtaining health insurance.

The last category merely says to “please submit documentation if possible.” After sending in their signed application, applicants, if approved, will receive an “Exemption Certificate Number” to put on their federal income tax return.

FOODS WITH PROVEN REGENERATION
Article by Sayer Ji.

It may come as a surprise to some, especially those with conventional medical training, but the default state of the body is one of ceaseless regeneration.  Without the flame-like process of continual cell turnover within the body – life and death ceaselessly intertwined – the miracle of the human body would not exist.

In times of illness, however, regenerative processes are overcome by degenerative ones. This is where medicine may perform its most noble feat, nudging the body back into balance with foods, herbs, nutrients, healing energies, i.e. healing intention. Today, however, drug-based medicine invariably uses chemicals that have not one iota of regenerative potential; to the contrary, they almost always interfere with bodily self-renewal in order to suppress the symptoms against which they are applied.

Despite the outright heretical nature of things which stimulate healing and regeneration vis-à-vis the conventional medical system which frowns upon, or is incredulous towards, spontaneous remission in favor of symptom suppression and disease management, over the course of the past few years of trolling MEDLINE we have collected a series of remarkable studies on the topic...

Nerve Regeneration – There are actually a broad range of natural compounds with proven nerve-regenerative effects. A 2010 study published in the journal Rejuvenation Research, for instance, found a combination of blueberry, green tea and carnosine have neuritogenic (i.e. promoting neuronal regeneration) and stem-cell regenerative effects in an animal model of neurodegenerative disease.[1] Other researched neuritogenic substances include:

1.    Curcumin

2.    Lion's Mane Mushroom

3.    Apigenin (compound in vegetables like celery)

4.    Blueberry

5.    Ginseng

6.    Huperzine

7.    Natto

8.    Red Sage

9.    Resveratrol

10.Royal Jelly

11.Theanine

12.Ashwaganda

13.Coffee (trigonelline)

There is another class of nerve-healing substances, known as remyelinating  compounds, which stimulate the repair of the protective sheath around the axon of the neurons known as myelin, and which is often damaged in neurological injury and/or dysfunction, especially autoimmune and vaccine-induced demyelination disorders.  It should also be noted that even music and falling in love have been studied for possibly stimulating neurogenesis, regeneration and/or repair of neurons, indicating that regenerative medicine does not necessary require the ingestion of anything; rather, a wide range of therapeutic actions  may be employed to improve health and well-being, as well.

[View the first-hand biomedical citations on these neuritogenic substance visit our NeuritogenicResearch page on the topic]

Liver Regeneration – Glycyrrhizin, a compound found within licorice, and which we recently featured as a powerful anti-SARS virus agent,  has also been found to stimulate the regeneration of liver mass and function in the animal model of hepatectomy. Other liver regenerative substances include:

1.    Carvacrol (a volatile compound in oregano)

2.    Curcumin

3.    Korean Ginseng

4.    Rooibos

5.    Vitamin E

[view the first-hand biomedical citations on the Liver Regeneration research page]

Beta-Cell Regeneration – Unfortunately, the medical community has yet to harness the diabetes-reversing potential of natural compounds. Whereas expensive stem cell therapies, islet cell transplants, and an array of synthetic drugs in the developmental pipeline are the focus of billions of dollars of research, annually, our kitchen cupboards and backyards may already contain the long sought-after cure for type 1 diabetes. The following compounds have been demonstrated experimentally to regenerate the insulin-producing beta cells, which are destroyed in insulin dependent diabetes, and which once restored, may (at least in theory) restore the health of the patient to the point where they no longer require insulin replacement.