On Saturday, November 19, 2005 I attended the Codex Working Group on Infant Formulas which operates as part of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Food for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU).
It was a fascinating day (if you like watching decision made which will potentially impact negatively on every single child on the planet who is not breast fed. This working group is setting standards which all manufacturers who ship formula internationally must follow AND which those countries unwise enough to pass these regulations as their own domestic laws on infant formula must follow, too.
Here is the highlight of the day:
Dr. Barbara Schneeman, Director of the Dietary Supplements Department of the FDA urged the Working Group to allow fructose in baby formula. Now that is quite fascinating, really, because our own FDA prohibited the use of fructose in the beverage supply of the US because it was high in empty calories, and likely to bring about preventable diabetes, obesity (and with it cancer and cardiovascular disease) and a host of other ill health effects, especially in children and adolescents. Manufacturers, whose bottom line is the bottom line, protested and forced the FDA to abandon its health-protective stance by allowing fructose (also known by names such as “high fructose corn syrup”) into the food supply BECAUSE CODEX ALLOWS FRUCTOSE.
So the FDA knows full well that fructose is associated with a decline in health associated with an increase in obesity and diabetes. Remember, the US is battling an epidemic of juvenile and adult obesity and another [related] one of juvenile and adult diabetes, both preventable disorders.
So why would Dr. Schneeman argue for the inclusion of this health-degrading substance in baby formula? Babies need about 670 calories per 100 grams of formula, according to the working group (older and younger babies do not seem to get special nutritional recognition: perhaps they figure that older babies will just tank up on more fluid in order to get more of what they need). How many of those calories should be from empty, dangerous, insulin-spiking sweeteners for which there is no nutritional requirement whatsoever?
And how many of those calories should be for something that teaches babies to demand sweet foods despite the fact that the perfect baby food, breast milk, does not have fructose in it?
Oh, yes, the fructose generally comes from corn. And, oh, yes, the corn is generally genetically modified (GM). And, oh, yes, the genetically modified corn and anything made from it does not have to be tested for safety before it is released into the food supply. Of course, the Working Group on Infant Formula has already approved GM soy for use in infant formula. The recent study Russian study showing that over 55% of rat pups whose mothers were fed GM soy died after failing to gain weight properly should suggest some caution to a truly “science based” process such as Codex claims to be.
Tragically, it would appear that the only science upon which Codex is based in the science of International Banking.
What can you do about it? Several things. Go to www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and take the following steps:
• Join the Citizen Petition (a legal challenge to the US government policy on Codex. (Do not be misled by those who mistakenly believe its purpose is to “persuade” government bureaucrats since whether they are persuaded or not is irrelevant to the legal process set in motion by the Citizen Petition. The more people who do so, the stronger our case before Congress.
• Tell Congress that you want a Congressional Briefing on Codex and tell them that you want Dr. Rima E. Laibow, MD, Medical Director of the Natural Solutions Foundation, to help them organize the briefing.
• Write to Congress to support and oppose the bills that will determine your health freedom by using our email engine. Let Congress know that your health and health freedom is important to you!
• Use any (or all) of several methods to support the critical work of the Natural Solutions Foundation
o Do your personal and holiday shopping at www.EatSafeEatSmart.com, your source for GM-free, organic personal products, snacks, foods and products. Every purchase helps to support the Natural Solutions Foundation
o Send your unwanted treasures and collectables (each worth at least $30) to us at the Dump Fund: take the item(s) to any common carrier (Federal Express, UPS, DHL, etc.), (you can have them pack it or do it yourself) and ship it to the D.U.M.P. Fund, at: NSF, 297 Passaic Avenue, Fairfield, NJ 07004. Questions? Email us at infor@dumpfund.org. You will get a letter for the sale price of your tax deductible donation for your records.
o Make a donation to us by visiting www.HealthFreedomUSA.org/donate.shtml/.
You can be sure we will keep you posted during the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Food for Special Dietary Uses this next week. We’ll keep you posted on everything Dr. Grossklaus, the “Dr. Strangelove of Nutrition” does and says.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
Up for some good news? The Eat Safe, Eat Smart Buy-Cott (what to buy, not what not to buy!) is nearly ready. Your source of GMO-free, organic products with just a click is nearly hear. We have a great selection of products from chocolate to deodorant for you to chose from. This site is meant to please you so we are taking the unusual step of asking you to help us put the finishing touches on it.
Just go to www.EatSafeEatSmart.com and take a look at the site. Then tell me at info@healthfreedomusa.org what you like and what you don’t like about it. Let me know if there is something we forgot or a whole product line you love and feel should be there. Tell us if the format works for you and tell us what doesn’t work for you.
We’ll change it and make it right so you can have a site which offers you the best in Safe, Smart food and products!
Thanks in advance for your input!
Oh, yes. One other thing: Please go to our website and sign the Citizens Petition. Even if you signed before, since it has been revised and now contains the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, we invite you to sign again and get everyone you know on board. Thanks.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Five days is not much time to see results when you change your diet. So the remarkable study by Chensheng Lu of Emory University in Atlanta is all the more astounding. Lu and his colleagues recruited 23 families in suburban Seattle which had children between 3 and 11 years old and showed that in just 5 days on organic foods, the levels of deadly pesticides in the children dropped so low they were undetectable! Prior to the study, all of the children ate conventionally grown and produced food (that includes produce with 5 number codes on the little tags that begin with either a “4” [grown with pesticides] or “8” [genetically modified]).
The study consisted of 5 days during which the 23 test families and their children, between 3 and 11 years old, substituted organic fruits, vegetables, fruit juices, cereals and pastas for conventional ones. The families made the same meals that they would have with conventional foods and followed the same dietary habits, just substituting the organic foods supplied by Lu and his team.
The results showed that in those 5 short days, the levels of two dangerous organophosphate pesticides became undetectable in the children’s urine. Parents collected two daily urine samples from their children to allow researchers to see what the impact of the change in diet was on the pesticide levels. Both before and after the test period, when they were eating conventional food, the pesticides were detectalbe in the children’s urine.
The researchers were interested in the levels of two dangerous organophosphate pesticides routinely used in food, called “malithion” and “chlorpyrophos” which are, unfortunately, legal in this country for use on conventional food crops. Organophosphates have numerous well established, serious negative impacts on health including profound and often irreversible neurological, psychological, immunological and skin problems. Malathion, for example, is neurotoxic: “The main target of malathion toxicity in children is the nervous system, the same as in adults.
So when children were given a rest from pesticides for just 5 days, their bodies were able to detoxify and get rid of those dangerous chemicals. Perhaps it would take adults longer, since these toxins build up in fats, but doesn’t it seem reasonable to cut down the toxic burden of your body when you know that the toxins are poisonous, nerve poisons, in fact?
Is organic food worth the approximately 25% price premium? You tell me: what is your Central Nervous System worth? How about your child’s (or your mother’s or your brother’s) brain and nerves? And given that the cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other epidemics which are making us so sick and killing us so rapidly are primarily the result of toxins in the food supply and environment, doesn’t it seem reasonable to eat as much clean, safe, smart food as possible? Think of what you will save on medication and hospital co-pays later on!
Of course, that means that the organic food supply must be worth spending that extra money on. We pushed back the degraded organic standards shamefully being pushed by the major corporate interests in the Organic Trade Association last week. The OTA wanted a rider attached to the Agricultural Spending Bill which would have allowed many, many contaminants in the organic food supply with no notification to consumers about what they were buying or consuming. Our letters and those of other activists succeeded, with the help of Sen. Patrick Leahey of Vermont, in putting the matter before the Secretary of Agriculture “for further study”. Let’s help with that study: write a quick letter to your Congressional delegation and let them know how important maintaining organic standards is to you.
And take a suggestion from a doctor who knows what the health impact of organophosphate pesticides is: spend the extra money on organic food. It’s your life, your body, your health and your choice! Do it before there’s a diagnosis of cancer, heart disease, dementia, seizures, etc. in your family. Prevention really is the best medicine. And if there is already a health problem for you or a loved one, going organic will make things better by lowering the toxic burden the body has to struggle with.
Watch for our new website, www.EatSmartEatSafe.info to help you make those healthy choices!
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
It’s Pink Ribbon time when we are all urged do our best to walk and talk for a “Cure”. That’s right; it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month again. Never mind that the last thing the “cancer cure industry” wants is a cure for cancer. After all, cancer is the single most economically productive disease in the history of mankind. Never mind that valid, successful and inexpensive cures for cancer are ruthlessly suppressed by the cancer industry, including the shameful performance of my profession, organized medicine. Pink Ribbon Season means well crafted messages to maneuver women all over America to have mammograms and undergo dangerous and often unnecessary treatment for it in the common event that the diagnosis of breast cancer is wrong.
Breast Cancer is a largely preventable disease on an epidemic rise and is now the leading killer of woman between 45 and 55, according to Preventing Breast Cancer. The Story of a Major, Proven, Preventable Cause of This Disease. by Dr. John Gofinan. There is no doubt that finding and treating a malignant breast tumor early increases survival by at least 17 % according to the [highly suspect, Big Pharma dominated] American Cancer Society.
Breast Cancer Awareness Month is, simply put, a corporate strategy , sponsored by, among others, Astra Zeneca, which makes Tamoxifen. Every word, walk and wink associated with the ubiquitous pink ribbon must pass their approval process. Perhaps you have noticed that, under their guidance, “prevention” has become “early detection” and early detection means, pure and simple, mammograms.
But do mammograms detect cancer? Well, no, not particularly well. In fact, 70 to 80 percent of all positive mammograms do not, upon pathology examination, show any presence of cancer.. How’s that? After an invasive technique like mastectomy (removal of a breast), lumpectomy (removal of a lump) or biopsy (sample material removed from the area for study), the false positive rate is between 70 and 80%? Right. But the cost is anywhere between $250-$500 per woman per year. You do the math. Industry can well afford to support those “Walk for the Cure” Events. Except they should be renamed “Walk for the Profit”.
Well, when a mammogram says there is no cancer, that’s correct, isn’t it? Actually mammograms are shockingly bad at finding cancers that really are there. Dr. Samuel Epstein in his book, The Politics of Cancer, notes that the false negative rate is, according to the National Cancer Institute, about 40 percent among women ages 40-49. The National Institutes of Health says that mammograms also miss 20 percent of malignant tumors in women.
But at least they can’t do any harm, right? Wrong. Mammograms currently deliver about 1 rad per breast per screening for a glandular dose of 0.1 rad per breast or a total glandular dose of 0.2 rad.. The National Cancer Institute estimates that each rad in a woman between the ages of 35 and 50 increases the risk of breast cancer by 1% so a bilateral mammogram each year increases a woman’s rate of breast cancer by 20% over each decade of screening! This is not a negligible risk.
But wait! There’s more.
Since mammography was introduced, Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS), the most common form of breast cancer has increased by 328% and 200% of this increase may be largely caused by mammography! Radiation, like that delivered by mammography equipment, is associated with sharp increases in breast cancer. In fact, Dr. John W. Gofman, an expert on the health impact of ionizing radiation, believes that 75% of breast cancer can be prevented by avoiding ionizing radiation altogether! Now, that’s good for us, but it’s not good for the people who make mammography equipment. Prevention is, unfortunately, very bad business if you make detection equipment or treatment options for a preventable condition like breast cancer. And there are a host of studies showing that mammography is, at best, a major question and, at worst, a serious problem.
Mammography also may spread existing cancer because, during the procedure, massive, and painful, pressure is applied to the breast. This may cause existing cancer cells to spread before immune processes can kill them (which a healthy immune system does routinely).
And, if you are unlucky enough to carry predisposing genes (Oncolgene A-T, BRCA1 and BRCA2), you are particularly susceptible to even small amounts of radiation and will perhaps be among the estimated 10,000 women who will succumb this year to breast cancer directly caused by mammography.
These are not unknown, controversial facts touted by obscure researcher. Dr. Gofman analyses NCI data showing that among women under 35, mammography can induce 75 cases of breast cancer for every 15 it identifies. Canadian National Breast Cancer Study Canadian study tracking outcome showed that woman40-50 who had mammograms had a 52 percent increase in breast cancer mortality (that is, death) compared to similar woman who did not and that they were more likely to die of breast cancer if they were screened regularly than if they were not!
So what do I, as a woman, as a physician and as a health advocate suggest? First of all, I recommend finding, and using regularly, another screening technology called “thermography” which detects cancer sooner, far more accurately and with no harm at all to the body since it relies on heat emitted by your body and takes a sensitive heat picture of your body. Because malignancies grow extra blood vessels, they emit more heat so they are detectible early and without danger. So, from where I sit,
1. Women under 35 are not well served by mammograms as a screening tool and should not allow mammograms to be performed
2. Although the American Cancer Society advocates mammogram screening for woman 40-49 every two years, I suggest thermography, not mammography, for all women of all ages along with any one of several high sensitivity biochemical tests for cancer. Please note that many experts, especially those whose incomes depend, directly or indirectly, on mammography and treatment for cancers –even false positive cancers — do not agree with my conclusions. Although many experts feel that the risk of breast cancer for women under 35 is not high enough to warrant the risk of radiation exposure, many feel that for women over 55 the risk is high enough to warrant the significant risk of mammograms.
In 1997, NIH appointed a consensus panel to evaluate the risk of mammography. They found no evidence that mammograms for this age group save lives and may do more harm than good. Rather than coming to a conclusion, the panel advised women to weigh the risks with their doctors and decide for themselves.
I do not have mammograms. I also do not have the approval of the Pink Ribbon people to tell you this. (Tamoxifen is another, sad, deadly story. We’ll talk about it another time.) In the mean time, walk for a cure because exercise reduces the risk of breast cancer. Eat for a cure because sensible, natural diets reduce the risk of breast cancer. Laugh for a cure because stress and loneliness reduce immune competence. Pray for a cure because people with sincere religious convictions live longer and healthier than those without them.
Yours in radiation-free health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Adaptation is the process by which a stressed system attempts to regulate itself in response to a new set of factors in order to achieve balance and harmony (often called “homeostasis”). Countries adapt, plants and animals adapt, social organizations (like cultures) adapt and so do we humans.
In fact, health promoting substances called “adaptagens” (which enhance regulation) are used in natural medicine because they help the body increase or decrease whatever is out of balance.
The good news, then, is that we are, individually and collectively, wondrously adaptable. Up to a point. Please prepare yourself and click here to see a graphic and heartbreaking example of what happens when we stretch the adaptive rubber band so far that it snaps. Because that is what we are doing with our bodies by exposing them to hundreds of thousands of toxins never encountered by any living thing prior to the last hundred years including deadly pesticides, radiation at levels unknown in nature, toxic, untested chemicals, new organisms and weird DNA.
How much can an organism, a child, a gene, an organ, a marriage, a brain or a society take before its adaptive abilities are overwhelmed and the stress is greater than the compensation for the stress that the system can manage. The result? Damage to the ability of the organism to function, self protect and self correct. If the stress is great enough to show, we call it by the name of some illness or another: cancer, social decay, infertility, depression, skin eruptions, rising crime rate, looting, suicide, drought, autism, monster storms. If the damage is greater still, the result is death of the society, the child, the mind, the heart, the planet. The disorder and dysfunction (and the diagnosis) depends on the system being stressed but the principle is the same.
What can you do about it? Reduce the load. Reduce the number of stressors that the system has to adapt to and give the adaptive systems help, support and nutrition. That means Read labels!
1. Eat organic food. Yes, it costs more. Think of what your will save on co-pays and hospital bills!
2. Eat non-GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) food. We are building our new website, www.EatSafeEatSmart.info so you can come to the site for healthy alternatives to familiar choices.
3. Avoid trans fats. Use pure, unrefined organic coconut oil or extra virgin organic olive oil) for cooking.
4. Take adequate amounts of high potency, pure vitamins and minerals. Cheap one a day nutrients are not worth much (and that’s what they cost, too, because they do not compare at all to the high quality, high potency nutrients you really need.
5. Use all natural, non-toxic cleaning products for your house, your clothes and yourself.
6. Quit smoking
7. Drink adequate water and avoid carbonated beverages. Fizzy drinks will make your body more acid, setting you up for toxic events.
8. Do a supervised detoxification program with nutrients, sauna (if possible) and herbs so that you can remove the built up toxins from your body. This is not a do it yourself procedure.
9. Do not drink liquid from a plastic bottle which is soft enough to change its shape when you squeeze it. That means that it has phthalates in it. Phthalates act like unopposed estrogen and wreak havoc with the entire body of both born and unborn people.
10. If you identify contaminants or dangers in your home, office, car, etc. please take the action necessary to remover it (or remove yourself if that is the only way to protect yourself).
11. No perfume, no fragrance no matter what. In aother blog I will discuss the importance of NOT using perfumes if you are trying to reduce the toxic load of your body to give it more adaptagenic potential than it has now because of the toxic load you are carrying.
In order to get and stay healthy, there is no doubt in my mind: we need to enhance our ability to adapt by removing the things that keep us from doing well adaptively.
Remember, property and habits are much less important than health and health freedom. You can replace the first, but you can never replace the second.
Yours in irreplaceable health and freedom,
Dr. Laibow