Provocative new research suggests international rules that ban potentially infectious tuberculosis patients from flying are too stringent, and airline passengers are really at little risk from catching TB from a fellow traveler.

The paper is controversial. U.S. health officials disagree, and a prominent TB expert says the findings are based on paltry data and current guidelines are appropriate.

The research analyzes 13 earlier studies of 4,300 airline passengers from six countries. Only two studies offered convincing evidence of an infected passenger spreading the disease to others.

There were only 10 infections diagnosed in thousands of passengers who flew with infected travelers.

The paper mentions what may be the most famous incident of a TB-infected airline passenger: Andrew Speaker, a Georgia lawyer with a drug-resistant form of TB who ignored government advice and flew to and from Europe in 2007. Hundreds of passengers who traveled with him were tested, and none was found to have tuberculosis.

Sources:

• The Lancet Infectious Diseases March 2010; 10(3):176-183

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Tuberculosis (TB) made headlines back in 2007, when Georgia lawyer Andrew Speaker went against government advice and flew to Europe and back while infected with a drug-resistant form of TB.

International World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines currently recommend that a person with TB should not fly until they are no longer infectious. The guidelines also recommend tracing airline passengers who were seated in nearby rows to an infected person for longer than eight hours.

These measures are intended to curb the spread of tuberculosis, but they are based on limited research and their true benefit is unknown.

That's why Dr. Ibrahim Abubakar conducted the above study, to determine whether the risk of contracting TB during airline travel is a real concern. After analyzing 13 studies of 4,300 airline passengers, he found that only two studies showed evidence of an infected passenger spreading TB to others.

In all, of the thousands of passengers who flew with TB-infected individuals, only 10 subsequent infections were diagnosed.

His conclusions, which have been admonished by U.S. health officials, were that it might be unnecessary to ban TB patients from air travel, as well as test other passengers and crew for possible infection, because the risks of catching TB from a fellow passenger are actually very low.

Does Flying Increase Your Chances of Getting Sick?

Air travel, with its frequent delays, security hassles, cramped quarters, and jet lag concerns, can be stressful, but does it inherently make you more likely to contract a contagious disease like TB?

In the last two decades, for instance, airplane manufacturers have elevated air re-circulation levels to as high as 50 percent of all cabin air in an effort to reduce the engines' workload, thus increasing the planes' fuel-efficiency.

On a typical large commercial jet aircraft, there are about 20 air exchanges per hour while cruising, with the obvious concern being that this "used" air may be contaminating the cabin with infectious agents.

That said, the latest WHO report found there is no evidence that recirculation of cabin air facilitates the transmission of infectious disease agents on board.

Further, a University of California, San Francisco study found recycled air on short-term flights is no more likely to cause colds than flights using fresh air. The researchers interviewed 1,100 passengers before and one week after an approximate two-hour flight and reported that the levels of those with colds and colds with runny noses were virtually the same between recycled air and fresh air flyers.

As this report confirms, it is the competency of your body's own immune system that determines whether or not you will get sick. The infectious bacteria and viruses that may circulate around an airplane cabin are merely triggers for an already weakened immune system.

Your Immune System Determines Whether or Not You'll Get Sick

Anytime you're in a confined public space, you run the risk of being exposed to germs. In fact, you're exposed to germs just about 24/7, every day of your life.

But the solution to staying healthy is not to turn into a modern-day Howard Hughes where you avoid all public interactions at any cost. Not only is this not feasible, but it's not addressing the foundational cause of the problem.

The problem with the WHO air travel guidelines for TB is that they fully believe that the bacteria (and in other cases viruses) are responsible for all the damage.

It is my belief, and that of nearly all natural health care practitioners, that these infectious agents only serve as triggers to cause the illness, but what is required or responsible for the actual infection is a dysfunctional immune system.

When I lecture, I frequently use the analogy of disease to darkness and health to light. If you shine a light in a dark room it is not dark anymore. Darkness and light simply can't coexist. Similarly if you are healthy you can have massive exposure to infectious agents and you simply will NOT get sick.

Just like light and darkness it is very difficult, if not impossible in most cases, for a strong immune system and infectious disease to exist together.

It is the state of your immune system -- not the bacteria or virus itself -- that determines whether or not you will get sick, even if you come in contact with the germ.

Are You Taking This Simple Precaution to Virtually Eliminate Your TB Risk?

Although nearly one-third of the world's population carries the tuberculosis bacteria, only about 0.2 percent of those infected with tuberculosis (TB) actually develop a clinically significant infection. This fact alone indicates that something other than the bacteria is responsible for developing the disease.

Several studies have appeared in the last decade indicating that vitamin D is one of the major keys that dictate whether you will actually develop the disease upon exposure. These studies have all come to the conclusion that vitamin D deficiency sets off the disease if you are a carrier of the bacteria.

One previous study was able to show an astonishing nearly 100 percent resolution rate by treating TB patients with 10,000 units of vitamin D daily (compared with the paltry 400 units usually advocated by conventional medicine).

This is not too surprising as prior to the advent of antibiotics for the treatment of TB, solariums, in which sun exposure was the primary therapy, was highly effective for TB.

Researchers have discovered that your white blood cells convert the vitamin D that your skin produces from proper sun exposure into an active form, which helps form a protein that kills the tuberculosis bacteria.

Therefore the more severe your vitamin D deficiency is, the higher your risk of developing the active form of TB.

Vitamin D is also necessary for your immune system to function properly, and has been well documented to increase the production of over 200 antimicrobial peptides that fight infection.

I've written quite extensively on the many health benefits of vitamin D. In fact, one recent meta-analysis of 18 randomized controlled trials concluded that supplemental vitamin D significantly reduces mortality from ALL diseases!

For a refresher on this essential nutrient, I recommend viewing my free one-hour video lecture on vitamin D.

10 Tips for Enhancing Your Immune Response Before Air Travel

If you know you're going to be on a long flight soon, it makes sense to take extra precautions to ensure your immune system is functioning at its peak. I actually recommend you follow these tips year-round, regardless of your travel plans, as you will inevitably be exposed to bacteria and viruses in your daily life as well.

Following these guidelines -- which form my 10 basic tenets of health -- will help you optimize your health and immune function, and by doing so, minimize your risk of developing disease.

1. Address your emotional traumas and manage your stress

2. Get optimal exposure to sunlight or a safe tanning bed, or take oral vitamin D this is not possible

3. Drink plenty of clean water

4. Limit your exposure to toxins

5. Consume healthy fat

6. Eat a healthy diet that's right for your nutritional type (paying very careful attention to keeping your insulin levels down)

7. Eat plenty of raw food

8. Optimize your insulin and leptin levels

9. Exercise

10. Get plenty of good sleep

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  Sniffling, Sneezing, and Flying

 Comments (20)

Diet Coke and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health have joined forces to raise awareness about women's risk of heart disease. Diet Coke's Red Dress Program will take center stage at high-profile events.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest points out that Coca-Cola, whose products are not exactly heart healthy, is a strange partner for the NHLBI.

Are such partnerships a benign win-win? History suggests otherwise.

In 1984, Kellogg cooked up a partnership with the National Cancer Institute to put health claims for fiber on the boxes of All-Bran cereals. In doing so, Kellogg (and NCI) went around the FDA and undermined that agency's control over health claims on food packages -- leading to problems that the agency is still struggling to fix.

Sources:

• Food Politics February 17, 2010

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Diet Coke teaming up with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to raise awareness for women's heart health programs is laughable . if it weren't such a sad testimony to the cozy relationships between corporate giants and U.S. public health organizations

The irony here is that Coke is one of the main retailers of sugar in the U.S. and it is very clear that sugar, primarily in the form of high fructose corn syrup, which provides the most food calories in the U.S., is actually leading the charge for increasing heart disease.

Drinking diet soda has been clearly linked to an increased risk of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors such as excessive fat around your waist, high cholesterol, high blood sugar and high blood pressure, all of which can raise your risk of heart disease, not to mention diabetes.

Diet soda, like most all diet foods, also increases your chances of becoming obese, and we all know that obesity in turn raises your risk of heart disease!

And, again, this doesn't even take into account Coca-Cola's other mainstay product, regular Coke, which is loaded with high fructose corn syrup --­ the major cause of the obesity epidemic.

Can You Say "Sell-Out"?

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is the parent organization to NHLBI, is seen by many Americans as a group of neutral government experts who set out to provide the public with honest, reliable, unbiased health information.

In reality, NIH scientists have long been open to partnerships with the "enemy," so long as the pay-off was lucrative enough. According to records, at least 530 government scientists at the NIH have taken fees, stock or stock options from biomedical companies in recent years.

Sad to say, but I've come to expect these kind of underhanded dealings when it comes to federal agencies . but I expected better of the Olympics.

Olympics Sells Out to Coke, McDonald's

If you watched this year's winter Olympics, you've surely seen the ads from companies like Coke and McDonald's, both of which were among the most highly visible Olympic sponsors.

Now kids and adults alike have the pleasure of seeing two of the world's biggest junk-food brands side-by-side with some of the world's greatest athletes . and are left with the impression that to win Olympic Gold they need only grab a Big Mac and fries, and wash it down with a long swig of Coke.

It's really incredible that Coke is the official "Beverage of Choice" for the Olympics, while McDonald's is the "Restaurant of Choice." You can rest assured that the U.S. would not have topped the world in total medals won if their athletes subsisted on a diet of Coke and McDonald's!

McDonald's has even been promoting shameless games encouraging people to guess how certain Olympic athletes eat their McNuggets, while running commercials showing athletes celebrating a victory with McDonald's value meal!

For an event that prides itself on physical fitness and athletic greatness, what are they teaching the world's children? Surely we can do better than this.

The Major Cause of the Obesity Epidemic

Getting back to Coca-Cola's partnership with women's heart health . it has to be pointed out that soda is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Fructose is actually the number one source of calories in the United States, and it is very clear that it is the primary cause of the obesity epidemic.

If you received most of your carbs from vegetables and fruits as most people did a century ago, you'd only consume about 15 grams per day -- a far cry from the 73 grams per day the typical person receives from their diets today. Sadly another 25% of people consume more than 130 grams of fructose per day.

It isn't that fructose itself is bad -- it is the MASSIVE DOSES you're exposed to that make it dangerous.

There are two reasons fructose is so damaging:

• Your body metabolizes fructose in a much different way than glucose. The entire burden of metabolizing fructose falls on your liver.

• People are consuming fructose in enormous quantities, which has made the negative effects much more profound.

The metabolism of fructose by your liver creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and causes gout.

And where as glucose suppresses the hunger hormone ghrelin and stimulates leptin, which suppresses your appetite, fructose has no effect on ghrelin and interferes with your brain's communication with leptin. The result is overeating, weight gain and ultimately obesity.

If you're obese, you're also at an increased risk of heart disease, which is another glaring reason why Coca-Cola's partnership with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute is so absurd.

I strongly recommend you keep your fructose consumption to below 25 grams per day, and you view some sample fructose contents in fruits here. There are about 40 grams of HFCS per can of soda, so if you drink one a day you're already way over the limit.

And please don't be fooled by the myth that diet soda is somehow better than regular. Drinking diet soda is clearly linked to obesity as well!

Keep Your Eyes Wide Open

Deceptive marketing practices, such as those being used by Diet Coke and McDonald's, can lead you to subconsciously prefer certain foods. If you see enough Olympians with a Coke in hand, for instance, suddenly your daily habit may not seem so bad.

Children, of course, are especially vulnerable to these messages.

So please make an effort to seek out the ulterior motives that are present when health agencies join forces with junk food manufacturers. And, if you're a parent or teacher, please take the time to explain the realities to your children as well.

We don't need a generation of kids aspiring to become Olympic athletes by making Coke and McDonald's their "foods of choice." And we don't need to set women up with the false knowledge that drinking Diet Coke is a smart choice for a healthy heart.

If you want REAL tips to keep your heart healthy, I've compiled many of them here -- and you'll notice that not one involves sipping on an artificially sweetened soda of any kind.

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 Comments (24)

Twenty-plus years of research on antidepressants, from the old tricyclics to the newer selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) show that their benefit is hardly more than what patients get when they take a placebo.

More and more scientists who study depression and the drugs that treat it are concluding that antidepressants are basically expensive Tic Tacs.

Research has found that patients do improve, often substantially, on SSRIs, tricyclics, and even MAO inhibitors. This improvement is the basis for the ubiquitous claim that antidepressants work.

But when researchers compare the improvement in patients taking the drugs with the improvement in those taking dummy pills, they find that the difference is minuscule.

Nonetheless, the number of Americans taking antidepressants doubled in a decade, from 13.3 million in 1996 to 27 million in 2005.

This is a very important point, folks.  In many cases, your beliefs are as or more effective than pills when it comes to achieving health.

The second article linked below frowns on the notion of homeopathy, because some people think it may work as a placebo.  But the article shouldn't be so dismissive.  The placebo effect is very powerful.  Thousands of clinical studies have found that the placebo effect can aid in healing or even cure disease.

What it comes down to is the crucial mind-body connection.  Those who have hope and belief in the solutions they try will likely find them working.  That's why it is so key to keep your health freedom, and pay attention to the huge corporations that continually discredit alternative methods.

Typically, more natural healing techniques won't harm you, and many of the drugs will.  In time, energy medicine will be better understood, and perhaps this placebo element will be utilized in such a way that no pill will ever be necessary -- your mind will be stimulated to heal on its own.  Similarly, those who pray or meditate for healing should not be ridiculed either.

Simply labeling something as a placebo and not pursuing it any further misses a key point.  The so-called "placebo effect" may very well point the way to the future or medicine.

Sources:

• Newsweek January 29, 2010

• New Scientist February 1, 2010

• The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) January 6, 2010; 303(1):47-53

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Every year, 230 million prescriptions for antidepressants are filled, making them one of the most prescribed drugs in the United States. The psychiatric industry itself is a $330 billion industry -- not bad for an enterprise that offers little in the way of cures.

Despite all of these prescriptions, more than one in 20 Americans are depressed, according to the most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)[i]. Of those depressed Americans, 80 percent say they have some level of functional impairment, and 27 percent say their condition makes it extremely difficult to do everyday tasks like work, activities of daily living, and getting along with others.

So why are so many people still feeling so low, even though the use of antidepressants -- medicine's answer for depression -- has doubled in just one decade, from 13.3 million in 1996 to 27 million in 2005?

Because they don't work.

Unfortunately, antidepressant drugs are no more effective than sugar pills. Some studies have even found that sugar pills may produce better results than antidepressants!

Personally, I believe the reason for this astounding finding is that both pills work via the placebo effect, but the sugar pills produce far fewer detrimental side effects.

Many people forget that antidepressants come with a slew of side effects, some of which are deadly. Approximately 750,000 people attempt suicide each year in the US, and about 30,000 of those complete it.[ii] Taking a drug that is unlikely to relieve your symptoms and may actually increase your risk of killing yourself certainly does not seem like a rational, healthy choice.

In addition, since most of the treatment focus is on drugs, many of the safe and natural treatment options that DO work are being completely ignored.

No wonder so many people are suffering.

Detecting Depression in Yourself or a Loved One

Unfortunately, about two-thirds of people with depression go undiagnosed. Untreated depression is the number one cause of suicide, which is a sad testament to the clinical astuteness of most physicians.

The diagnostic clues provided in this past article are telling indicators that you or someone you love might be suffering from this illness, so please review them now.

Depression is much more than just feeling blue once in a while.

One set of diagnostic criteria used to assess depression is known as "SIGECAPS," which stands for sleep, interest, guilt, energy, concentration, appetite, psychomotor and suicide.

If four or more of these items are a concern, it strongly suggests major depression.

However, it is important to watch for symptoms besides mood changes, considering relevant information from friends and family as well.

If you have been feeling down for two weeks or more and have lost interest in activities you once enjoyed, I'd encourage you to consider the treatment options for healing depression suggested later in this article, and not take potentially dangerous drugs as your first option.

Notes on Suicide: When to Worry

Most suicide attempts are expressions of extreme distress, not harmless bids for attention. A person who appears suicidal needs immediate professional help.

If you think someone is suicidal, do not leave him or her alone.

Try to get the person to seek immediate help from his or her doctor or the nearest hospital emergency room, or call 911. Eliminate access to firearms or other potential suicide aids, including unsupervised access to medications.

Besides straightforward or "sideways" comments about not wanting to live any longer, some of the red flags that a person has a high risk for self-harm include[iii]:

• Acquiring a weapon

• Hoarding medication

• No plan for the future

• Putting affairs in order

• Making or changing a will

• Giving away personal belongings

• Mending grievances

• Checking on insurance policies

• Withdrawing from people

Your suicide risk is higher if you have recently experienced any of the following extremely stressful life situations (this is certainly not a comprehensive list):

• Loss of a significant relationship or death of a loved one

• Diagnosis of a terminal illness

• Loss of financial security or livelihood

• Loss of home or employment

• Abuse, rape or other serious emotional trauma

People sometimes become more suicidal as they begin the climb up out of depression, which is one means by which antidepressant drugs can increase suicide risk.

One of the reasons for this is, as your lethargy lifts, you can more easily find the energy to carry out a suicide plan. Another possible reason is that you might feel more in control and therefore at peace with your situation once you've made a decision to end your own life.

This is important to keep in mind because people may appear as if they are feeling better, when in fact, they are more at risk.

Remember that these are only general guidelines, and often your own intuition is the best indicator that someone you love is really in trouble.

If you are feeling desperate or have any thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a toll-free number 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or call 911, or simply go to your nearest Hospital Emergency Department. You can't make long-term plans for lifestyle changes when you are in a crisis!

First let someone help you through the crisis -- then you can deal with your depression later, when you're feeling more resourceful.

Why Antidepressant Drugs Don't Work

Every time a new study about the efficacy of antidepressants hits the journals, we see antidepressants plunge further into the abyss.

One study that is hot off the press in the January 2010 issue of JAMA[iv] concludes that there is little evidence that SSRIs (a popular group of antidepressants that includes Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft and others) have any benefit to people with mild to moderate depression, and that they work no better than a placebo.

That means that SSRIs are 33 percent effective, just like a sugar pill.

Another study presented at the Neuroscience conference in 2009 tells a similar story.

Researchers from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine shared two major findings:

1. Antidepressant drugs were not developed for depression. Researchers used certain drugs to manipulate the behavior of stressed animals, and then concluded (erroneously) that the drugs would be "good antidepressants." But chronic stress does not cause the same molecular changes that depression does, making the hypothesis incorrect.

   So, antidepressants were actually designed to treat stress, rather than depression -- which is one reason they are so ineffective.

2. An imbalance of neurotransmitters in your brain may not trigger depressive symptoms as has long been thought. Instead, the biochemical events that lead to depression appear to start in the development and functioning of neurons. This means antidepressants focus on the effect of depression and completely miss the cause. yet another reason why they are so ineffective for most people.

Unfortunately, the lead researcher is hoping the research will "open up new routes to develop new antidepressants," when in reality a drug solution is not the answer.

Similarly, in 2008, a meta-analysis published in PLoS Medicine[v] concluded that the difference between antidepressants and placebo pills is very small -- and that both are ineffective for most depressed patients. Only the most severely depressed showed any response to antidepressants at all, and that response was quite minimal.

The article states:

"Given these results, the researchers conclude that there is little reason to prescribe new-generation antidepressant medications to any but the most severely depressed patients unless alternative treatments have been ineffective."

These are not new revelations.

Back in 2002, a meta-analysis of published clinical trials indicated that 75 percent of the response to antidepressants could be duplicated by placebo.

Many antidepressants may actually make your "mental illness" worse, because when your body doesn't feel good, your mood crashes along with it.

The List of Horrible Side Effects Grows

Depression -- or described another way, "unrepaired emotional short-circuiting" -- can cause far more profound negative health consequences than all the denatured food and toxins you expose yourself to daily.

Psychiatric drugs kill 42,000 people every year. And the death count continues to rise.

Antidepressants are the largest category of psychiatric drugs. It wouldn't be so bad if antidepressants were harmless sugar pills, occasionally showing benefit simply because you believe they will work.

But in addition to being ineffective, they are far from harmless and are now associated with many serious health problems:

• Diabetes: Your risk for type 2 diabetes is two to three times higher if you take antidepressants, according to one study.

• Problems with your immune system: SSRIs cause serotonin to remain in your nerve junctions longer, interfering with immune cell signaling and T cell growth.

• Suicidal thoughts and feelings and violent behavior : Your risk for suicide may be twice as high if you take SSRIs; seven out of twelve school shootings were by children who were either on antidepressants or withdrawing from them.

• Stillbirths: A Canadian study of almost 5,000 mothers found that women on SSRIs were twice as likely to have a stillbirth, and almost twice as likely to have a premature or low birth weight baby; another study showed a 40 percent increased risk for birth defects such as cleft palate.

• Brittle bones: One study showed women on antidepressants have a 30 percent higher risk of spinal fracture and a 20 percent high risk for all other fractures.

• Stroke: Your risk for stroke may be 45 percent higher if you are on antidepressants, possibly related to how the drugs affect blood clotting

• Death: Overall death rates have been found to be 32 percent higher in women on antidepressants.

Diabetes or stroke will kill you, but suicide is much quicker. The link between suicide and antidepressants is so strong that these drugs have been mandated to have suicide warnings.

Let's consider one of the newer psychotropic medications that is now being given to people for depression: Abilify (also called aripiprazole).

Abilify is licensed for the treatment of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism, and major depression (when taken with antidepressants). It is used to augment the effects of the antidepressants -- because, of course, they work so poorly!

But did you know that Abilify has 75 different side effects associated with it!?

How absurd is it to take a drug that works about as well as a sugar pill but exposes you to this minefield of ills?

Andy Behrman, a former spokesman for Abilify and Bristol Myers Squibb, which manufactures Abilify, stopped taking the drug in order to avoid the final side effects -- coma and death. He made a short video warning you about the drug.

If a former spokesman for the company is sticking his neck out to warn you, how warm and fuzzy does that make you feel about what the pharmaceutical companies are telling you?

Even More Reasons to Avoid Antidepressants

Professor of Medicine Lennard J. Davis wrote an excellent article about SSRIs for the January 2010 issue of Psychology Today[vi]. He points out that physicians routinely prescribe not one, but two or three SSRIs and other psychopharmacological drugs in combination -- with really no studies to back them up.

Physicians who engage in what is known as "polypharmacy" are hoping that if one didn't work, maybe two or three will.

Davis writes:

"Doctors are in essence performing uncontrolled experiments on their patients, hoping that in some scattershot way they might hit on a solution. But of course drugs have dangerous interactions and most physicians are shooting in the dark with all the dangers that attend such bad marksmanship."

In fact, the entire serotonin hypothesis for depression should be given a serious review.

You have heard for years that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance of your neurotransmitters, mainly serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, but there's a serious lack of research to prove it.

This theory has become so indoctrinated into our culture and media that most people just accept it as fact, simply because they've heard it so often. Even mental health practitioners!

But there is no way to measure your serotonin or your dopamine without cutting open your head. Scientists can't even decide on what a "normal" serotonin level is, much less an abnormal one.

Why do some depressed folks have high serotonin levels, while many happy folks have low ones?

Your brain is far too complex for this overly simplistic explanation to work.

More and more "psychiatric diseases" are appearing in the literature all the time, and many could be considered "lifestyle disorders:"

• Do you shop too much? You might have Compulsive Shopping Disorder.

• Do you have a difficult time with multiplication? You could be suffering from Dyscalculia.

• Do you tend to overdo the lattes and then can't sleep at night? You might have Caffeine-Induced Sleep Disorder. But take care not to go off that coffee too quickly, lest you end up with Caffeine Withdrawal Disorder.

• Can't get along with your brother or sister? It might be Sibling Rivalry Disorder.

• Spending too much time surfing the Web? It might be Internet Addiction Disorder.

• Spending too much time at the gym? You'd better see someone for your Bigorexia or Muscle Dysmorphia.

• And my favorite -- are your terrified by the number 13? You could have Triskaidekaphobia!

You get the idea.

Point is, each of these new "diseases" gets added to the next edition of the official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) if enough people show up with those traits. And increasingly, the criteria for inclusion involves whether or not the disorder responds to a category of drugs.

If it does, the phenomenon is dubbed a disease.

Of the 297 mental disorders described in the DSM, none can be objectively measured by empirical tests. In other words, they're subjective. Mental illness symptoms within this manual are arbitrarily assigned by a subjective voting system by a psychiatric panel.[vii]

So, they're making diseases to fit the drugs -- not the other way around!

It's almost impossible to see a psychiatrist today without being diagnosed with a mental disorder because so many behavior variations are described as pathology. And you have a 99 percent chance of emerging from your psychiatrist's office with a prescription in your hand.

Why so much reliance on popping a pill for every mental or emotional ill?

Because writing a prescription is much faster and takes far less effort than sitting down with you and talking for a while to help you figure out why you are distressed. The shared goal of the drug companies and the overall medical system is to ultimately have drugs coursing through the bloodstreams of every living soul.

If Antidepressants Don't Work, Then What Does?

There are five important strategies to consider if you are facing depression. These strategies have nothing but positive effects and are generally very inexpensive to implement.

1. Do a Bit of Emotional Housekeeping

   It is helpful to view depression as a sign that your body and your life are out of balance, rather than as a disease. What you need to do is regain your balance.

   One of the key ways to do this involves addressing negative emotions that may be trapped beneath your level of awareness. My favorite method of emotional cleansing is Meridian Tapping Technique (MTT), a form of psychological acupressure.

   If you have severe depression, it would be best to consult with a mental health professional who is also an MTT practitioner. But for most of you with depression symptoms, this is a technique you can learn to do effectively on your own. In fact, it's so easy that children are learning it.

   There are other effective stress-management methods you could try as well, such as meditation, journaling, breathing exercises, yoga, or simply sharing your feelings with a close friend.

   Experiment with a number of approaches, and then pick the methods you find most helpful.

2. Get Regular Exercise

   Regular exercise is one of the "secret weapons" to overcoming depression. It works by helping to normalize your insulin levels while boosting the "feel good" hormones in your brain.

   As Dr. James S. Gordon, MD, a world-renowned expert in using mind-body medicine to heal depression, said:

   "What we're finding in the research on physical exercise is that exercise is at least as good as antidepressants for helping people who are depressed. physical exercise changes the level of serotonin in your brain. And it increases your endorphin levels, your "feel good hormones."

   And also -- and these are amazing studies -- exercise can increase the number of cells in your brain, in the region of the brain called the hippocampus. These studies were first done on animals, and they're very important because sometimes in depression, there are fewer of those cells in the hippocampus.

   But you can actually change your brain with exercise. So it's got to be part of everybody's treatment, everybody's plan."

   If you want to establish an exercise routine, please review my exercise page for some specific recommendations about how to incorporate exercise into your life.

3. Improve Your Nutrition

   Another factor that cannot be overlooked is your diet.

   Foods have an immense impact on your body and your brain, and eating whole foods as described in my nutrition plan will best support your mental and physical health.

   Avoiding sugar and grains will help normalize your insulin and leptin levels, which is another important aspect of depression. Sugar causes chronic inflammation, which disrupts your body's normal immune function and can wreak havoc on your brain.

   Sugar also suppresses a key growth hormone called BDNF (brain derived neurotrophic factor), which promotes healthy brain neurons and plays a vital role in memory. BDNF levels are critically low in people with depression, which animal models suggest may actually be causative.

4. Supplement Your Diet with Omega-3 Fatty Acids

   I strongly recommend taking a high-quality, animal-based omega-3 fat, like krill oil. This may be the single most important nutrient for optimal brain function, thereby helping to prevent depression.

   DHA is one of the Omega-3 fatty acids in fish and krill oil, and your brain is highly dependent on it. Low DHA levels have been linked to depression, memory loss, Schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's disease.

5. Let the Sun Shine Down on You

   Have you ever noticed how great it can feel to spend time outdoors on a sunny day? Well, it turns out that getting safe sun exposure, which allows your body to produce vitamin D, is great for your mood.

   One study even found that people with the lowest levels of vitamin D were 11 times more prone to depression than those who received adequate vitamin D.

   You can optimize your vitamin D either by sunlight exposure or by using a safe tanning bed, or by taking a high-quality vitamin D3 supplement.

Think Twice Before Filling That Script

Think twice, be skeptical, and question a perfunctory depression-type diagnosis you might receive after a short discussion with a rushed practitioner.

It is easy to become seduced into thinking a pill might relieve your pain, especially when it comes with the endorsement of your physician. Feeling depressed is never pleasant, and you naturally want to escape it as quickly as possible.

But drugs should always be your last choice, and antidepressants are no exception.

There is a better way! You wouldn't want to expose yourself to the enormous risks these drugs present, especially for so little gain.

Hang in there, and if you implement the healthy strategies above, I bet you'll soon find yourself feeling better.

[i] Pratt LA and Brody DJ. "Depression in the United States household population 205-2006," (September 2008) NCHS Data Brief No. 7 

[ii] Caruso K. Suicide.org 

[iii] Read K. (March 5, 2008) "Red flags: Warning signs of suicide" 

[iv] Fournier JC, DeRubeis RJ, Hollon SD, Dimidjian S, Amsterdam JD, Shelton RC, and Fawcett J. "Antidepressant drug effects and depression severity," JAMA 2010; 303(1):47-53 

[v] Kirsch I, Deacon BJ, Huedo-Medina TB, Scoboria A, Moore TJ, et al. 2008 Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration. PLoS Med 5(2): e45. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050045 

[vi] Davis L. (January 7, 2010) "Five reasons not to take SSRIs," Psychology Today 

[vii] "Marketing of Madness," DVD, available through Foodmatters website 

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Hundreds of people taking Avandia, a controversial diabetes medicine, needlessly suffer heart attacks and heart failure each month.

Confidential government reports say that about 500 heart attacks and 300 cases of heart failure would be averted every month if patients switched away from Avandia.

One report, by Dr. David Graham and Dr. Kate Gelperin of the FDA, argued that Avandia should be withdrawn from the market.

Sources:

• New York Times February 19, 2010

• Senate Finance Committee January, 2010 (PDF)

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

There's no denying that diabetes is one of the most pressing disease epidemics in the US and across other parts of the world. By some estimates, diabetes has increased more than 700 percent in the last 50 years.

Although nearly 14 percent of men and 12 percent of women over 30 in the United States have diabetes, when you add in pre-diabetics the statistics become truly staggering, as over one in four people in the U.S. are either pre-diabetic or have full-blown diabetes!

These are truly shocking statistics, as type 2 diabetes is a completely avoidable disease and in nearly all cases reversible through proper diet.

Sadder still is the fact that the drug industry has been able to manipulate the medical industry and most consumers into believing their pills are the answer to the problem.

Unfortunately, the conventional treatment for diabetes does far more harm than good, and the case of Avandia killing people prematurely by the thousands is a perfect example of this.

Avandia - Yet Another Deadly Drug Debacle

Avandia hit the market in 1999 and following a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign it quickly became a blockbuster drug. By 2006 its annual revenue was $3.2 billion.

Sales plummeted to $1.2 billion in 2009, two years after a study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) that linked Avandia to a 43 percent increased risk of heart attack and a 64 percent higher risk of cardiovascular death than patients treated with other methods.

Unfortunately, a committee of independent experts recommended that Avandia remain on the market, despite its risks, and an FDA oversight board voted 8 to 7 to accept the advice.

I wonder just how many of them had ties to the drug industry.

Dr. Graham Steps Up to Protect Your Health Once Again

The last time the FDA voted to keep a deadly drug on the market, ten of the advisors had conflicts of interest but were allowed to vote anyway. As a result, one of the most lethal drugs we've ever seen, the NSAID drug Vioxx, was allowed to keep killing thousands of unsuspecting patients.

In testimony before the US Senate, Dr. David Graham estimated that between 88,000 to 139,000 Americans experienced heart attacks as a side effect from Vioxx, and that 30 to 40 percent of them died.

I've written rather extensively on Dr. Graham in the past, and I, for one, am thrilled that Dr. Graham is still with the FDA, and working for your benefit. He's clearly doing a great job and is a true champion for drug safety.

It's tragic that there aren't more like him at the FDA. He's a major hero in my book, consistently sticking his neck out to warn about dangerous drugs, and he's done it again with Avandia. What really is surprising to me is that he hasn't been kicked out of the FDA after exposing the Vioxx scandal over five years ago.

Avandia and Actos

Many endocrinologists did stop prescribing Avandia after the damning NEJM study, but hundreds of thousands of diabetics still take it every year.

According to the two-year long Senate investigation that was just released, Avandia causes about 500 more heart attacks and 300 more cases of heart failure than a similar drug called Actos.

However, it's important to realize that while Avandia is MORE dangerous than Actos, Actos may also damage your heart - just "not as much."

In reality, the combined harm of these diabetic drugs is likely FAR greater than what this report indicates!

Senate Report Blames GlaxoSmithKline

The 342-page bipartisan Senate report-- overseen by Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Charles E. Grassley(R-Iowa) - sharply criticizes the drug manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), stating it has neglected to warn patients about Avandia's potentially lethal dangers for several years.

The US FDA is now going to re-examine the drug and is expected to make a decision later this summer about whether or not Avandia should remain on the market. Unfortunately, they too have known about the dangers but ignored the concerns of their own experts, including Dr. Graham.

Warning signs go back several years:

• GSK completed a study in 2003 in which diabetics given Avandia suffered far more heart problems than those given a placebo.

• Two months later, the World Health Organization alerted GSK that they'd also found a link between Avandia and heart ailments.

• In a June 2004 company meeting, GSK's Global Safety Board advised they needed to review all of Avandia's clinical trials to check for more indications of heart problems caused by the drug. As a result, GSK completed two reviews of their own data. In both cases they discovered that Avandia increased the risks of serious heart problems by nearly one third, which is very significant since two-thirds of diabetics die of heart problems!

In addition, according to an analysis done by the Institute for Safe Medication Practice, in the third quarter of 2009 Avandia ranked number one among ALL prescribed drugs in the number of serious, disabling and fatal problems!

Truly, if you or someone you know is a diabetic and taking medication for it, you are needlessly exposing yourself to massive health risks. And why? Probably because you've been indoctrinated to believe a pill is the answer.

Please understand, you cannot successfully treat the underlying cause of diabetes with drugs!

Most Diabetic Recommendations are DEAD Wrong!

And I do mean dead, literally, as they are prematurely killing millions with their flawed insights into basic human physiology.

It's sad but true - most conventional recommendations for diabetics are seriously flawed and if you follow them, you will likely experience increased health problems.

Even the Mayo Clinic is guilty of issuing health-harming diabetic advice. For example, along with researchers from North Carolina State University, the Mayo Clinic have developed a computer model intended to determine the best time to begin using statin therapy in diabetes patients to help prevent heart disease and stroke.

If you've read my newsletter for any amount of time, you'll know just how dangerous statin drugs are. No less than 900 studies back this up! And yet conventional treatment for diabetes now includes tacking on yet another potentially deadly drug as early as possible. It is truly insane.

There's no doubt in my mind that if government agencies and the medical community would do the right thing and STOP catering to the greedy demands of the industries of sugar, grain and pharmaceuticals, and start issuing recommendations that actually promote health rather than deteriorating it further, this modern epidemic would go into rapid decline.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of physicians are still seriously confused about this issue, which is why most doctors cause diabetics to D. I. E.

What You Must Know About Diabetes in Order to Successfully Treat it

First and foremost, you must understand that diabetes is NOT a blood sugar disease like your doctor may have led you to believe.

Type 2 diabetes is a disease caused by insulin resistance and faulty leptin signaling, both of which are regulated through your diet.

Until that concept becomes well-known in both the medical community and by the public at large, the misconception about what diabetes is and the appropriate way to treat it will continue to be promoted and people will continue dying prematurely.

Conventional treatment, which is focused on fixing the symptom of elevated blood sugar rather than addressing the underlying disease, is doomed to fail in most cases.

Why?

Because most treatments for type 2 diabetes utilize drugs that either raise insulin, or lower blood sugar. Avandia, for example, lowers your blood sugar levels by increasing the sensitivity of liver, fat and muscle cells to insulin.

As I will explain below, this in no way addresses your underlying problem, which is metabolic miscommunication.

Let me assure you, the cure for type 2 diabetes has NOTHING to do with giving insulin. Giving someone with type 2 diabetes insulin is one of the WORST things that can be done. Any physician doing this simply does not understand insulin physiology.

Leptin is a Major Key to Successful Treatment of Diabetes

The hormone leptin is largely responsible for the accuracy of insulin signaling and whether you become insulin resistant or not.

Leptin, a relatively recently discovered hormone produced by fat, tells your body and brain how much energy it has, whether it needs more (saying "be hungry"), whether it should get rid of some (and stop being hungry) and importantly what to do with the energy it has (reproduce, upregulate cellular repair, or not).

In fact, the two most important organs that may determine whether you become (type 2, insulin resistant) diabetic or not are your liver and your brain, and it is their ability to listen to leptin that will determine this.

When your blood sugar becomes elevated it is a signal for insulin to be released to direct the extra energy into storage. A small amount is stored as a starch called glycogen in your body, but the majority is stored as your main energy supply -- fat. Thus, in this regard insulin's major role is not to lower sugar, but to take the extra energy and store it for future times of need.

Insulin lowers your blood sugar as a side effect of directing the extra energy into storage.

This is why treatments that concentrate merely on lowering blood sugar for diabetes while raising insulin levels can actually worsen rather than remedy the actual problem of metabolic miscommunication.

Taking insulin is one of the WORST things you can do, as it will actually make your insulin and leptin resistance worse over time. And taking diabetic drugs like Avandia may send you into an early grave from a heart attack or heart failure.

Fortunately, the safest treatment alternatives are also the most successful!

Fructose - One of the Major Culprits for Both Diabetes and Obesity

Before I delve into the other treatment strategies, I want to emphasize the importance of avoiding fructose if you want to successfully address your diabetes, or avoid it in the first place.

It's important to understand that your body metabolizes fructose differently from glucose (regular table sugar is a disaccharide and 50 percent glucose and 50 percent fructose), and these differences lead to serious health consequences.

For example, fructose does not stimulate a rise in leptin, so your satiety signals are diminished. It also reduces the amount of leptin crossing your blood-brain barrier by raising triglycerides. And whereas glucose suppresses ghrelin (the hunger hormone, which makes you want more food), fructose does not.

Fructose also increases your insulin levels, interfering with the communication between leptin and your hypothalamus, so your pleasure signals aren't extinguished. Your brain senses starvation and prompts you to eat more.

All of this also sets the stage for over indulgence and hence overweight, and puts you on the path toward both obesity and diabetes.

I strongly advise keeping your fructose consumption below 25 grams per day.

However, it would be wise for most people to limit fruit fructose to 15 grams or less as it is virtually guaranteed that you will be getting "hidden" sources of fructose from just about any processed food you eat.

This includes fruits, which also need to be carefully measured to make certain that you're not inadvertently consuming too much fructose. See the table below to get an idea of how much fructose is in your favorite fruits.

Fruit
Serving Size
Grams of Fructose

Limes
1 medium
0

Lemons
1 medium
0.6

Cranberries
1 cup
0.7

Passion fruit
1 medium
0.9

Prune
1 medium
1.2

Apricot
1 medium
1.3

Guava
2 medium
2.2

Date (Deglet Noor style)
1 medium
2.6

Cantaloupe
1/8 of med. melon
2.8

Raspberries
1 cup
3.0

Clementine
1 medium
3.4

Kiwifruit
1 medium
3.4

Blackberries
1 cup
3.5

Star fruit
1 medium
3.6

Cherries, sweet
10
3.8

Strawberries
1 cup
3.8

Cherries, sour
1 cup
4.0

Pineapple
1 slice
(3.5" x .75")
4.0

Grapefruit, pink or red
1/2 medium
4.3

Fruit
Serving Size
Grams of Fructose

Boysenberries
1 cup
4.6

Tangerine/mandarin orange
1 medium
4.8

Nectarine
1 medium
5.4

Peach
1 medium
5.9

Orange (navel)
1 medium
6.1

Papaya
1/2 medium
6.3

Honeydew
1/8 of med. melon
6.7

Banana
1 medium
7.1

Blueberries
1 cup
7.4

Date (Medjool)
1 medium
7.7

Apple (composite)
1 medium
9.5

Persimmon
1 medium
10.6

Watermelon
1/16 med. melon
11.3

Pear
1 medium
11.8

Raisins
1/4 cup
12.3

Grapes, seedless (green or red)
1 cup
12.4

Mango
1/2 medium
16.2

Apricots, dried
1 cup
16.4

Figs, dried
1 cup
23.0

Keep in mind that most processed food is loaded with fructose and is best avoided entirely. For instance, there are about 40 grams of HFCS per can of soda.

Clearly, eliminating excess fructose from your diet is FAR safer and MORE effective than taking a drug like Avandia if you have diabetes. However, virtually no doctor will inform you of this, as there aren't billions of dollars worth of drug

company marketing muscles behind this sort of recommendation.

Most Diabetes Cases Can Be Cured Without Drugs!

Please understand that nearly 100 percent of type 2 diabetics can be successfully treated -- meaning you will no longer have the symptoms of diabetes, or the high risk of developing health complications -- if you are willing to implement a few healthy lifestyle changes.

Diabetes runs in my family. About fifteen years ago, I diagnosed my father with it and gave him these guidelines to follow. He's 81 years old and does two hours of exercise every single morning. Recently he's added strength training. He's been able to keep his diabetes under control without taking a single drug by following these principles.

If you follow the recommendations listed below, your likelihood of successfully going off of drugs and having normal blood sugars is close to 100 percent, as treating type 2 diabetes is simply a matter of implementing some basic strategies to improve your insulin and leptin resistance:

1. Exercise

Exercise is an absolutely essential factor, without which you're highly unlikely to get this devastating disease under control. It is clearly one of the most potent ways to lower your insulin and leptin resistance.

Typically, you'll need large amounts of exercise, until you get your blood sugar levels under control. You may need up to an hour or two a day. Naturally, you'll want to gradually work your way up to that amount, based on your current level of fitness.

If you're unsure of how to get started, I recommend you view this comprehensive exercise program video for tips and guidelines.

2. Eliminate Grains and Sugars

For the last 50 years, many people have been following the nutritional recommendations dictated by conventional health agencies, which advise a high complex carbohydrate, low saturated fat diet. The end result has been a 700 percent increase in diabetes in the same time frame, and many have come to view diabetes as an incurable chronic disease.

This is clearly not true, but the inevitable result of seriously flawed dietary recommendations. Instead, you'll want to eliminate foods that your body will react to by creating insulin, which includes ALL types of sugars and grains -- even "healthy" grains such as whole, organic grains. This means avoiding all breads, pasta, cereals, rice, potatoes, and corn (which is in fact a grain). You may even need to avoid fruits until your blood sugar is under control.

3. Eat Right for Your Nutritional Type

Exercising and avoiding grains and sugars might not be enough unless you balance your protein, carb and fat ratios for your unique and specific genetic biochemistry. You can read more about nutritional typing here.

4. Monitor Your Fasting Insulin Level

This is every bit as important as your fasting blood sugar. You'll want your fasting insulin level to be between 2 to 4. The higher your level, the worse your insulin receptor sensitivity is.

The recommendations mentioned above are the key steps you need to achieve this reduction.

5. Optimize Your Vitamin D Level

Interestingly, optimizing your vitamin D levels can not only help improve type 2 diabetes if you have it, but can likely eliminate the risk of type 1 diabetes in your children if you are pregnant. It's also vital for infants to receive the appropriate amounts of vitamin D in their early years for these same reasons.

Ideally, you'll want to do this by exposing a large amount of your skin to appropriate amounts of sunshine (or a safe tanning bed) on a regular basis, year-round. Your body can safely create up to 20,000 units of vitamin D a day this way.

However, if neither of these options are available, you may want to use an oral vitamin D3 supplement. But remember, if you choose to take an oral supplement it's essential that you get your levels tested regularly by a proficient lab to make sure you're not reaching toxic levels, and are within the therapeutic range. Maintaining your vitamin D levels around 60-80 ng/ml can significantly help control your blood sugar.

These are the top steps you should take, starting today, if you have type 2 diabetes. Doing so will virtually guarantee that your diabetes will disappear. And if you want to make sure you are not one of the millions impacted by the coming diabetes epidemic, these same steps will help you to stay healthy and diabetes-free.

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Tiny spy cameras allow you to see some of the world's most magnificent birds in flight. Learn how the fastest bird on the planet, the Peregrine Falcon, keeps control at mind-numbing speeds, and take a flight with the master of maneuvrability, the Gos Hawk.

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The National Sleep Foundation has releases its annual "Sleep in America Poll," which reveals how much sleep Americans are getting, what their bedtime habits are, and who's taking medications when sleep is elusive. This year, for the first time, the report explored differences in the sleep habits of different ethnic groups.

And overall, no one's getting enough sleep. Fewer than half of respondents from each ethnic group say they get a good night's sleep on most nights.

African Americans reported the least amount of sleep.  Inadequate sleep is starting to be associated with obesity, heart disease and diabetes -- all diseases that are more prevalent among African Americans.

Justice Christopher Jessup, an Australian federal court judge, has found that the anti-arthritis drug Vioxx doubled the risk of heart attacks and was not fit to be on the market.  In a landmark decision, Graeme Peterson, who claimed the drug caused him to have a heart attack in 2003, was awarded compensation of $278,000 plus interest.

Mr. Peterson, acting on behalf of every Australian who took the drug from its launch in 2001 to its voluntary recall in September 2004, alleged that drugmaker Merck knew about the cardiovascular risks of the drug, but covered it up and engaged in inappropriate marketing tactics. The Australian Federal Court case heard allegations that Merck created a “hit list” of doctors critical of the drug who needed to be “neutralized”, and even faked a medical journal promoting the company's product.

It was the first civil trial against the pharmaceutical giant outside the U.S.  Merck settled hundreds of lawsuits over Vioxx in the U.S. for $4.8 billion in late 2007, but did not admit any liability.

Merck has announced that it will appeal the decision.

A new study has confirmed that vitamin D plays an important role in activating your immune defenses against infectious diseases like flu.

Vitamin D deficiency has already been linked to a wide spectrum of diseases including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, depression, autoimmune disease and many others.

The new study discovers that activation of T-cells to fight infections needs definite help from vitamin D. When a T cell recognizes foreign invaders like bacteria or viruses, it sends activating signals to the vitamin D receptor gene. The VDR gene then starts producing DVR protein, which binds vitamin D in the T cell.  Then the vitamin D bound and activated DVR produces PLC-gamma1 protein -- which allows the T cell to get started fighting the infection.

Dr. John Cannell has also reported that vitamin D helps produce antibacterial peptides that help protect against flu.  That is why in winter, when there is little sunshine, people are more prone to vitamin D deficiency and getting infected with flu viruses.

According to the Gizmodo article linked below, Sony has lost its spirit, spending too much time telling you it's the greatest electronics company in the world and not nearly enough time showing you.

Time and again, Sony took an excellently engineered solution and held it tightly, the better to extract big profits. But each time, Sony's need to control the format became more and more of a liability. As a result, today's Sony is an also-ran that wants to be respected like a market leader.

There's no better example of the arrogance of the modern Sony than the launch of the PlayStation 3. It was the last of the current generation of game consoles to market. It cost more than all its competitors. Sony president and CEO Kaz Hirai said infamously, "The next generation doesn't start until we say it does." Sony spent the next three years struggling in a videogame market they once dominated.

As the U.S. taste for bottled water grows, environmentalists have been trying to sell people on tap water. Bottled water is a drain on the environment -- the U.S. public goes through about 50 billion water bottles a year, and most of those plastic containers are not recycled.

But switching to tap water could be a bad idea in some schools where the risk of lead contamination from old pipes -- known to affect physical and mental development -- is high, particularly in large urban areas such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.

A nationwide investigation showed that the drinking water in schools in 27 states is contaminated with lead and other toxic substances from lead-soldered pipes installed before 1985.  In 2007, Baltimore City public schools switched their entire system to bottled water after a study of 84 randomly selected water fountains found 10 with lead levels high than the EPA's cutoff of 20 parts per billion.

The school district decided it would be cheaper to provide bottled water than testing and remediation efforts.