Vitamin D, the grossly underestimated nutrient...

What would you think if someone told you that one nutrient could dramatically alter your health? That indeed that nutrient was necessary to prevent cancer, diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis and many more conditions. Vitamin D, more a hormone than a vitamin, is necessary for the utilization of calcium and thus in the formation and repair of bones. How about if they told you that eating a low fat diet actually robs you of that very valuable nutrient? Well that is a reality that most of us are faced with on a daily basis and especially in the western world where processed food is the flavor of the decade.
Good fats from ethically raised animals such as raw milk, raw milk butter and raw milk cheeses, free range eggs etc. are great sources of Vitamin D as is, believe it or not the sun. In fact D3 is synthesized in the skin from sun exposure which in turn converts a type of cholesterol in the skin into vitamin D.
Vitamin D is important for the absorption of calcium and in fact, without vitamin D your body cannot absorb this essential nutrient. Nutrition can be a complex science if you try to break it down to individual nutrients and try to take each of these nutrients separately in pill form. We could easily become a nation of pill poppers leaving very little room remaining for good healthy foods. It is in our very foods where we can find the secret to optimal nutrition. However we can also find our nutritional demise there if we are not careful.
In order to become conscious consumers of high quality foods, we need to take a few steps back to an era when we had not yet succumbed to the media advertising blitz that convinced mothers that formula was better than breast milk and that pasteurization of dairy products was an important way to ensure us access to healthier foods. The debate over raw milk is a hot one and regulations, in addition to access to raw milk varies greatly from state to state. In order to find this valuable food, go to http://www.realmilk.com/where1.html. Also be sure to learn more about raw milk and its benefit from one of our recent radio show guests Mark McAfee at http://www.organicpastures.com/.
Having established that raw milk products are great sources of Vitamin D and its precursors and that this same nutrient is in no way bio-available from pasteurized dairy products, some might wonder where else we might find this important nutrient.
Many experts agree that Cod liver oil is a superior source of Vitamin D and many folks of certain generations will remember being fed this oil when they were children. Much research now recommends Krill oil over fish oil. Ultimately, however you get your vitamin D, it is just as important that you be able to absorb this vital nutrient. In order to absorb it you need to have a good functioning liver and kidneys since these organs are involved in transforming the natural form of vitamin D3, into its active hormonal form. Since fish oils and fatty saltwater fish are traditionally known to be the better sources off this nutrient and with our oceans being so badly polluted, it is advisable to eat smaller younger fish rather than older ones that so often retain heavy metals and chemical toxins into their tissues. One suggestion here is sardines, although since most of these are canned, you would be wise to seek out a source that is canned in BPA free cans. In order to keep our liver and kidneys in optimal working order I recommend taking a greens product daily, which will keep your liver and kidneys cleaner and help you detox some of these undesirable pollutants from your body. The product I recommend is called Enerfood and it is a totally organic source of many minerals and vitamins, in addition to its ability to keep your organs clean. In order to do a deeper cleanse, which I recommend once a season, I suggest doing a colon, liver and kidney cleanse. You can find the cleanses at http://www.enerhealthbotanicals.com/Cleanses-s/77.htm
Remember to get enough Vitamin D also by exposing your skin to the sun on a daily basis. Keep your exposure to between 15 and 30 minutes depending on your skin color. Lighter skinned people synthesize vitamin D more efficiently, while darker skinned folks need a little more time to synthesize this important nutrient. When your skin is exposed to the sun, the ultraviolet rays convert a form of cholesterol in the skin into a precursor to vitamin D. A precursor is something that goes on to make the nutrient itself. A short amount of skin exposure such as 20 minutes can bring you around 10 000 iu of Vitamin D. Expose as much op your skin as you can without shocking the neighbors or calling out the constables.
When we realize that higher vitamin D levels reduce mortality from all causes and that these levels improve all health complaints and enhance health, we understand why we need to get adequate vitamin D. Getting adequate sun exposure, drinking raw milk, eating fresh free range eggs, dandelion greens, alfalfa and horsetail, all of which are in the greens formula Enerfood and cleansing your liver and kidneys which process vitamin D, you will ensure that your health just gets better every day.

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The world may be on the brink of biological disast...

When we consider the all important topic of excellent health or for that matter just sustainable health, fresh fruits and vegetables are never too far away. For us to think that such essential elements of good health could be under threat, we realize that we need to get active and even vocally militant to promote the kind of change we all need. Getting healthy and staying that way involves eating a healthy diet comprised of preferably organic fruits and vegetable as well as taking high quality food based supplements like Enerfood.

Published on Sunday, May 2, 2010 by The Observer/UK
Fears for Crops as Shock Figures From America Show Scale of Bee Catastrophe

by Alison Benjamin
Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.
Bernard Vallat, the World Organisation for Animal Health’s director-general, warned: “Bees contribute to global food security, and their extinction would represent a terrible biological disaster.” (photo by Flickr user Steve Punter) The decline of the country’s estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.
The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS).
The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global economy.
Potential causes range from parasites, such as the bloodsucking varroa mite, to viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods. The disappearance of so many colonies has also been dubbed “Mary Celeste syndrome” due to the absence of dead bees in many of the empty hives.
US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a key problem. “We believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition, pesticide exposure and other stressors are converging to kill colonies,” said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS’s bee research laboratory.
A global review of honeybee deaths by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) reported last week that there was no one single cause, but pointed the finger at the “irresponsible use” of pesticides that may damage bee health and make them more susceptible to diseases. Bernard Vallat, the OIE’s director-general, warned: “Bees contribute to global food security, and their extinction would represent a terrible biological disaster.”
Dave Hackenberg of Hackenberg Apiaries, the Pennsylvania-based commercial beekeeper who first raised the alarm about CCD, said that last year had been the worst yet for bee losses, with 62% of his 2,600 hives dying between May 2009 and April 2010. “It’s getting worse,” he said. “The AIA survey doesn’t give you the full picture because it is only measuring losses through the winter. In the summer the bees are exposed to lots of pesticides. Farmers mix them together and no one has any idea what the effects might be.”
Pettis agreed that losses in some commercial operations are running at 50% or greater. “Continued losses of this magnitude are not economically sustainable for commercial beekeepers,” he said, adding that a solution may be years away. “Look at Aids, they have billions in research dollars and a causative agent and still no cure. Research takes time and beehives are complex organisms.”
In the UK it is still too early to judge how Britain’s estimated 250,000 honeybee colonies have fared during the long winter. Tim Lovett, president of the British Beekeepers’ Association, said: “Anecdotally, it is hugely variable. There are reports of some beekeepers losing almost a third of their hives and others losing none.” Results from a survey of the association’s 15,000 members are expected this month.
John Chapple, chairman of the London Beekeepers’ Association, put losses among his 150 members at between a fifth and a quarter. Eight of his 36 hives across the capital did not survive. “There are still a lot of mysterious disappearances,” he said. “We are no nearer to knowing what is causing them.”
Bee farmers in Scotland have reported losses on the American scale for the past three years. Andrew Scarlett, a Perthshire-based bee farmer and honey packer, lost 80% of his 1,200 hives this winter. But he attributed the massive decline to a virulent bacterial infection that quickly spread because of a lack of bee inspectors, coupled with sustained poor weather that prevented honeybees from building up sufficient pollen and nectar stores.
The government’s National Bee Unit has always denied the existence of CCD in Britain, despite honeybee losses of 20% during the winter of 2008-09 and close to a third the previous year. It attributes the demise to the varroa mite – which is found in almost every UK hive – and rainy summers that stop bees foraging for food.
In a hard-hitting report last year, the National Audit Office suggested that amateur beekeepers who failed to spot diseases in bees were a threat to honeybees’ survival and called for the National Bee Unit to carry out more inspections and train more beekeepers. Last summer MPs on the influential cross-party public accounts committee called on the government to fund more research into what it called the “alarming” decline of honeybees.
The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has contributed £2.5m towards a £10m fund for research on pollinators. The public accounts committee has called for a significant proportion of this funding to be “ring-fenced” for honeybees. Decisions on which research projects to back are expected this month.
WHY BEES MATTER

Flowering plants require insects for pollination. The most effective is the honeybee, which pollinates 90 commercial crops worldwide. As well as most fruits and vegetables – including apples, oranges, strawberries, onions and carrots – they pollinate nuts, sunflowers and oil-seed rape. Coffee, soya beans, clovers – like alfafa, which is used for cattle feed – and even cotton are all dependent on honeybee pollination to increase yields.
In the UK alone, honeybee pollination is valued at £200m. Mankind has been managing and transporting bees for centuries to pollinate food and produce honey, nature’s natural sweetener and antiseptic. Their extinction would mean not only a colourless, meatless diet of cereals and rice, and cottonless clothes, but a landscape without orchards, allotments and meadows of wildflowers – and the collapse of the food chain that sustains wild birds and animals.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Contact your representatives about what could be the biggest threat to human survival to date. No bees, no pollination. No pollination no food!!

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Superweeds...

By WILLIAM NEUMAN and ANDREW POLLACK

DYERSBURG, Tenn. — For 15 years, Eddie Anderson, a farmer, has been a strict adherent of no-till agriculture, an environmentally friendly technique that all but eliminates plowing to curb erosion and the harmful runoff of fertilizers and pesticides.

But not this year.

On a recent afternoon here, Mr. Anderson watched as tractors crisscrossed a rolling field — plowing and mixing herbicides into the soil to kill weeds where soybeans will soon be planted.

Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.

To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.

“We’re back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Mr. Anderson, who will plow about one-third of his 3,000 acres of soybean fields this spring, more than he has in years. “We’re trying to find out what works.”

Farm experts say that such efforts could lead to higher food prices, lower crop yields, rising farm costs and more pollution of land and water.

“It is the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen,” said Andrew Wargo III, the president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts.

The first resistant species to pose a serious threat to agriculture was spotted in a Delaware soybean field in 2000. Since then, the problem has spread, with 10 resistant species in at least 22 states infesting millions of acres, predominantly soybeans, cotton and corn.

The superweeds could temper American agriculture’s enthusiasm for some genetically modified crops. Soybeans, corn and cotton that are engineered to survive spraying with Roundup have become standard in American fields. However, if Roundup doesn’t kill the weeds, farmers have little incentive to spend the extra money for the special seeds.

Roundup — originally made by Monsanto but now also sold by others under the generic name glyphosate — has been little short of a miracle chemical for farmers. It kills a broad spectrum of weeds, is easy and safe to work with, and breaks down quickly, reducing its environmental impact.

Sales took off in the late 1990s, after Monsanto created its brand of Roundup Ready crops that were genetically modified to tolerate the chemical, allowing farmers to spray their fields to kill the weeds while leaving the crop unharmed. Today, Roundup Ready crops account for about 90 percent of the soybeans and 70 percent of the corn and cotton grown in the United States.

But farmers sprayed so much Roundup that weeds quickly evolved to survive it. “What we’re talking about here is Darwinian evolution in fast-forward,” Mike Owen, a weed scientist at Iowa State University, said.

Now, Roundup-resistant weeds like horseweed and giant ragweed are forcing farmers to go back to more expensive techniques that they had long ago abandoned.

Mr. Anderson, the farmer, is wrestling with a particularly tenacious species of glyphosate-resistan t pest called Palmer amaranth, or pigweed, whose resistant form began seriously infesting farms in western Tennessee only last year.

Pigweed can grow three inches a day and reach seven feet or more, choking out crops; it is so sturdy that it can damage harvesting equipment. In an attempt to kill the pest before it becomes that big, Mr. Anderson and his neighbors are plowing their fields and mixing herbicides into the soil.

That threatens to reverse one of the agricultural advances bolstered by the Roundup revolution: minimum-till farming. By combining Roundup and Roundup Ready crops, farmers did not have to plow under the weeds to control them. That reduced erosion, the runoff of chemicals into waterways and the use of fuel for tractors.

If frequent plowing becomes necessary again, “that is certainly a major concern for our environment,” Ken Smith, a weed scientist at the University of Arkansas, said. In addition, some critics of genetically engineered crops say that the use of extra herbicides, including some old ones that are less environmentally tolerable than Roundup, belies the claims made by the biotechnology industry that its crops would be better for the environment.

“The biotech industry is taking us into a more pesticide-dependent agriculture when they’ve always promised, and we need to be going in, the opposite direction,” said Bill Freese, a science policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety in Washington.

So far, weed scientists estimate that the total amount of United States farmland afflicted by Roundup-resistant weeds is relatively small — seven million to 10 million acres, according to Ian Heap, director of the International Survey of Herbicide Resistant Weeds, which is financed by the agricultural chemical industry. There are roughly 170 million acres planted with corn, soybeans and cotton, the crops most affected.

Roundup-resistant weeds are also found in several other countries, including Australia, China and Brazil, according to the survey.

Monsanto, which once argued that resistance would not become a major problem, now cautions against exaggerating its impact. “It’s a serious issue, but it’s manageable,” said Rick Cole, who manages weed resistance issues in the United States for the company.

Of course, Monsanto stands to lose a lot of business if farmers use less Roundup and Roundup Ready seeds.

“You’re having to add another product with the Roundup to kill your weeds,” said Steve Doster, a corn and soybean farmer in Barnum, Iowa. “So then why are we buying the Roundup Ready product?”

Monsanto argues that Roundup still controls hundreds of weeds. But the company is concerned enough about the problem that it is taking the extraordinary step of subsidizing cotton farmers’ purchases of competing herbicides to supplement Roundup.

Monsanto and other agricultural biotech companies are also developing genetically engineered crops resistant to other herbicides.

Bayer is already selling cotton and soybeans resistant to glufosinate, another weedkiller. Monsanto’s newest corn is tolerant of both glyphosate and glufosinate, and the company is developing crops resistant to dicamba, an older pesticide. Syngenta is developing soybeans tolerant of its Callisto product. And Dow Chemical is developing corn and soybeans resistant to 2,4-D, a component of Agent Orange, the defoliant used in the Vietnam War.

Still, scientists and farmers say that glyphosate is a once-in-a-century discovery, and steps need to be taken to preserve its effectiveness.

Glyphosate “is as important for reliable global food production as penicillin is for battling disease,” Stephen B. Powles, an Australian weed expert, wrote in a commentary in January in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The National Research Council, which advises the federal government on scientific matters, sounded its own warning last month, saying that the emergence of resistant weeds jeopardized the substantial benefits that genetically engineered crops were providing to farmers and the environment.

Weed scientists are urging farmers to alternate glyphosate with other herbicides. But the price of glyphosate has been falling as competition increases from generic versions, encouraging farmers to keep relying on it.

Something needs to be done, said Louie Perry Jr., a cotton grower whose great-great- grandfather started his farm in Moultrie, Ga., in 1830.

Georgia has been one of the states hit hardest by Roundup-resistant pigweed, and Mr. Perry said the pest could pose as big a threat to cotton farming in the South as the beetle that devastated the industry in the early 20th century.

“If we don’t whip this thing, it’s going to be like the boll weevil did to cotton,” said Mr. Perry, who is also chairman of the Georgia Cotton Commission. “It will take it away.”
With all these toxins in our environment from extra herbicides and pesticides, we need to become more attentive to caring for our health. Internal cleansing becomes imperative, so go to our cleanse page and get started today http://www.enerhealthbotanicals.com/Cleanses-s/77.htm
William Neuman reported from Dyersburg, Tenn., and Andrew Pollack from Los Angeles.

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