Antioxidants and Vitamins:The Truth Behind the Headlines

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We recently read this article and thought you might enjoy it. This article is on The Peoples Chemist and we would like to recomend this site to our friends.

Antioxidants and Vitamins: The Truth Behind the Headlines
By Mike Adams
If you've been reading the mainstream media recently, you might have come to the conclusion that vitamins are the most dangerous things you could possibly consume. Headlines declare antioxidants to be useless, vitamin C to be dangerous and vitamin E to be deadly! Nutrition, it seems, is suddenly under attack.
But what's really behind these scare tactics? Is there any real science behind the headlines?
To answer this question, consider the most recent example: a large antioxidant study (vitamins E and C) in women. A nine-year study followed more than 8,000 women to determine the effects of antioxidants in preventing heart disease. The study found a significant reduction in stroke (31 percent) and heart attacks (22 percent) among those women who actually took the vitamins. But if you consider all the women who originally signed up for the study -- including those thousands who never took the vitamins -- it turns out the results show nothing substantial.
Of course you're not going to see positive results in women who didn't take the vitamins. Nor would you see results from anything else (a drug, an herb, etc.) if the women didn't actually take that substance. And yet the mass media stories about the study all declare antioxidants to be useless because they are considering the measured results of all the women, including those who didn't take the antioxidants. It's like taking a hundred cars that ran out of gas, filling up 40 of them with gasoline, then declaring that gasoline doesn't make cars run because 60 of them are still on empty.
It sounds absurd, I know, but it's only the beginning of this story. Time after time, medical researchers and the mainstream media seem to go out of their way to distort scientific studies and misinform readers about the usefulness of vitamins and dietary supplements.
Another study publicized last year declared that vitamin E was deadly and would kill you with heart attacks and strokes. This particular meta-data analysis was based on synthetic vitamin E (a completely unnatural chemical made from petroleum derivatives), not the vitamin E that appears in nature. Furthermore, many of the study subjects were elderly patients already suffering from heart disease, putting them at high risk for heart attacks from day one. When these patients started to die during the study, researchers declared, "The vitamin E killed them!"
Researchers also went to great lengths to cherry-pick studies that showed negative results for vitamin E, tossing out all the studies that showed positive results. This kind of subjective inclusion of clinical trials in a meta analysis is a classic sign of scientific fraud.
I know what you're thinking: Researchers are smarter than that. They wouldn't be so foolish as to count the results of people who didn't take the vitamins or give supplements to the near-dead and blame their deaths on the supplements. But you might be assuming these researchers are operating with ethics in the first place -- and experience tells us they're not.
Many receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants offered to them by drug companies. Their primary research (and revenue source) involves studying the effects of pharmaceuticals. Researchers who don't consistently "discover" positive effects for pharmaceuticals are eventually blackballed from the industry and find themselves jobless and unemployable. There's a tremendous amount of pressure applied to researchers to make sure they uncover findings that support the financial interests of the drug companies. Eighty percent of all clinical trials funded by drug companies produce results that are favorable to the financial interests of those companies.
Similarly, there is also a lot of pressure to find something wrong with dietary supplements, herbs and nutrition -- precisely because such substances compete with pharmaceuticals. The more consumers take nutritional supplements, the less they need pharmaceuticals because nutrition actually prevents disease. So one of the key ways to ensure a strong future market for pharmaceuticals is to discredit nutritional supplements and make people believe they're somehow dangerous.
This is all quite laughable, given that prescription drugs are now the 4th leading cause of death in America. FDA-approved pharmaceuticals are killing at least 100,000 Americans a year right now. Dr. David Graham, a senior FDA drug safety researcher, reported that just one diabetes drug recently scrutinized for its health effects has likely killed more than 80,000 Americans! That's more Americans than died in the entire Vietnam War, and this is from but one drug.
Almost nothing is killing Americans faster than prescription drugs, not terrorists, not war, not chemicals in the food, car accidents or drunk driving. Pharmaceuticals are so universally dangerous to the health and safety of Americans that if they were herbs, they would have been outlawed years ago.
And yet vitamins have killed no one. No one ever died from taking natural vitamin E, eating superfoods or ingesting vitamin-rich berries. In fact, nutritional supplements and superfoods greatly enhance human health, protect you from disease and greatly reduce your risk of cancer, heart disease, depression, diabetes, obesity and many other common diseases.
It is a curious sign of the times that the mainstream media, which receives billions of dollars in advertising from drug companies, now finds itself in the business of misinforming Americans, trying to convince them that day is night, up is down, nutrition is dangerous, war is peace, ignorance is strength and freedom is tyranny. It's right out George Orwell's classic, 1984.
So don't be suckered by the headlines. Be a skeptical thinker, and consider who's funding these skewed studies that somehow keep inventing dangers associated with herbs or dietary supplements.

Aromatherapy for the Home

The practice of "Aromatherapy" is an interesting and fun form of therapy that any one of us can experiment with and develop into our own style of aromatherapy for relaxing and rejuvenating our daily lives. We sell many candles at The Natural Gaits Mercantile and find that most people enjoy candles in their home.

In the last few years there has been an overwhelming increase of interest in Aromatherapy, it seems that people are interest in different ways to improve their life quality, and since the Spa hotels have now become very common a lot of people had the opportunity of experiencing the sensation of Aromatherapy in one way or the other. Although a lot of people think that Aromatherapy is used mainly to induce a feeling of some sort or an ambiance to a room or space it is used many times in serious and much more medical oriented ways, it has been proved that Aromatherapy can effect a patient condition and in mild conditions even help the patient to a full recovery. Dating back many years Aromatherapy has been used by many cultures around the world, the latest phase is only another cycle of time in which Aromatherapy is popular once again. The basics of aromatherapy are based in the belief that natural things can help other living organisms, in general you might say that herbs and plants are sharing this planet with us and they also share some of the basic qualities of life with us humans, so it is also possible that the power of plants can be extracted from them to aid and help humans. Combining different plant odors can stimulate a response in anyone, you do not need to be an expert to know that certain smells are very clearly unpleasant as some others are distinctly calming and relaxing, it is also known that certain smell can be associated with feelings and memories, making the odor much more than a part of a scenery and more an active participant in the effect the environment has on us.Aromatherapy uses what it calls home therapy by using the oil and the plant extracts to create a relaxing environment, this basic concept is the most common in aromatherapy and is practiced by many around the world, the process of introducing the aroma to the space is usually done by using a burner that has a candle burning which heats an oil or water with some fragrant in it thus making the liquid evaporate. The materials usually used in the home are mostly eucalyptus oil that gives a very unique odor and will also assist many during the winter time, when it has the ability to clear the nose and make breathing a lot easier. Grapefruit oil is also used in the home therapy process and will also produce a lovely smell in the space it is used in, these aromatherapy oils will provide a solid base for relaxation and inner peace, if used correctly and if practiced in the right way the home Aromatherapy procedure can reduce stress levels and increase the harmony and peace in the house. Aromatherapy is a way we use odors to promote a state of peace and wellness, we can help our bodies and minds relax by introducing certain aromas to our homes, by doing that we will change our behavior and reduce our stress.
by Celia Namart an avid traveler and researcher, an avid travels and an enthusiast of alternative medicine

Nature Crafts

Well it fell to me to add something to the blog this week and after much looking and thinking I decided to share some nature crafts with you. I like to make things from "found" objects especially things that I find in nature. Since Fall is upon us and pinecones abound this time of year here are some things I have done with pinecones. They make beautiful ornaments when spray painted gold or silver. They look nice piled up in a bowl in their natural state or painted, you can spray them with pine scent and they smell wonderful all throughout the house. I have used them as decorations on gifts, plain or spray painted. Pinecones make great bird feeders, add some peanut butter or suet into the spaces and roll in bird seed. Add a hanger and hang in a tree or on a shepards hook. The pinecone looks so pretty mixed in with dried wildflower arrangements using a floral pick and a little wire. I have spray painted them green and decorated them with little "ornaments" to look like Christmas trees and hung them on the tree.

Here is a little craft you might enjoy using a pinecone.

Things you will need:
Any size pinecone
sheet moss
dried or silk leaves
wooden disk or wooden ball
white glue
flesh colored craft paint
fine tipped black permanent marker
pink marker, crayon, blush makeup or lipstick
small length of gold rickrack, wire edged ribbon or metallic cord
optional - spray sealer, decoupage medium, or spray paint- invisible thread or fish line
Pinecone Angel Nature Craft Project Instructions:1. Choose a pine cone with open petals and a flat bottom that will stand up fairly straight when placed on a table. 2. You can use two dried leaves as the angel's wings, or four leaves, as shown in the photo. If you use four leaves, glue them together in pairs, using small dots of white glue between the leaves. If desired, protect the leaves with a coating of decoupage medium or spray sealer, or decorate with gold spray paint.Glue the leaves in place at the back of the pine cone, near the top where you will be placing the angel's head.3. Paint the wooden disk or wooden ball in flesh toned paint and let dry. Draw on the facial features in pencil, then trace over the pencil marks in fine tipped black permanent marker. If desired, add pink cheeks using a small dab of pink marker, or a small smudge of pink blush makeup or pink lipstick.4. Glue small pieces of sheet moss all around the edge of the wooden disk, or all around the face on a wooden ball. 5. Cut a small length of gold rickrack, gold cord or even thin gold wire and form this into a circular halo at the top of the angel's head. Secure with a dab of glue at the back.6. If necessary, break off a petal or two at the top of the pine cone to make room for the angel's head. Glue the head in place.7. If you wish to hang the angel from a Christmas tree or in the window, tie a length of invisible thread or fish line to one of the pinecone petals near the head, at the back. You can also add potpouri in between the petals on the pinecone.

Anybody have a nature craft to share? We would love to hear from you. Kay at The Natural Gait