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Sugar Leads to Depression – World’s First Trial Proves Gut and Brain are Linked (Protocol Included)

It’s official. If you’re keeping up with the latest science, you know that the gut is inexorably linked to the brain. This year researchers found a correlation between depression and mood swings in men and high sugar intake.Last year a study showed probiotics could help with reducing the risk of depression.2 A growing body of evidence is proving that healthy people’s microbiota has a lot in common with other healthy people’s microbiota, and diseased people’s micro-biota also have common traits.3  They’ve been talking about how the gut may affect the brain and the immune system more and more for the last 20 years. Mainstream medicine is slowly figuring out that our gut’s microflora correlates directly with our health, and sugar and other junk foods do not promote healthy gut bacteria.

World’s First Trial Shows Improving Diet Can Treat Major Depression

Depression is one of the world’s most prevalent and costly medical disorders. It may be surprising to read “World’s First” in regards to a trial study establishing a link between diet and depression, as many would guess that this kind of study has done before. It hasn’t been, but headlines proclaiming that healthier diets may decrease the risk of depression have been appearing in the news more frequently. That is the work of Director of Deakin’s Food and Mood Centre Professor Felice Jacka and her team. She’s published numerous epidemiological (survey-based) studies reporting that eating an unhealthy diet shows you are more likely to be depressed. The studies were based on questionnaires. They were not actual diet experiments. They have simply educated guesses that hadn’t been tested in the real world yet. Until now.

Professor Jacka said the results of her team’s new study may offer a better approach to depression.

We’ve known for some time that there is a clear association between the quality of people’s diets and their risk for depression.

This is the case across countries, cultures and age groups, with healthy diets associated with reduced risk, and unhealthy diets associated with increased risk for depression.

However, this is the first randomised controlled trial to directly test whether improving diet quality can actually treat clinical depression.” – Professor Jacka

The Study Details

Professor Jacka’s team recruited 67 men and women. The participants had severe depression and also reported eating a relatively unhealthy diet. Most of them were taking antidepressants and/or were in regular psychotherapy.

Half of the participants adhered to a Mediterranean diet while they attended dietary support sessions with a nutritionist. The others continued eating as usual (unhealthy), but they were required to attend social support “befriending” sessions. Everyone’s depression symptoms were graded using several different tests.

Encouraged foods included: whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, low-fat/ unsweetened dairy, raw unsalted nuts, lean red meat, chicken, fish, eggs, and olive oil

Discouraged foods included: Sweets, refined cereals, fried food, fast food, processed meat.

Beverage information: maximum two sugar-sweetened beverages per week and maximum two alcoholic drinks per day, preferably red wine.

The Study Results

People in the unhealthy diet group improved a statistically insignificant amount, and those in the healthy diet group improved their symptoms with a full third of them fully reversing their depression. It’s also important to note that this was done with conventionally accepted dietary protocols. It should be noted that these “healthy” diets are not that healthy. Imagine the results a more radical approach could have achieved.

How & Why (gut bacteria, B vitamins, etc.)

In another study, scientists from McMaster University wanted to test how mice with different gut bacterial conditions deal with stress.

The baby mice were stressed from 3 to 21 days old by being separated from their mother for 3 hours each day. This experiment was conducted with mice that had different gut bacterial conditions. One group of mice was grown completely free of bacteria in their guts and kept in a sterile room to prevent bacteria from affecting their behaviors (germ-free mice). The other group were regular mice that were exposed to an ordinary, complex range of bacteria. The last group was a germ-free control group that hadn’t been separated from their mothers. The baby mice with normal gut microbiomes that had been subjected to early-life stress showed an unusual increase in the stress hormone corticosterone. They also exhibited signs of depression as well as anxiety. The germ-free mice, meanwhile, behaved similarly to the control mice, showing no symptoms of anxiety or depression. It is interesting to note that these mice also had elevated levels of corticosterone, just not symptoms of depression. Naturally, the control group showed no elevated stress hormone or altered behavior.”

These results indicate that the bacteria in our environment contribute to our mental health and behavior.

Next, they exposed the germ-free mice to bacteria taken from the stressed group. As the bacterial composition of the germ-free mice changed, so did their metabolic activity and their behavior. After a few weeks, the previously symptom-free mice were now showing signs of depression. Finally, the researchers wanted to see how the control group reacted when they were exposed to bacteria from the stressed mice. In this situation, the mice didn’t start showing symptoms of depression at all.” – IFLS

Our brains are running off of the energy our gut and our lungs are producing. If our gut is producing an unhealthy chemical environment, this effects the whole body including the brain.

Depression Free Diet & Lifestyle

Eat Right

So eating right…we’ve got you covered:

Stop eating sugar and processed foods. Yes, the depressed brain wants to reach for the nearest comfort food (donut, pizza, what have you), but the mice have proven that’s probably the last thing you actually need. The brain and the gut are intertwined and cultivating your beneficial bacteria with raw, fresh produce; soaked and sprouted nuts; and antibiotic-free, pasture-raised meats is a necessary part of any healing process. You don’t expect a mechanic to work on your car without tools. Why expect the same from your body?

Most people reading this who are really looking for answers to help with their depression are not going to be able to take on an entirely new lifestyle filled with shopping at farmers markets and cooking all of one’s own food. Think of this is the long-term goal and take baby steps towards being more connected and in touch with your food. Also, check out How I Overcame Depression Naturally and I’m Depressed.

Stop with the germaphobia

If you carry a small bottle of disinfectant on your keychain or find yourself constantly rubbing your hands together in a strange imitation of someone over a campfire, step away from the sanitizer. You’re doing more harm than good. Most commercial sanitizers contain harmful ingredients like triclosan, parabens, and sulfates. They also contribute to the inability to fight diseases naturally.

Exposure to harmful bacteria teaches the body how to naturally fight infection. It’s why we suggest that small children spend time playing in the dirt. But antibiotics, hand sanitizers, and household cleaners have taken that away from us, along with the beneficial bacteria. Beneficial bacteria is the gatekeeper to the immune system.

Play With Nature, Get Dirty

Speaking of sticking your hands in the dirt…do it. When you’re depressed, the last thing you want to hear s some random person chirping at you about how you should “just go outside…” but seriously…do it. Vitamin D is your friend.

If you’re near water, you’re in luck. Humans respond to water on a primal level.

Exert Yourself

This one is kind of like the go outside one…you gotta do it. Make it something simple. Maybe swap getting in the car for walking somewhere instead. Play your favorite music or enjoy some people watching.

A depressed brain is likely in short supply of feel-good endorphins and neurotransmitters.

Sleep Well

Make yourself go to bed. Stop looking at your phone. In fact, take a cue from babies, nature’s original fussy sleepers. Or at least a cue from their parents – nighttime routine. No, you’re not in a onesie (are you?), but many of the tricks used by hopeful parents can be modified to help you.

Bath, with soothing essential oils (because you’re an adult now!) or other pleasing spa products? Check. Soothing music/white noise/smoothly voiced NPR podcast? Check. A ridiculous book you don’t necessarily want anyone to see you reading? Check. Momma knows best, but you’re still a grown ass adult. Have fun planning a decadent pre-bed routine. Also, check out Insomnia – A Comprehensive Look with Natural Remedies.

Supplements To Fix The Gut & End Depression

Almost everyone in the world who is dealing with chronic health issues or chronic mental issues has an abundance of Candida and heavy metal toxicity, along with a lack of beneficial bacteria. Diet alone can fix this for most people, but when the head is not working well, choices don’t usually go well either. B vitamins can help alleviate depression until the healthy gut microbes develop. Good fats (click here) are a must for people who can’t assimilate Bs properly. For those dealing with depression, a diet rich in B vitamins and healthy fats is a very good start. Supplements can be used to accelerate healing and eliminate all the other ailments and used to kill Candida and promote healthy bacteria.

Related:

SF722

This is my favorite for killing anything fungal, but it also works on parasites and other pathogens. If you have had yeast infections, athlete’s foot, see floaters, have BO, or eat the way everyone in modern countries do, you’ll want this supplement. There are tons of other choices for killing yeast (click here), but I don’t know of anything that does a better job for the money than SF722. Candida can become fairly immune to many other antimicrobials but studies have shown that this does not happen with SF722.

Probiotics

Probiotics help fix everything int he gut, including breaking down and removing things that shouldn’t be there, like heavy metals. A healthy gut detox the body all the time. Often touted as the cure everything supplement for the well-informed, probiotics are something most everyone is familiar with these days. What most do not know is that the vast majority of probiotic supplements on the market are ineffectual at best, and many actually feed yeast. How the probiotics are processed and preserved make all the difference. It’s not an easy task to produce good probiotics; our stomach acid is designed to kill it. Two of my favorites are FloraMend and Bio-K (the latter is not available in our store, but it is at most health food stores and Whole Foods). I don’t recommend taking a probiotic with antimicrobials. A really good probiotic should come out on top, but you are reducing its effectiveness when you combine it with compounds that kill. For instance, I would take SF722 all day and a probiotic at night and early morning, or vice versa, where I take the probiotic with food and the SF722 late and early. Different digestive issues can favor one over the other so try both ways and see what works for you.

Don’t take them with antimicrobials, and make sure they are high-quality supplements. Anyone without an appendix should take a probiotic every day with every major meal for the rest of their life. Your appendix secretes out beneficial bacteria when you don’t have enough. Take them on an empty stomach as noted or with food to help digest food inside the gut. I recommend mixing it up each day, but I do recommend caution when taking systemic enzymes. Too many systemic enzymes can cause issues, they can start to eat away at the body, so I don’t just grab a big handful like I do with SF722. I personally take 4-6 a day on an empty stomach, and I take more with food as needed.

One antimicrobial you can take with probiotics is olive leaf extract. It’s great for maintenance but it’s not a yeast serial-killer like SF722 (otherwise it would damage the probiotic). It’s a fine supplement, and but it’s not going to do much of anything all by itself. I like Abzorb best right now for a probiotic. For more on systemic enzymes click here.

Magnesium

Magnesium is an old home remedy for all that ails you, including ‘anxiety, apathy, depression, headaches, insecurity, irritability, restlessness, talkativeness, and sulkiness.’ In 1968, Wacker and Parisi reported that magnesium deficiency could cause depression, behavioral disturbances, headaches, muscle cramps, seizures, ataxia, psychosis, and irritability – all reversible with magnesium repletion.” – Psychology Today

A small study reported that over-the-counter magnesium tablets significantly improve depression in just a couple of weeks.11

Magnesium is a foundational supplement, like calcium. In the modern world, there is a tendency to become deficient in this vital mineral, and this effects every single function of the body! Not having enough magnesium is like not having enough oil in the car. Something is going to break down sooner or later, and in the meaning time, things will not be running as well as they should.

Poop Easy

For some, the gut needs more help to eliminate properly. Everyone should defecate once for every meal, and maybe once or twice more for those who also snack on lots of calories throughout the day like I do. Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse is the best I know of for healing the gut, killing parasites that may reside within, and getting the bowels regular. Shillington’s Intestinal Detox helps eliminate heavy metals and anything positively charged (like most pathogens), and it slows down and firms up stools. It also helps heal the gut and rebuild a healthy biofilm. Together the two supplements have synergistic properties, and they can be taken together to help balance the gut. It’s a very effective combination, but if the budget is tight, get the one that suits your needs. Note that if you have chronic constipation and have not tried magnesium yet, Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse may not be necessary with a good magnesium supplement.

Conclusion

We rely on bacteria to survive and yet many aspire to live in an antibacterial world. We know certain heavy metals are incredibly toxic to us, but we excuse them in vaccinations and light bulbs and sushi. Most of us know that fresh, raw vegetables pull our heavy metal toxins, but we grow conventional vegetables with such a heavy toxic load that they no longer have their natural chelation properties. For most people, when it’s all said and done, our physical well being affects our mental well being more than anything else in our lives. Our entire body is built on what we eat. Our heart, our gallbladder, our appendix, our fingers, our eyes, our noise, our brain – they all need the right nutrition to function properly. Nothing in the body gets healthy and stays healthy for long without fixing the gut first, and that includes the brain. If you’re looking for the easiest thing you can do, a little baby-step just to get you started, get the SF722 and Abzorb and some B vitamins. I can’t stress enough how much almost everyone in any modern country could use SF722 to help fix the gut. Get some sunlight or a D vitamin and some good fats. Start squatting every day, just a few to start with and build up daily. And get into some nature, be it walking or gardening or whatever. Another good option would be CBD oil. It’s showing a lot of promise with depression.

 

Recommended Reading:
Sources:
  1. The Link Between Sugar And Depression: What You Should Know – Forbes
  2. Effect of Probiotics on Depression: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials – NCBI
  3. The healthy human microbiome – NCBI
  4. Link Found Between Gut Bacteria And Depression – IFL Science
  5. Gut Bacteria in Health and Disease – NCBI
  6. Diet and Depression – Psychology Today
  7. Mediterranean Diet Can Help In Fight Against Depression – study – ABC News 
  8. World’s First Clinical Trial Finds Diet Works for Depression – Psychology Today
  9. Mediterranean diet can help in fight against depression, Australian study finds – ABC News
  10. A randomized controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression (the ‘SMILES’ trial) – BMC Medicine
  11. Can magnesium help depression – or is it just a placebo?

 




Fungal Infections – How to Eliminate Yeast, Candida, and Mold Infections For Good

Most, maybe all of you reading this, have Candida, even if you’re perfectly healthy. You have other fungi too. We all do. When the gut is healthy some fungus and lots of bacterial microbes live in harmony with us. Like bacteria, there will always be some fungi within us. Candida likes the human body. It’s the most common infectious fungus, typically responsible for oral thrush, skin rashes, eczema, psoriasis, athlete’s foot, vaginal yeast infections, and so much more. It’s one of our main microbes. Studies show that up to 90% of the population has Candida Albicans within them, but some (like me) suspect it’s closer to 100%.

Contents

Candida albicans is by far the most commonly known, accounting for about 50% of all cases of recognized fungal infections around the world. There is also Candida tropicalis, Candida glabrata, Candida parapsilosis, Candida krusei, Candida lusitaniae, and probably more, but let’s just call it all “Candida” for simplicity’s sake.

The most important point you should take away from this article is that Candida is not the “bad guys” any more than bacteria or other microbes are. With few exceptions, pathogens are simply responding to their environment. We understand this concept in biology well, but this concept gets ignored regarding the human body as it relates to disease. The fact is that the microbes all around our body are primarily based on the eco-system inside our gut, which is dictated primarily by the food they have to eat, i.e., the food we eat. You can take the nicest, friendliest bacteria from the gut, place it in a sanitized petri dish, introduce some sanitary junk food with simple sugars, and those bacteria are not going to look or act like our friendly little symbiotic fellows much longer. Microbes are very good at evolving to their environment, and we have a lot of different kinds. Even if you’re missing most of the beneficial bacteria that you should have, you still have a huge array of symbiotic microbes.

Candida and Bacteria

This single-cell organism, Candida, reproduces asexually and thrives on dead tissue, scar tissue, dead and decaying cells of any kind, and simple sugars from food. On that note, most all pathogens prefer to feed on simple sugars and dead or decaying cells. They are our garbage collectors. The problem is that their mere presence causes irritation (for various reasons, including gasses they release). This irritation leads to damage, so if a colony of a certain type of microbes has enough to eat in an area where they should not be, this can damage the area, giving the microbes more food, thus the vicious cycle of disease.2

Pathogens like simple sugars the best,1 but when they don’t get as much as they are used to they tend to get irritated and then turn hostile. This causes more nearby cell damage and decay which hurts us and feeds them.

When the body is in homeostasis, the microbes are balanced and the gut is healthy. When the gut is healthy, the gut doesn’t leak the wrong things into the body.

Gut Balance

When we eat foods that are best for us (like raw vegetables and herbs) the most beneficial microflora go to work. Happy with plenty of food and reproducing, they crowd out everyone else, and these guys help regulate and even produce lots of vitamins hormones as they break down protein molecules. Proteins that have not been digested thoroughly by our gut bacteria will not be digested well by us. These proteins entering the body will be looked at as “foreign proteins” which is antigenic to the body (causes immune response).3

Many of the bacteria that harm us tend to move quickly and come across as generally more agitated under a microscope. Healthy gut bacteria under a microscope look like a decent bunch of fairly slow moving microbes, just doing their thing. There are plenty of slow-moving bacteria and amoeba and other pathogens that move slowly, but looking at good bacteria, you can visually see how they can gently protect the body and crowd out or at least slow down pathogenic proliferation. Gut bacteria and mouth bacteria have a lot in common and bio-dentistry is on to this.

Check out the different behaviors of bacteria and other pathogens under a microscope. A fun experiment is to eat some raw vegetables like a salad, and then take a large saliva sample, put it under the lens in a petri dish, and find the bacteria swimming around in your mouth. See how fast they move. See how many there are. Now drink some soda or something else terrible, and get it all in your gums and everything. If you’re a smoker, do that too. In 10 minutes take another sample. The microbes are different. They’re fast and they seem angry. If you like videos, here’s a video. Note what they say about diet. I find it both wonderful and frustrating how close conventional wisdom has gotten to understanding the impact food plays on our microbes.

But we live in an antibacterial world. And while superbugs are coming to destroy us all, we’ve done a remarkable job of killing off and suppressing bacteria, for both good and bad. I had the urge to type “both good and bad bacteria,” but that’s the misnomer. Microbes are not good or bad (though for simplicity’s sake I will refer to them this way). The “bad” bacteria are just doing their job, and the beneficial bacteria that are friendly to us can mutate and become pathogenic under poor-health circumstances.

Just a quick, barely relevant fact: There are many strains of e. Coli and salmonella that we know of that often exist in our gut and cause us no harm.7 The pathogenic, virulent forms are a result of factory farming. 8 These two superbugs that kill us so often are a result of some badass e. Coli or salmonella that was actually tough enough to survive and escape the incredibly acidic and antimicrobial environment of a factory-farmed cow or chicken, respectively. It’s not only metaphoric of how our gut works. Consider the parallels between how microbes adapt and our justice system, or our drug wars, or how we fight terrorism. We as humans behave like microbes in a myriad of ways. We could learn a lot…

Also, our fruit has much more sugar in it than it used to. Even if one never eats refined foods we get more sugar from fresh fruit than we ever would have in nature before we started selectively breeding our food (hybridization). In other words, even if you’re eating the perfect modern paleo diet, you’re not eating like a paleo at all, unless your bananas look more like this:

So, as a population, we eat fruit with tons of easily absorbed sugar, we eat refined foods, and we do lots of stuff to kill our gut flora, like GMOs, antibiotics, pesticides, and herbicides, etc. But Candida is really hard to kill. We often eliminate most or all of the microbes in our gut and much around our body with antibiotics, but Candida spores cannot be killed so easily. They wait, dormant, patient, just lying around for up to 6 months.4,5 These spores will survive anything we try to do to get rid of them. As soon as they sense a hospitable environment (food, i.e. sugar) they will come to life and proliferate.6

What Causes An Overabundance of Candida?

You get the idea by now, but mostly, it’s an overall poor diet with too much sugar. At least 95% of the problem is sugar. Refined foods are sugar to the body. But there are a lot of other things we do that allow Candida to flourish and run our lives:

  • Chemical birth control
  • NSAID pain relievers
  • Steroids
  • Factory farmed meat
  • Chronic constipation
  • Alcohol
  • Recreational drugs
  • Mercury toxicity (like dental fillings)
  • Other heavy toxicity  (like from vaccines)
  • Extreme stress
  • Vitamin and mineral deficiencies

Here’s How Candida Takes Over

Candida is hanging out in the gut of a person. Said person eats a bunch of nasty food with toxins that kill our most beneficial flora, along with refined foods that quickly break down into simple sugars that do an efficient job of feeding pathogenic microbes. The person gets sick. The person takes antibiotics. The prescriptions may also kill off the Candida in the gut too, but not the spores. Said person then, hopefully feeling better by now, eats as he or she normally eats. Candida reactivates its lifecycle. They proliferate with little to no competition. Once that Candida is feeling crowded and has outgrown its home in the gut, Candida will grow out of its simple single-cell yeast form and into a filamentous, mycelial, virulent fungal form, growing root-like tentacles (hyphae) that drill deep into the mucosal lining of the gut, poking “holes” into already an irritated and inflamed, gut lining, resulting in a leaky gut.9,10 (Click here for more on mycelial fungi.) Now Candida and all kinds of other crap (excuse the pun) can leak into the bloodstream and travel throughout the body. Candida can infect every organ of the body. When it takes the fungal form, it creates a toxic biofilm that protects itself against things that would normally kill it (like antibiotics). It may or may not be Candida that is causing what ails you, but there is at least a very good chance that Candida opened the door to the pathogen at some point.

When Candida makes its escape, it proliferates into the bloodstream, and consequently, all around the body. If you smashed your elbow in a football injury 17 years ago there is still a tiny bit of scar tissue there, and that’s one of the places that Candida will set up a home outside the gut. When they don’t have sugar they will feed off of scar tissue and other “dead” cells.

Now the body is overwhelmed. The Candida will travel all over the body, but it will usually be eliminated from the blood fairly quickly. Maybe said person goes and gets a blood test, but you can read here why tests for Candida aren’t very accurate. The toxins that Candida leave behind get filtered out by the liver, eventually, hopefully, but the virulent Candida itself will be purged from the blood as the body’s immune system goes into high gear. Now the body has satellite infections of Candida all over, spread throughout. Every ache we have from an old injury is most likely hurting when there is pathogenic activity. When we wake up in the morning we are at our most achy in large part because of reduced blood flow and movement leading to more pathogenic activity. And again, this is a good thing in a balanced body, as they are taking out the garbage.

Picture that body full of Candida satellite infections. If the person eats sugars the Candida get fed, gets happy, proliferates, probably does another bloodstream ride to spread out, and that’s that. When one restricts the sugar, what do Candida eat? Us. Dead or weak cells. It kinda hurts. Feed the Candida another burst of sugar (or toxic food that damages the cells enough to feed the Candida that way), and the Candida leaves us alone for a bit. This is obviously overly simplistic, but it should show how easily and symbiotically Candida can cause poor food cravings.

There are antifungal drugs that can kill off Candida, but again, not the spores. Once those spores are all over the body, they will stay hanging around for up to six months, waiting for food.

This same sort of thing happens with other pathogens too, but Candida is the key. It literally opens the doors for other pathogens (and food particles that needed more digestion, and lots of other “crap”) by creating the holes in the gut. Other things can create this extra permeability as well, but Candida opens the gut fast and typically does it often.

Candida and Wheat

Candida causes lots of unexpected and fascinating problems that connect a lot of dots for those with chronic health issues. Take wheat for instance. A protein found in Candida called HWP-1 is identical or highly homologous (nearly identical) to two gluten proteins, alpha gliadin and gamma-gliadin. These proteins are known to stimulate immune cell responses in people with celiac disease. In other words, Candida, the yeast responsible for oral thrush and vaginal infections (and so much more), contains the same protein sequence as wheat gluten and therefore could trigger celiac disease.

It gets worse. The gluten protein is similar to protein structures in the nervous system and the thyroid tissue. The body will turn on these proteins shortly after it begins reacting to gluten. This is the essence of chronic autoimmune disease.

How To Know if You Have Candida

This is a hard one for most people to swallow, but if you’re sick, you’ve got Candida. As we’ve established, it’s not about “catching it.” If the gut is not balanced the gut has an abundance of Candida and other less-than-beneficial microbes. If any of the following pertain to you, Candida or not, it’s time to balance the gut by fixing the diet.

  • Allergies
  • Skin issues
  • White tongue
  • Floaters in vision
  • Itchy feet or hands or ears
  • Prone to any other infections

The allergies concept is especially hard for many, but it’s true. If you have food or seasonal allergies, stop blaming genetics and accept that the body’s biology is out of balance. For more on this, check out Candida Overgrowth Symptoms.

How to Prevent Candida Overgrowth

First of all, stop thinking of microbes as the bad guys. That’s not the case, not at all. Think of them more like humans. Picture yourself as you grow up in the worst war-torn part of the world you can imagine. Drone strikes, little food, toxic water, and a brain that functions half as well as yours does. How would you react to your environment? What’s the best way to fix the problem? Fix the environment. And it’s also the only way to prevent the problem in the first place.

Drink lots of water, and feed the body foods that the friendliest microbes love. Flushing the body is critical because there are lots of gasses and other toxic substances that accumulate in the body with an abundance of Candida. It slows the bodily systems, causing sluggish liver and kidney functionality.

Here are three articles on diet. The information will prevent Candida infestations in the body, as well as any other pathogen, and in most cases, with patience, this diet/lifestyle will eliminate Candida and other diseases as well.

The first one has my salad and cranberry-lemonade recipe. I suggest everyone eat and drink like that every single day.

The Best Supplements for Killing Candida, Yeast, Molds, Other Funghis

First and foremost, just pack the gut with good food. Eat a big salad. Picture the intestinal tract and imagine it being packed full of vegetables and herbs. If you’re one of those health-food hating virulent microbes, you’re at least not going to be reproducing while you’re being squeezed out by salad and salad loving microbes.

Cut out all refined foods because they feed pathogens. Cut out all toxic foods because they kill the good guys and damage the gut which feeds the pathogens. If you suffer from allergies, you eat too much sugar and/or refined foods (or drink alcohol regularly). Cut out the sugar and the allergies go away. See the above articles for more on diet. Most people don’t need supplements and can get rid of every single health issue they have with just diet. On the other hand, with the intense sugar cravings that Candida causes, supplements can not only speed up the process of getting well, they can balance a person’s body just enough to help ensure better choices are made and the supplements also compensate for the bad choices. But therein lies the rub. Most people are just looking for that one supplement that’s going to ease some of the pain their lifestyle causes. And while that one supplement should be SF722, in my opinion, the most common way someone uses such a supplement is to take enough to feel the pain relief they seek while they keep making poor food choices until more pain relief in one form or another is needed. The only difference between supplements and prescriptions in the way most people use them is that supplements don’t have the toxic side effects. But my point is that without the right diet, just consuming supplements will not create homeostasis. That said, here are the top supplements to take for Candida control:

SF722

This is my favorite for killing anything fungal. There are tons of other choices (click here), but I don’t know of anything that does a better job for the money than SF722. Candida can become fairly immune to many other antimicrobials but studies have shown that this does not happen with SF722. SF722 is antimicrobial so it can kill some of the good guys, but it doesn’t seem like it’s very good at killing bacteria compared to some other compounds. This is a benefit when dealing with Candida.

How to Take SF722

I’ve known people that take more than 60 in a day. It can acidify the body temporarily, but the acids are dispelled easily and Candida doesn’t like acidity (I wonder how many people will feel the need to check on this fact). Obviously, you want a slightly alkaline body for health, but Candida is not one of the ones that like acidic environments. The bottle says to do 15 (5×3) and I recommend moving up in dosage if need be, depending on the die-off symptoms. Take it until Candida symptoms are gone, and then have it on hand to compensate future indulgences with poor food or drink choices. I usually take 20 when I eat at a restaurant.

Berberine

Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis), barberry (Berberis vulgaris), Oregon grape (Berberis aquifolium), and goldthread (Coptis chinensis) contain the broad-spectrum antibiotic alkaloid berberine. Berberine is effective against pathogens including bacteria, protozoa, and fungiBerberine has been proven in some studies to be stronger than many common antibiotics.

How to Take Berberine

Take it separately from probiotics, and follow the instructions. I tend to always take twice as much as they recommend, but I also weight 220 pounds. There should not be a need for high doses while taking the other supplements.

Oil of Oregano

Oil of Oregano is one of nature’s most powerful antibiotic supplements, but I don’t think it’s all that great against Candida. Plus, it works so well that the body can’t maintain healthy bacteria. It’s a great supplement to have on hand, but it is one I reserve for the acutest cases where killing the bad guys is the primary and urgent focus.

Probiotics

Often touted as the cure everything supplement for the well-informed, probiotics are something most everyone is familiar with these days. What most do not know is that the vast majority of probiotic supplements on the market are ineffectual at best, and many actually feed yeast. How the probiotics are processed and preserved make all the difference. It’s not an easy task to produce good probiotics; our stomach acid is designed to kill it. Two of my favorite are FloraMend and Bio-K (the latter is not available in our store, but it is at most health food stores and Whole Foods). I don’t recommend taking a probiotic with antimicrobials. A really good probiotic should come out on top, but you are reducing its effectiveness when you combine it with compounds that kill. For instance, I would take SF722 all day and a probiotic at night and early morning, or vice versa, where I take the probiotic with food and the SF722 late and early. Different digestive issues can favor one over the other so try both ways and see what works for you.

How to Take Probiotics

Don’t take them with antimicrobials, and make sure they are high-quality supplements. Anyone without an appendix should take a probiotic every day with every major meal for the rest of their life. Your appendix secretes out beneficial bacteria when you don’t have enough.

One antimicrobial you can take with probiotics is Olive Leaf Extract. It’s great for maintenance but it’s not a yeast serial-killer like SF722 (otherwise it would damage the probiotic). It’s a fine supplement, but it’s not going to do much of anything all by itself.

Systemic Enzymes

I am in love with a fairly new supplement called Abzorb. It’s one of the only four I regularly take (I’ll mention the other three as well in a moment).

As we age, our pancreas produces fewer enzymes for the body. We need enzymes to survive. We need enzymes to do everything, not just break down proteins. If you are healthy, you have an abundance of healthy enzymatic activity. When enzymatic production yields are low enough, the body will break down within hours with a heart attack or a stroke.  They are the catalyst for almost anything the happens at a molecular level in the body. Without enzymes, we would not be able to do anything with our vitamins and minerals.

Enzymes break down proteins. They do this with foreign proteins (which those with Candida issue have in abundance) and fibrin, the protein that makes up scar tissue. Fibrin feeds Candida and other pathogens if you didn’t skip all that ecology knowledge up above. These enzymes also reduce toxins in the blood and help balance cholesterol. Our body produces fibrin in response to trauma and enzymes help take it away in time. Anyone working in a morgue can tell you that one of the most obvious differences between a young body and an old body is that the older person has lots of fibrin all over the inside of their body. Strokes, heart attacks, aneurysms, and other often deadly ailments can be attributed directly to this.

Inside the gut, if food is not digested, it rots and feeds pathogens (ever notice how when things rot they smell sickly-sweet?), and Candida makes it hard to digest food properly.

The more enzymes we have to break down food, the better we digest and use the nutrition. Digestive enzymes help digest food in the stomach. Systemic enzymes don’t break open until they reach the gut. So, taken on an empty stomach, the systemic enzymes will go to work to repair the body and kill some viruses while they’re at it (I forgot to mention that enzymes kill viruses).

On the other hand, if you take a systemic enzyme with food, the enzyme will go to work to digest the food inside the gut.

And this brings me to Abzorb. It’s a probiotic and systemic enzyme. If you take it with food it will help you digest the food, and it works very well for this, much better than just taking one or the other. And while the product is more affordable than some of my other favorite probiotics, I find this probiotic is just as effective at colonizing in the gut. Usually, you need to spend considerable money on probiotics and enzymes for quality, but Abzorb is affordable. It is very effective, and you get two very important and synergistic supplements in one.

How to Take Systemic Enzymes

Take them on an empty stomach as noted or with food to help digest food inside the gut. I recommend mixing it up each day, but I do recommend caution when taking systemic enzymes. Too many systemic enzymes can cause issues, they can start to eat away at the body, so I don’t just grab a big handful like I do with SF722. I personally take 4-6 a day on an empty stomach, and I take more with food as needed.

Magnesium

The byproducts of Candida albicans include ethanol, uric acid and ammonia, acetaldehyde, and about 75 other toxic gases we know of. The big one on the list is acetaldehyde.12 Acetaldehyde is also produced when you drink alcohol, smoke, or breathe in car exhaust. It’s in large part responsible for the “hungover” feeling we get after a night of debauchery.13 Magnesium is required to break down acetaldehyde. It’s unclear if magnesium deficiency can cause more Candida growth in any way, but a lack of this mineral does exacerbate the problems associated with Candida. Without enough magnesium, the body will sustain a lot more damage, which feeds the Candida overgrowth cycle. Candida causes magnesium deficiencies too, and anyone who has Candida overgrowth is low in magnesium.

How to Take Magnesium with Candida Issues

Candida causes the body to require more magnesium than the recommended daily dose of 400mg. Often a Candida cleanse can cause the magnesium levels to become dangerously low, and then the individual may suffer from sluggish bowels which just compounds the symptoms of  Candida die-off further.

Biotin

Like Magnesium, B vitamins are always low in those dealing with Candida overgrowth. Candida makes it very difficult for good bacteria to give us the b vitamins we need to make good decisions. Impulse control is severely hampered when there aren’t enough Bs. Too much fungi = not enough good bacteria = not enough b vitamins = poor food choices.

But biotin has a trick up its sleeve that causes it to make this list. Biotin is a coenzyme and a B vitamin. It is also known as vitamin H and vitamin B7. Because biotin is present in so many different kinds of foods, a serious deficiency is rare. But those who have had health issue due to Candida for a long enough period of time are likely going to be low in all Bs including B7. And B7 actually inhibits Candida from transforming into its mycelial, pathogenic form.

How to Take Biotin

With B vitamins it’s usually best to take a complex, not a single B. If one takes too much of one B vitamins it can inhibit the assimilation of other Bs and throw all the vitamins out of whack. Another option is chlorella, which has lots of B vitamins, including biotin, and it kills Candida in some other ways too.

I wanted to keep this article a bit more specific and focused. But the reality is, if you suffer from an abundance of Candida, you also suffer from many other pathogens. And the aforementioned salads can take care of the vitamin and mineral need. For people who need to heal their gut, I recommend a healthy diet void of refined and processed foods, salads every day, and the following supplements:

The first three should be plenty for most people, but for really prominent fungal issues or for impatient people with a bigger budget I’d recommend all of them. For more on diet, including salad recipes, check out:

My Supplements

Total Nutrition Formula is my multi-vitamin/mineral formula. I take it once a week, but I used took it every day with smoothies. Now I eat enough salads I don’t feel the need for it as much. It has chlorella and spirulina and lots of other good stuff. Spirulina isn’t a big Candida killer but it goes hand-in-hand with chlorella, so I figured I’d add it in. A study in 2001 found that spirulina supports our beneficial microflora which leads to less Candida,13 and an experiment from 2010 shows that spirulina enhances immune system response to Candida and other pathogens. 14 It’s said that chlorella does a similar number on Candida, and it’s rich in B vitamins including biotin, and I also read somewhere about how chlorella can break down the cell walls of fungi, but I cannot find that anywhere.

I always have SF722 on hand but I don’t take it very often. I take Abzorb in the mornings on an empty stomach, 3-4, and I take 1-2 with every cooked meal I have when I remember. I also take Liquid Light every now and then, just when I have a feeling I need a mineral boost.

When I was smoking marijuana  I constantly sipped on Mother Earth Cider. It kept me from getting sick. Now I just sip once or twice a day. Just read the ingredients and you’ll see why. This is by far my favorite supplement on the market, but it’s not here as a Candida fighter. I’m sure it does a little, but not like the aforementioned.

Conclusion

Two other big causes of Candida overgrowth that we did not touch include vaccines and amalgams. The damage these medical products cause will feed Candida indefinitely. If you have heavy metal toxicity, the only thing I would do differently in this protocol is to add the Total Nutrition Formula and take additional chlorella and spirulina daily. It’s hard to eat too much of these seaweeds, and they have tons and tons of benefits, so get them in you any way you can. I think they’re disgusting so I prefer tablets or strong smoothie concoctions to bury the taste.




Foods That Increase and Decrease Sex Drive – Manage Your Libido Naturally

There are a variety of things that can impact a man’s sex drive: stress, performance anxiety, relationship problems, health conditions, and food consumption are just a few.

Some libido inhibitors are difficult to manage, but fortunately, the majority of situations call for quick, simple, and natural methods to increase sexual appetite.

For example, a couple of changes to your diet can greatly enhance your libido.

Related: Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

How Food Affects Sex

Food has a very powerful influence on our bodies. It can either help or hinder the body’s functionality.

When it comes to sex, there are a couple of significant ways your diet will impact your performance:

  • Blood flow: Erections are caused by relaxed muscles that allow for greater blood flow to the penis. Therefore, it is important to look for foods that increase, not decrease, blood flow.
  • Testosterone: Testosterone is one of the primary ingredients in a man’s libido. Any foods that impact hormone levels will also impact sex drive.
  • Emotions: Stress and anxiety often inhibit libido. Foods that have a calming effect on the brain will improve the quality of sex.

Foods That Increase Libido

If you are looking for a natural way to ignite the spark, add these delicacies to your shopping cart.

Related: The Power of Our Hormones and How To Balance Them

Food

How it Helps

Spinach Spinach has an abundance of magnesium. By decreasing blood vessel inflammation, magnesium helps increase blood flow.
Peppers Spicy peppers increase your metabolism, which makes your heart beat faster and pump more blood.
Ginger Ginger greatly improves artery health, improving blood flow.
Bananas Bananas are high in potassium. Potassium is needed to balance out an abundance of sodium, which decreases blood flow.
Potatoes Potatoes are another food with significant amounts of potassium, aiding blood circulation.
Fatty fish Omega-3 fatty acids found in foods like wild salmon, sardines, and tuna increase dopamine production. Not only does dopamine improve circulation, but it also makes you feel more relaxed—and sex more enjoyable.
Dark chocolate Dark chocolate increase levels of serotonin and dopamine, which makes you happier and less anxious.
Pumpkin seeds The tryptophan in pumpkin seeds also increases serotonin production, meaning the decreased stress makes your performance even better.
Oysters The zinc in oysters increases testosterone levels and enhances physical performance.
Pesto The pine nuts in pesto are rich in testosterone-producing zinc.

Foods That Decrease Libido

If you want the most healthy sex life possible, avoid these foods whenever possible.

Related:

Food

Why it’s Bad

Diet soda The aspartame in diet soda decreases serotonin production—and libido.
Microwave popcorn The acid found in the lining of the popcorn bag can kill your sex drive and cause long-term damage to your prostate.
Alcohol Alcohol is a well-known depressant that inhibits the ability to establish and maintain an erection.
Soy Soy can decrease sperm count and negatively impact libido.
Sugar Sugar can deplete testosterone levels, causing your interest in sex to wane.
Licorice The glycyrrhizic acid in licorice also decreases testosterone production.
Mint Menthol is another inhibitor of testosterone production.

Eating a nutritious diet is essential for maintaining overall health, and sexual health is no exception.

What are your favorite libido-enhancing foods? What do you try to stay away from? Sound off in the comments section!

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Studies Show How to Treat & Reduce Recurring UTIs Without Antibiotics

A new study presented in San Diego of 140 premenopausal women in Bulgaria who found that urinary tract infections (UTIs) were reduced by half with when their water consumption increased by 1 and a half liters. The women included in the study previously had experienced UTIs more than three times a year. After dividing the test subjects in half, researchers found that the group who increased their water intake by 1 and a half liters (6 cups) averaged 1.6 infections a year and the group who did not drink more water reported an average of 3.1 infections.

Drink more water. Experience fewer UTIs. Is it really that simple? The answer is yes and no. UTIs don’t magically develop because you’re not drinking enough water, though a dehydrated body is more susceptible to infection and any number of ailments from headaches to constipation to depression to acid reflux. Consider these health issues. Consider the time, money, and effort that goes into treating these ailments. Why aren’t we putting as much effort into preventing the UTI as we are into treating it?

The Very Beginning

Conventional medicine says that a urinary tract infection occurs when bacteria enter the urinary tract through the urethra. The belief is that the bacteria comes from the rectum, and studies show that 80 to 90 percent of bladder infections are caused by E. coli, an intestinal bacteria. Many holistic health practitioners suspect that leaky gut may also be a common cause of UTIs. The E. coli bacteria has a long, hair-like appendage with the protein FimH at the end of it. That protein forms a tiny hook. The hook helps the E.coli hang on and gives it a chance to grow and irritate the urinary tract. The urinary and intestinal tracts are composed of the same mucosal tissue and much like the gut, the E. coli that end up in the urethra can be balanced by beneficial bacteria, particularly lactobacillus. If there isn’t enough lactobacillus to balance the E. Coli, the risk of UTIs increases. Other common UTI risk factors include:

  • Sex
  • Holding in urine for too long
  • Feminine products
  • Hormone shifts
  • Dehydration
  • High blood sugar or uncontrolled diabetes
  • Kidney stones
Recommended Reading: Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases

While physiology makes UTIs are more easily noticed in women and much of the literature on them is geared towards women, they do affect men as well. In fact, older men are most likely to be hospitalized for serious kidney and bladder infections, usually the next phase of an untreated urinary tract infection. Rates of emergency visits for people with UTIs remain highest among the elderly, although there is a bump among women 15-25 years old. Fifty to sixty percent of adult women have experienced a UTI in their life, and that familiarity could explain why women are less likely to be hospitalized than men. Being able to recognize UTI symptoms quickly and deal with them effectively can be the difference between a mild inconvenience and a serious bladder or kidney infection. Some of the ways to spot a UTI are obvious (it burns when you pee), but other signs of a distressed urinary tract are equally important. These include, but are not limited to:

  • A constant need to urinate
  • A burning sensation when you urinate
  • Cloudy, foul-smelling urine
  • Pain or pressure in the lower abdomen
  • Feeling tired
  • Fever and chills
  • Back or side pain

Regular lower back pain is a sign of a sluggish renal system. A sluggish renal system allows pathogens to colonize. Fluid gets stale, it doesn’t move as it should, and pathogenic activity increases. The organs become swollen and put pressure on the hip and lower back joints. This can make it difficult to stand up straight and elongate the back. If the pain decreases after urination, this is the sign that none needs to detox the urinary tract and the liver and gut.” – Michael Edwards

If you’re experiencing any of these symptoms, how can you stop a UTI from going any further?

Treatment Options

Once you realize that you have or could soon have a UTI, time is of the essence. If you decide to go the conventional medicine route, you’ll be given antibiotics. UTIs are the second most common reason to prescribe antibiotics, but this method harms more than it helps. Yes, harmful bacteria like E. coli are eliminated, but the slow-moving lactobacillus necessary to keep the harmful bacteria in check are also destroyed. Without those beneficial bacteria to balance the vaginal ecosystem, antibiotics have turned a simple UTI that research now tells us could have been resolved with drinking more water into a breeding ground for a potentially recurring infection.

Recommended Reading: How to Cure Lyme Disease, and Virtually Any Other Bacterial Infection, Naturally

It is naive to think that a bladder or urinary tract infection should attempt to be cured just by simply drinking more water. But this study also proves that there are other potential treatment methods out there that haven’t been properly explored due to how easy it is to prescribe antibiotics. Many of these methods also have the benefit of strengthening your overall body ecosystem and preventing future infections. In addition to drinking lots of water, other common holistic treatment options include:

  • Cranberry – According to Web MD, cranberry juice, extract, or supplements help about as much as taking antibiotics to prevent another UTI. It is most effective when paired with higher PH urine or a balanced microbiome. The tannins in cranberry make it effective against E. coli and prevent it from colonizing the urinary tract. Cranberry also supports the kidneys, making waste elimination more efficient. All cranberry is not created equal, though so make sure you use unsweetened cranberry juice, not from concentrate. The taste can be gnarly, so do yourself a favor and check out this lemonade recipe. The recipe makes it easy to add cranberry to your everyday routine.
  • Probiotics – Good bacteria are needed to manage harmful bacteria overgrowth. Without them, E. coli and other disruptors are able to flourish. For a UTI (or anything really), it’s important to pick a probiotic that makes it to the problem area. Lacto-fermented foods like sauerkraut, kefir, or kim chi are great sources of beneficial lactobacillus, but it remains to be seen if they make past the stomach acid. Your best bet is looking for a probiotic with an acid-resistant capsule.
  • Garlic – Garlic has some fantastic antimicrobial properties and is effective in eliminating a range of bacteria and fungus, including candida. The properties are a result of the compound allicin which occurs when a sulfur-based compound called alliin, and the enzyme alliinase in garlic come into contact. To take full advantage of the allicin, leave the garlic for a few minutes after it has been chopped. This allows the alliin and alliinase time to create more allicin. Keep your garlic raw to get the most benefits, but swallowing raw garlic by itself can cause nausea. Raw, chopped garlic on salads is an especially effective deployment of the herb.
  • D-Mannose – Of all of the remedies listed, D-mannose has received the most attention from researchers. In a 2014 study of its efficacy, D-mannose was more successful than nitrofurantoin, an antibiotic, at reducing recurring UTIs and had fewer side effects. D-Mannose is related to glucose and derived from cranberries, peaches, and other berries.
  • Vitamin C – Vitamin C enhances the immune system, improves liver function, and inhibits the growth of E. coli. Pregnant women experiencing vitamin c treatment for three months experienced fewer urinary infections, according to a 2007 survey. It acidifies the urine, limiting bacteria growth. Vitamin c does come in supplement form, but many of those are derived from corn. Your best bet to increase your vitamin c intake to eat more produce, as it’s found in oranges, kale, peppers, and a multitude of other beneficial goodies.
  • Oil of Oregano – Active against all of the clinical strains of bacteria tested (including E. coli), oil of oregano acts like an antibiotic without contributing to antibiotic-resistant bacteria.It does this with extremely high levels of antioxidants and is antiparasitic, antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal. It is a powerful, indiscriminate killer that can reset the microbial environment in the intestines. It can be very harsh to irritated or sensitive skin, so capsule form is likely the easiest way to use it.

None of those actually fix the root cause of UTIs, though. Environment matters. Many people don’t have complete control over the pesticides sprayed on their food or what is happening with the waste produced by the chemical company down the street or 15 miles away. There is, however, another environment that you can and should exert control over in the quest to be healthy – your gut environment. This is where it all starts. When you have a UTI or bladder infection, something has gone wrong with the gut. Diet is crucial.

Recommended Reading: How to Kill Fungal Infections

Bad bacteria will always be there, but infections occur when the good bacteria are no longer able to keep them in check. Good bacteria are slow moving globs of protection that crowd out and starve off pathogens. Cultivating this good bacteria is essential to balance the pathogenic bacteria. Diet builds and nurtures beneficial bacterial colonies. Bad bacteria thrive on sugar and other refined foods, and it’s no coincidence that our most beneficial gut bacteria prefer to live off of a variety of beneficial raw veggies, fruits, and herbs.

We Need Fewer Antibiotics…Start Now

Antibiotic resistance is here. By necessity, we must look somewhere other than antibiotics, and there are other options that conventional medicine is not considering. If reducing UTIs by half is accomplished with a treatment as simple as drinking more water, what do we even need them for? For years, medicine has pushed for a cure rather than prevention. As margins for error in health keep decreasing, choosing to treat and support your body with diet and lifestyle before you get sick is the best way to never get sick.

Fast UTI Protocol

Cranberry juice is the secret. But not just any cranberry juice will do, it must be 100% cranberry juice with no other juices or sweeteners added. Conventional cranberry juice with high fructose corn syrup or table sugar will more often than not feed a urinary tract infection.

Lakewood is a common brand of cranberry juice that is available in the U.S. It is pasteurized but it is not reconstituted (not from concentrate). If you can find cranberry juice that’s unpasteurized at your local farmers market, or make it yourself, even better. If you cannot find the cranberry juice get a cranberry supplement. For those with recurring UTIs. have both on hand if possible.

At the first sign of kidney problems, like slow, shy, or otherwise difficult urination, take a gulp of cranberry juice straight, and then make a gallon of cranberry lemonade. This will help detoxify the kidneys, liver, gallbladder, and to a smaller extent the gut. If the infection has set in, SF722 and a probiotic would be in order. For chronic urinary tract issues, taking SF722 daily and always having nettle leaf and this kidney tea (or tincture) on hand is advised.

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CBD Oil – A Comprehensive Guide To Cannabidiol

Cannabis, marijuana, weed, pot — no matter what you call it — it contains CBD. Although it won’t get you high, this plant compound can take your health to the next level.

What is CBD and CBD Oil?

Cannabidiol, commonly referred to as CBD, is one of over 60 compounds called cannabinoids that are most commonly found in the cannabis plant. Most cannabis plants contain less than 4% CBD, so the only way to get a good amount of this cannabinoid is from pure CBD oil. Most CBD oil is extracted from industrial hemp, which usually has a higher CBD content than marijuana. After extraction, the CBD is added to a carrier oil and sold at many different potencies to be used in a variety of different ways.

However, before we go deeper into the uses of CBD oil, we need a better understanding of what sets it apart from other cannabinoids. For example, you might already be familiar with another popular cannabinoid found in cannabis called THC. THC is infamous for being the reason why we get high when we smoke or consume “edibles,” but it also has a non-psychoactive form called THCA that is present when cannabis is in its raw form. CBD, on the other hand, plays many different roles in the body and never gets you high regardless of how much you smoke it.

The Difference Between THCA, THC, and CBD

Industrial hemp (a popular variety of the cannabis plant) tests out at less than 0.3% THC. THC rich cannabis in its raw form is non-psychoactive. “Raw” THC is actually THCA. What we call “Marijuana” is cannabis that tests out with THCA between 5 and 35%.

THCA is beginning to demonstrate immense therapeutic qualities. Some people add THCA-rich cannabis leaves and flowers to their salads and smoothies, others consume with a tincture.

Related: How to Make the Healthiest Smoothies – 4 Recipes

THCA becomes the psychoactive THC through a chemical process called decarboxylation, which occurs with heat and time. The delivery methods for THC are smoking, vaporizing, and consuming “edibles.” Drying and curing cannabis will cause some decarboxylation to occur. Cured cannabis flowers will often test for small amounts of THC along with THCA. THC is fat soluble (and not water soluble). THC infused cooking, from pesto to chocolate, is made by heating ground up THCA rich cannabis with oil at 220 degrees Fahrenheit (104 Celsius) for 30 to 45 minutes. THC rich treats are commonly referred to as “edibles,” and they typically have massive amounts of sugar btw!

THCA’s Therapeutic Properties

THCA is the most abundant cannabinoid in a plant, depending on the time at when it is tested. THCA has been seen to have many benefits in a limited number of studies. Studies have found THCA to be anti-inflammatory, neuro-protective, anti-emetic, and anti-proliferative. There is plenty more this compound can do, and there are other cannabinoids, like the many varieties of terpenes and THCV, all proving to have some similar and some very different effects, and many of which are proving to be medical viable in very different ways.

The science on all of these other cannabinoids is in its infancy. The cannabinoids that we know most about, however, are CBD and THC.

The Relationship Between CBD and THC

In particular, the effect that CBD can have when ingested with THC has garnered significant interest. What research has found so far is fascinating.

For example, when active THC is ingested alone, it increases pulse rate, disturbs time tasks, and induces strong psychological reactions in some people, but when CBD is ingested with the THC, it blocks most of these adverse effects.

CBD also has been found to decrease the anxiety component of a THC “high” in such a way that the study subjects reported more pleasurable effects when CBD was included with the THC. This evidence suggests that it is better for our health to have a higher percentage of CBD in or with our cannabis if we decide to ingest the plant in any form.

The Dark Side of Cannabis

It is an even better idea, however, to rarely consume THC unless you have a medical condition that has been proven to be helped by a combination of THC and CBD. When we look through the research, you will see why I am making such a cautionary statement about THC.

In a scientific paper on the current state of cannabinoid research, the authors found that the current trend for preferring higher THC content in cannabis carries significant health risks, particularly to those who are susceptible to its harmful effects. For example, Morgan and colleagues carried out a study on 120 current cannabis users, which included 66 daily and 54 recreational users, whose hair analyses revealed their THC and CBD amounts. The study found that higher THC levels in the hair of the daily users were associated with increased depression and anxiety, as well as weaker performance on memory tasks. On the other hand, higher CBD levels in the hair were associated with lower psychosis-like symptoms and better memory.

Epidemiological studies also point toward an association between the use of cannabis and the increased risk of developing a psychotic illness, in a dose-dependent manner. In other words, what this study found is that you are more likely to develop a mental disorder as your THC consumption increases. On top of that, they also found that increased cannabis use is often accompanied by symptoms of depression and anxiety.

However, this is only epidemiological evidence, so it should only be used to inform further experimentation on THC’s effects. The truth is that only a small minority develop a full-blown psychotic illness in the form of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. The majority of cannabis users, ranging from 15% to 50%, will only experience transient psychotic symptoms of brief duration, for a couple of hours to up to a week, and will usually recover without requiring any intervention.

These “transient psychotic symptoms” may be experienced in the form of an auditory hallucination like hearing voices or by having increased anxiety or paranoia for hours to days after the THC high wears off.

Whether you experience unpleasant side effects from THC use or not, it is best for anyone who has a family history of psychosis or anyone who has had symptoms of psychosis in the past to avoid THC altogether. On the other hand, CBD rarely causes side effects, and when it does, they are relatively minor.

The Side Effects of CBD oil

CBD oil is well tolerated by most people, but there are some potential side effects — especially at higher doses. According to a review in Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, the most common side effects include:

  • tiredness
  • diarrhea
  • changes in appetite
  • weight gain or weight loss

Another review of the potential side effects in humans found that CBD rarely causes issues with dosages of up to 1500 mg/day (orally). The good news is that most people won’t even need to take half that dose to reap the benefits of CBD.

The Benefits of CBD Oil

Although the research regarding CBD’s effects on the body is in its early stages, it has already been found to affect the body in various ways.

Preliminary evidence suggests that CBD oil:

  • modulates the immune system
  • reduces inflammation
  • decreases seizures
  • relieves muscle tension and stress
  • improves mental health
  • protects brain cells from damage and inflammation
  • prevents nausea and vomiting
  • regulates bowel motility
  • lowers heart rate
  • decreases blood pressure
  • has anti-cancer properties against gliomas and lung cancer

To follow up on these promising effects, researchers conducted more studies. As a result, we now have relatively convincing data that backs up these following benefits of CBD oil:

Anxiety Reduction

Both animal and human studies indicate that CBD has anti-anxiety properties. In fact, in a recent double-blind study carried out on patients with generalized social anxiety disorder, it was found that CBD significantly reduced their anxiety.

Related: Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

Anti-psychotic effects

As we discovered earlier, CBD can actually decrease the psychotic effects that THC can have on the body. Without the presence of THC, CBD can further help reduce symptoms of psychosis.

Decreased Inflammation

CBD has potent anti-inflammatory properties throughout the body and brain. In fact, it is such a powerful inflammation reducing agent that one study suggests that CBD may decrease inflammation too much in some people. This could put the body at a higher risk of illness and infection. However, when CBD is used at lower doses or in people who have chronic inflammation, it can be highly effective at improving immune system function.

Cancer Growth Inhibitor

CBD has been found to slow the growth of lung cancer, as well as trigger apoptosis (cell death) in brain and spinal cord tumors. This makes CBD oil a promising supplementary treatment for certain types of cancer. Hopefully, it will garner enough evidence to become the first line of treatment for cancer.

Helps Reduce Seizures

Both THC and CBD have been found to reduce the severity and frequency of seizures, but CBD is clearly a better option. This because it has shown better results than THC, and it doesn’t seem to negatively influence the brain in any way.

 Arthritis Pain Reduction

A study in the European Journal of Pain used an animal model to see if CBD could help people with arthritis manage their pain. Researchers applied a topical gel containing CBD to rats with arthritis for four days.

Their research found a significant drop in inflammation and signs of pain, without additional side effects. This indicates that people using CBD oil for arthritis may find relief from their pain, but more human studies need to be done to confirm these findings.

Improved Quality of Life for People with Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease that affects the entire body through the nerves and brain.

Muscle spasms are one of the most common symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis. Studies have found that short-term use of CBD oil can reduce the spasms.

The results are modest, but many people reported a reduction in symptoms. More human studies are needed to verify these results.

Pain Relief

CBD can also be used for general chronic pain. After compiling the results of dozens of trials and studies, researchers concluded that there is substantial evidence that cannabis is an effective treatment for chronic pain in adults.

Related: What Causes Chronic Inflammation, and How To Stop It For Good

Improved Sleep Quality

Research has found CBD to be more effective than a common insomnia drug at improving the length of sleep. This finding suggests that CBD can be helpful for people with sleep disorders like insomnia.

How CBD Works — The Endocannabinoid System

At this point, you may be thinking that CBD sounds too good to be true. How could a random little plant compound have all of these seemingly unrelated effects on the body? Well — you can thank your endocannabinoid system for that.

Each one of us has an endocannabinoid system that receives and translates signals it receives from cannabinoids in the body. Unfortunately for many cannabis consumers out there, we do not have this system because we’ve evolved to smoke weed every day. The purpose of the endocannabinoid system is to regulate various systems throughout your body with the cannabinoids that your body manufactures.

Even though our knowledge about the role of the endocannabinoid system is still evolving, the available evidence indicates that this system has multiple regulatory roles in neuronal, vascular, metabolic, immune and reproductive systems. Because of its involvement these systems, endocannabinoids affect functions such as cognition, memory, motor movements, pain perception, inflammation, body weight regulation, cardiovascular health, stress response, appetite, and sleep.

How CBD and THC Interact with Our Endocannabinoid System

Cannabinoids from plants like THC and CBD have such a massive impact on our bodies because they mimic the cannabinoids that we make inside our bodies. For example, when we get “high” from THC it is because that cannabinoid is interacting directly with cannabinoid receptors in our cells that end up triggering the experience of feeling “high.”

As you might have alright assumed, CBD interacts a bit differently with our endocannabinoid system than THC. Instead of acting directly on the receptors, CBD activates or inhibits other compounds in the endocannabinoid system.

For example, CBD stops the body from absorbing anandamide, an endocannabinoid in our body that is associated with regulating pain. Increased levels of anandamide in the bloodstream may reduce the amount of pain a person feels.

The distribution of the endocannabinoid system in the brain is also something to take note of.  If you look closely at the brain cells in areas of the brain that go awry in various mental disorders, you will find endocannabinoid receptors. This points us in the direction of a mechanism that explains why THC is linked with psychosis and why CBD mitigates these effects. Perhaps CBD prevents THC or our own cannabinoids from triggering mental health issues.

This is a fascinating hypothesis, but it is beyond the scope of this article. Instead, let’s take our discussion to a practical place to find out what dose we need to experience the benefits of CBD.

How Much CBD Oil Should You Take?

Below are some general CBD dosage guidelines:

  • General Health: start small at 2.5-15mg CBD by mouth daily and increase until you feel positive effects
  • To treat anxiety disorders: oral doses ranging from 300 to 600 mg (supported by multiple studies)
  • To treat chronic pain: 2.5-20 mg CBD by mouth daily (anecdotal suggestion)
  • To treat epilepsy: 200-300 mg CBD by mouth daily with antiepileptic medication (backed by research)
  • To treat sleep disorders like insomnia: 160 mg CBD by mouth daily (supported by multiple studies)

The right dose of CBD varies from person to person. Generally speaking, larger individuals may prefer a higher dose of CBD than smaller people.

If you are not sure how much to take, then start with a smaller dose and scale it up a few milligrams at a time to meet your personal needs. Also, those that have a medical condition should always consult with their healthcare professional before consuming CBD.

Other Considerations When Taking CBD Oil

Using CBD oil can make the medications that you may be taking more or less effective. For example, CBD may improve the effectiveness of antiepileptic drugs such as valproate and clobazam, while being negatively impacted by other antiepileptic drugs like carbamazepine and phenytoin. For this reason and because of how little we know about how CBD interacts with different medications, it is crucial that you discuss CBD oil supplementation with your healthcare professional and make adjustments to your dosages in small increments.

Another thing to consider is the long-term effects that CBD has on hormones and other aspects of health. To this day, there are no studies that examine how CBD oil supplementation impacts the body over extended periods of time. However, current studies suggest that CBD oil is safe at the dosages recommended above in the short and long term.

It should also be noted that all of the studies we explored in this article were performed using either adults or animals. The safety of CBD oil in children and pregnant women is not well understood. We do know, however, that the endocannabinoid system is an active player in the placenta, impacting fetal development. Future research may find that CBD oil can help improve the health of the mother and the fetus during pregnancy, but at this point, there is no evidence to back up that assumption.

Key Takeaways & Recommended CBD Oil Sources

Although the research on CBD oil is scarce, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it can help a wide range of people with a variety conditions.

Research indicates that CBD can help people with:

  • anxiety disorders
  • insomnia
  • psychosis
  • chronic pain
  • arthritis
  • epilepsy
  • chronic inflammation
  • cancer
  • multiple sclerosis

Even if you don’t have one of these conditions, CBD can be helpful for improving general health by reducing stress, pain, and inflammation. Just make sure you get your CBD oil from a trustworthy source because CBD oil — like every other supplement — is not well-regulated.

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WHO Says the World Will Run Out of Antibiotics Able to Treat Bacteria Superbugs

Antibiotic-resistant infections are on the rise. The World Health Organization released a list of the 12 different bacteria strains that could pose the highest level of risk to human health. The list, divided into three sections based on how critical the threat is, represents health problems the WHO feels we should be solving. Conventional medicine is not likely to have those answers. WHO, publishers of the “priority pathogens” list, reports that there are not enough new antibiotics in development to adequately combat these microbes, and the rate that bacteria develops resistance at will outpace new drug development soon.

Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Are and Will Be a Big Problem

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria is scary. The leading cause of death worldwide, ischaemic heart disease, claims 8 million people. If we continue at the current rate of prescribing antibiotics for people, animals, and livestock, 10 million people will die of antibiotic-resistant infections by the year 2050. WHO’s top three “priority pathogens” are Acinetobacter baumannii, pseudomonas aeruginosa, and enterobacteriaceae (E.coli). All three of these infections have already demonstrated significant resistance to antibiotic treatments.

Related: After Taking Antibiotics, This Is What You Need To Do To Restore Healthy Intestinal Flora

What’s Going On With the New Drugs?

So let’s talk about the new antibiotics. Of the 51 antibiotics and biologicals currently in development to treat these “priority pathogens,” the WHO only classifies 8 of them as innovative. The other 25 are modifications of existing treatments and will only function as stop-gap measures.

Why aren’t more antibiotics in the pipeline when numerous health organizations have explicitly stated the worldwide need for them? There isn’t a good answer to that questions, although profit margins are the most likely answer. Antibiotics aren’t meant for long-term use, and the decade long research and development period affects pharmaceutical companies’ return on investment. Drug companies are also reluctant to manufacture orally administered antibiotics, their most accessible form.

Fourteen percent of the drugs currently in development make it to market, and medical professionals argue that needs to change. But fewer drug hurdles are not the answer. More antibiotics aren’t the answer either.

Related: How C. Diff Infections Decrease with Fewer Antibiotics

Why Antibiotics Don’t Work Even When They Work

Doctors did not regularly prescribe colistin. Although powerful, it’s an older drug and causes severe kidney damage. That changed when resistance to modern, more highly-regarded antibiotics became more commonplace, and colistin became the antibiotics of last resort. Now that has changed. Chinese pig farmers used colistin when doctors stopped prescribing it, and the first colistin resistant gene was recorded in November 2015. The gene has spread worldwide, and scientists and healthcare professionals don’t have an answer yet.

Related: How to Detoxify From Antibiotics and Other Chemical Antimicrobials

Should antibiotics be part of the answer though? Drug-resistant strains of bacteria generally occur in people who are already sick and those with weak immune systems. Sick people are given antibiotics. Antibiotics eliminate beneficial bacteria, and damage the immune system. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria has developed in response to an overuse of antibiotics. It’s naive to imagine a world where we go cold-turkey on antibiotics, but every antibiotic usage is giving like the strongest bacteria another opportunity to figure out to survive treatment.

A Few Tips to Not Need Antibiotics

The first step to getting rid of antibiotic use is build up your immune system naturally. If you don’t get sick, there is no need for antibiotics. To do that, you need an immune system ready to take on anything. It’s easier to make and stick to a series of small changes, and there are plenty ways you can start building your immune system today with items found at the average grocery store.

Certain herbs, especially garlic, are your new best friends.

Oregano, calendula, echinacea, and goldenseal are some relatively accessible herbs that boost the immune system. Even easier to find? Garlic. Raw garlic can be added to salads, in snacks, and on dinners. Infections want an easy target, and the allicin found in garlic is a powerful deterrent to those harmful pathogens. If you have a mouth infection, chewing on raw garlic can be beneficial.

Tighten up your diet, and learn to love salads.

Eat as many whole, homemade foods as possible. Your meal prep should become a vegetable version of the will it float game from the Letterman version of the Late Show – Will. It. Salad! The answer is usually yes. The more fresh vegetables, the better. My favorite way to break up that monotony is with homemade hummus, quinoa, fresh tomatoes, and lemon juice. Refined sugar in its many forms damages the body, feeding fungus, bacteria, viruses, and other parasites while lowering the body’s immune system.

Prioritize your sleep.

Sleep deprivation causes an estimated 100,000 car accidents every year. Businesses in U.S. lose 411 million dollars a year due to a lack of sleep. It also makes you more susceptible to pathogens and infection. Lack of sleep suppresses the immune system. According to Diwakar Balachandran, director of the Sleep Center at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, “A lot of studies show our T-cells go down if we are sleep deprived…and inflammatory cytokines go up.” The ultimate in sleeping resets is electronic-free camping for a few days, but most people aren’t able to regularly do that. Popular herbal treatments include B vitamins, healthy fats like vitamin D, tryptophan, valerian root, and chamomile root.

Related: Some Antibiotics May Blind, Cripple, or Kill You

The Creation of Superbugs and Superweeds – Another Strike Against GMOs

Supporters of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) say that they lower the use of pesticides and benefit the environment. However, the record demonstrates that there are growing negative environmental impacts from GMOs. One major problem caused by the widespread use of GMOs, and the herbicides and pesticides they were developed to withstand, is the emergence of superweeds and superbugs – plants and insects now resistant to these chemicals.” – GMO Inside.org

Personal Preparedness

The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and climate change are linked by more than factory farming. We need to rethink the way we prepare for both of these things. The WHO is looking for antibiotics, but antibiotics have played a critical part in developing these bugs. Our food and environment dictate our health, and we have more control over that than modern medicine would have you believe.

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13 Scientifically-Proven Ways to Optimize Your Triglyceride and Cholesterol Levels Naturally

When was the last time you went out to dinner with family or friends? At that table, you can say with almost complete certainty that at least one of them had high LDL cholesterol, high triglycerides, or both.

Sorry to ruin your dinner, but we cannot ignore the fact that:

  • Nearly 1 in every 3 Americans have high LDL cholesterol.
  • Almost 1 in every 3 Americans have above normal triglyceride levels.

Why does this matter? Because both high LDL and triglyceride levels are risk factors for the leading cause of death in the world — heart disease.

There is, however, plenty of good news that is hiding behind these disheartening statistics. To find the silver lining, we need a deeper understanding of triglycerides, cholesterol, and heart disease.

Related: Triglycerides – Optimize The Most Important Biomarker That Most Doctors Ignore

What’s The Deal With Cholesterol, Triglycerides, and Heart Disease?

At first glance, they seem like entirely different entities.

Cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance that occurs naturally in all parts of the body. It floats around the blood bringing essential nutrients like fat-soluble vitamins and fatty acids to cells and get cleaned up by LDL receptors in the liver when the job is done.

Triglycerides, on the other hand, are the most energy dense molecule that provides our cells with energy and is stored in fat cells when we have enough energy.

Heart disease is the culmination of cell damage, inflammation, and plaque buildup that occurs in the blood vessels. This disease process can lead to a heart attack, chest pain (angina), or stroke.

How could cholesterol, triglycerides, and heart disease possibly be related? They don’t seem to have anything in common (yet). Let’s look a bit closer at what happens when things go wrong to find out how they are linked.

Related: Lower Cholesterol and Prevent Heart Disease Without Drugs

The Intimate Link Between Triglycerides, Cholesterol, and Heart Disease

Heart disease is a complex issue with many causes, but we do know one of the mechanisms that causes the damage, inflammation, and plaque build up that is characteristic of heart disease. This mechanism begins with a form of LDL cholesterol, which is called small, dense LDL, that can easily be damaged and cause harm to the cells that make up the blood vessels.

In response to the harm that the damaged LDL particles cause, the immune system activates and inflammation levels increase. The inflammation increases the chance that more small, dense LDL particles become damaged and destroy even more cells that line the blood vessels.

To prevent the damage from getting out of hand, the immune system neutralizes the damaged LDL particles and turns them into plaque. This mechanism of heart disease explains why high LDL and chronic inflammation increase the likelihood of heart disease, but what about triglycerides?

Let’s look at what happened before the small, dense LDL particles started circulating in the blood. As the LDL was being formed, one important factor determined which form of LDL it became — triglycerides. In fact, studies have confirmed that high triglycerides lead to the creation of more atherogenic LDL particles.

To sum up all of this complex biochemistry in one sentence: high triglyceride levels lead to the creation of more potentially atherogenic LDL cholesterol, which increases the risk of heart disease significantly.

Luckily, you can lower your triglycerides and optimize your cholesterol levels in one foul swoop by following these 13 simple suggestions.

13 Ways to Lower Your Triglycerides Naturally

1. Remove All Refined Sugars From Your Diet

Studies have found that each additional daily serving of sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with a 2.25 mg/dL increase in triglyceride levels, as well as increases in insulin resistance, LDL cholesterol, and systolic blood pressure and a decrease in HDL cholesterol.

Luckily, the exact opposite is true as well. When you remove all sugar-sweetened beverages from your diet, you will improve your cholesterol and triglyceride levels significantly. If you take it one step further and remove all added sugar from your diet, you will be on the fast track to good health.

Related: Healthy Alternative Sugars and More

2. Focus On Weight Loss

For those who are overweight or obese, a weight loss of 5% to 10% usually results in a 20% decrease in triglycerides, a 15% reduction in LDL-C, and an 8% to 10% increase in HDL-C. That is a win-win-win-win situation for your health.

One of the quickest ways to lose weight is by eliminating all processed foods from your diet and replacing it with whole foods. Have delicious detox cranberry lemonade instead of fruit juice or soda. Instead of fast food for lunch, make this surprisingly delicious salad

3. Stop Drinking Alcohol

Based on the data from many studies on alcohol consumption and triglycerides, it is estimated that the ingestion of 1 oz of alcohol per day corresponds to a 5% to 10% higher triglyceride concentration than found in nondrinkers. If you have high triglycerides, it is best to abstain from alcohol completely.

4. Eliminate All Trans Fats

Trans fatty acids are found in all partially and fully hydrogenated oils. They consistently cause significant increases in triglycerides and atherogenic LDL cholesterol levels, which increases cardiovascular disease risk dramatically. Stick to natural fats from nuts, olives, avocado, coconut, fish, meat, and dairy.

5.Establish a Sleep Schedule

One way to improve cholesterol, triglycerides, and energy levels at the same time is by prioritizing sleep. Make sure you are sleeping at around the same time every night and getting enough sleep (7-9 hours).

If you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, turn off all lights and electronics at-least 30 minutes before bedtime and meditate. By doing this, you will increase melatonin and decrease stress levels, making it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep throughout the night. Follow the same meditation and sleep schedule every week to wake up feeling more refreshed and healthier each morning.

6. Eat More Fiber

In seven studies that compared high fiber diets and low fiber diets, triglyceride levels decreased by 8% in the high-fiber groups. The same pattern emerges even when the high fiber diet contains many more carbohydrates than a moderate-carbohydrate low-fiber diet.

What does this mean for you? Eat more high-fiber plant foods like vegetables and your body will thank you.

Related: Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

7. Exercise

Many studies have found that the most active people have the lowest fasting triglyceride levels. For example, men who jogged for 10 miles a week had a 20% lower fasting triglyceride level than sedentary men, while men with even higher activity levels (>20 miles of jogging weekly) had the lowest mean fasting triglyceride level (~86 mg/dL).

The good news is that if you are not a fan of jogging, you can get results from walking as well. Studies on overweight people with higher triglyceride levels experienced triglyceride reductions (of about 26%) after walking at a brisk pace for 12 miles each week. To get these results, all you have to do is walk for about 30 minutes at a brisk pace every day.

Not a fan of walking either? Bring an audiobook or podcast with you to make it more enjoyable.

8. Include Nuts In Your Diet

Nuts provide a concentrated dose of fiber and healthy fats, which work together to lower blood triglycerides and improve cholesterol.

An analysis of 61 studies on the effects that nuts have on our health showed that each serving of tree nuts decreased triglycerides by 2.2 mg/dL. Other epidemiological studies found that you will get the greatest health benefits if you consume between 3–7 servings of nuts per week.

9. Increase Your Omega 3 Intake

Studies have found that consuming around 4 g of marine-derived omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids per day can decrease triglyceride concentrations by 25% to 30%. Because of these findings, the American Heart Association recommends getting 2 to 4 g of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) plus docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) per day for people with high triglycerides. This recommendation can be met by taking a fish oil supplement or eating 2 to 4 3-ounce servings of wild caught (not farm-raised) sardines or salmon.

Another important thing to mention is that there is a particular reason why “marine-derived” omega 3s are mentioned, rather than other types of “plant-derived” omega 3s. This is because non–marine-based omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids from foods like walnuts, canola oil, and flaxseeds have not demonstrated a consistent reduction in triglycerides like marine-derived DHA and EPA.

Related: How to Reverse Fatty Liver Disease (With Diet Plan)

10. Supplement With Niacin

This natural B vitamin has been shown to reduce triglycerides by 20-50% and increase “healthy” HDL cholesterol levels. However, it is important to take niacin as a part of a natural b-complex supplement for best results.

Related: Mental Health, Physical Health & B Vitamins – Nature’s Valium

11. Eat More Medium Chain Triglycerides (MCTs)

Yes, you read that correctly. To improve cholesterol and triglyceride levels, you should consume more triglycerides. But make sure they are the medium-chain kind of triglyceride.

MCTs are different from the long chain triglycerides that we commonly find in dairy and meat because MCTs skip the normal process of fat digestion and go straight to the liver. In the liver, the MCTs are often converted into ketones for fuel.

For this reason, many studies have found MCTs to increase weight loss when compared to other healthy fats like olive oil. MCTs also have been found to decrease triglycerides more than olive oil as well.

Coconut oil is the best natural source of MCTs (and despite the bad press, it provides us with many health benefits). However, if you need an unmistakable energy boost that will improve your health more rapidly, then supplement with pure MCT oil. Use it as the oil for your salad dressings or blend it into your smoothies.

12. Use More Garlic

Garlic has potent anti-inflammatory properties that can help improve cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Garlic extract’s triglyceride and cholesterol-lowering effects continue to be confirmed in several animal studies.

13. Supplement With Curcumin

Curcumin is an anti-inflammatory compound that is found in turmeric. It has been found to have many powerful effects on the body from improving brain health to relieving chronic pain.

One of turmeric’s benefits is blood triglyceride reduction. In fact, A 2012 study found that a low dose of curcumin can cause a significant drop in blood triglycerides.

Putting It All Together

Improving triglyceride and cholesterol levels is simple. By doing so, you can prevent and reverse heart disease.

For the best results:

  • Eliminate all processed foods to improve health and increase fat loss.
  • Implement a sleep schedule and improve sleep quality.
  • Exercise for at least 30 minutes a day.
  • Supplement with marine-derived omega 3s, curcumin, niacin, and/or garlic extract.
  • Eat more MCTs from coconut oil or an MCT oil supplement.
  • Avoid alcohol, trans fats, and added sugar.
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