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By Dr. Mercola

Vaccine policymakers routinely ignore the safest and most effective strategies that can naturally strengthen your immunity to help you stay well or move through illness with fewer complications if you do get sick.

For example, there are many far more effective ways to prevent the flu and other flu-like diseases, such as dietary interventions, making sure your vitamin D and gut flora are optimized, being more meticulous about washing your hands, getting enough exercise and sleep, and taking natural immune boosters like oil of oregano and garlic.

But ignoring the obvious is not the worst of it.

The vaccine industry is also ceaselessly working to figure out which propaganda strategy can most effectively lull concerned parents back to sleep and quit asking questions about safety.

Such questions threaten that which is truly important to the vaccine industry: their profits. Sadly, vaccines DO come with potential side effects, and many parents are already grossly underinformed about such risks. Narcolepsy, for example, has yet again been confirmed as a vaccine-induced side effect from the European version of the 2009-2010 H1N1 swine flu vaccine that contained an oil in water adjuvant, ASO3.

With such serious side effects at stake, should the government really be permitted to resort to what’s looking like outright fraud, in order to increase vaccination rates?

Flu Vaccine Shown to have Shockingly Low Effectiveness Rate

Propaganda scare tactics still do work, as demonstrated by the 25 percent uptick in 2012-2013 seasonal flu vaccine sales reported by Novartis.¹ This despite the fact that not just one, but three recent studies published in the journal Eurosurveillance^{2, 3, 4} strongly challenge the claim that the influenza vaccine will protect you against the flu.

According to CIDRAP:⁵

“All three studies suggest that during the 2011-12 flu season, the vaccine provided modest protection at first, but its effectiveness dropped sharply after 3 or 4 months.

A multicenter study by researchers in eight European countries indicated that overall vaccine effectiveness (VE) against influenza A/H3N2 in the first months of the season was 38%, but after mid-February it dropped to -1%.

'The concept that vaccine protection can be so short-lived provides a challenge for public health policy,' says the British report.”

Similarly, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently admitted that this year’s flu vaccine is doing a “startlingly dismal job of protecting senior citizens,” to quote the San Francisco Chronicle.⁶

While not at a negative percentage rate, as reported by CIDRAP for the European community, the US flu vaccine is only nine percent effective against this season’s type A (H3N2) influenza strain in people 65 and older. Across all age groups reviewed by the CDC, the flu vaccine's effectiveness was found to be just 56 percent—in essence, the statistical equivalent of a coin toss...

When Does Misrepresentation of the Facts Equate to Outright Fraud?

While none of this surprises me, I am troubled by the gross discrepancies between the government’s claims about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine compared to the actual effectiveness.

“Get vaccinated” is the mantra, even though the scientific evidence backing such a recommendation is flimsy at best. And, when you factor in effectiveness rates of negative one percent, or nine percent, or even 40-50 percent within the first few months of vaccination, the recommendation to use vaccination as your primary flu prevention strategy really becomes rather ludicrous. Not only that, but at what point do these PR tactics become equivalent to outright fraud?

More people than ever are reportedly sick this winter,⁷ including those who got their flu vaccination. This is in large part due to a new flu strain, the “H3N2 type variant,” identified as being particularly aggressive, and believed to be the cause of many if not most of the illnesses.⁸

Interestingly, according to Dr. Joseph Bresee, a medical epidemiologist in the influenza division at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the H3N2 component in this year’s seasonal flu vaccine “has been a good match against almost all the confirmed H3N2 samples the agency has tested,”⁹ and due to flu fears, vaccines have been flying off the shelves this year.

So, the vaccines are a great match against the most virulent flu strain in circulation, yet the effectiveness rate for the type A H3N2 influenza strain is nine percent for seniors, and equivalent to a 50/50 tossup for the rest of us? Personally, I would never accept the potential side effects associated with the influenza vaccine—such as permanent paralysis from Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) —for such odds.

Another thing to consider is that states that have fired health care workers for refusing the flu vaccine¹⁰ have done so over an absolutely useless vaccine that provides nothing but profits for the vaccine industry. Meanwhile, health professionals who buckle to the pressure are taking some very real health risks, just to keep their jobs. For a first-hand look at what’s at stake, take a look at the following video, featuring a former nursing professor who became permanently disabled following a flu shot.

Health Care Industry Boasts about Profits During Worse-than-Average Flu Season

A January 8 CNBC report¹¹ highlighted the profitability of the flu season:

“Walgreens reported earlier this month that it had administered 5.5 million flu shots by the end of December — up from 5.3 million in the same period a year earlier. 'Walgreens is a key provider of flu shots,' said Muken, 'so they are seeing a modestly outsized benefit.' Beyond flu shots, a strong cold and flu season could mean stronger sales for over the counter medication and other cold care items at Walgreens and its competitors, CVS Caremark and Rite Aid....The CDC reports outpatient visits and hospitalizations are up sharply with the early start of the flu season. That likely results in more testing for influenza, and higher overall medical costs.”

Similarly, an article in Infectious Diseases in Children, titled “Influenza vaccination makes sense for everyone,”¹² written by Dr. Richard Lander, MD, a pediatrician in private practice in northern New Jersey and a member of the Infectious Diseases in Children Editorial Board, offers an insightful glimpse into the motivations behind the at times near-rabid push for flu vaccinations.

It not only spells out the financial incentives for pediatricians and other physicians to “sell, sell, sell!” the vaccine to as many as possible, but when you read his disclosure, the root of his pro-vaccination stance becomes quite obvious, as he is not only co-owner of the National Discount Vaccine Alliance, he’s also a speaker for Merck, Novartis, Pfizer and Sanofi-Pasteur... Here, for the first time, a real doctor, with real numbers reveals exactly how profitable giving the flu vaccines is for doctors. The article reads, in part:

“...let’s calculate monies generated for administering influenza vaccine for a doctor with a panel of 2,000 patients. We’ll be conservative and consider that only 1,000 patients will get their influenza vaccine in your office. Some of the 1,000 not receiving the vaccine in your office might be infants younger than 6 months of age and not eligible for the vaccine, and some patients will go to retail-based clinics or refuse the vaccine.

I know you are all financially savvy and you have purchased influenza vaccines at the lowest possible price... The fee you receive has been set by your contract with each managed care organization and you are seeing a 10% to 25% profit.

If your practice purchased the vaccine at approximately $10, the profit on these 1,000 patients will range from $1,000 to $2,500. Additionally, you are receiving a vaccine administration fee, which should range from $14 to $30. This amounts to $14,000 to $30,000 for the 1,000 patients. Furthermore, in my practice, we do not vaccinate if a patient has not received a well visit in the last 12 months. If 100 patients who call for a flu shot ending up scheduling a well visit, you should be generating an additional $10,000. Bottom line: $25,000 to $42,500, which is not bad!”

Australian Study Reveals Strategic PR Plan

Another recent study published in the journal Vaccine¹³ reveals how the vaccine industry is plotting to adapt its propaganda strategy to make more people accept vaccine risks. According to the authors:

“We aimed to determine demographic predictors of parental vaccine safety and risk perceptions, and assess the relationship between the occurrence of children's perceived adverse events following immunization (AEFI) on parents' opinions.”

The survey found that:

• Of 469 parents interviewed, 95 percent were confident in vaccine safety in general, but nearly 50 percent still expressed concern for pre-licensure testing of vaccines
• 41 percent of all parents responded that at least one of their children had experienced an adverse event following immunization. Parents of children who had a previous AEFI were more concerned about vaccine safety
• Only half of parents surveyed were aware of surveillance for vaccine safety
• Almost one third of the AEFI parent group indicated they reported their children's symptoms to either a healthcare professional or the Department of Health, with most reports being made to the family’s general practitioner
• Parental acceptability of the risks of febrile convulsion and anaphylaxis were 73 percent and 76 percent respectively. Mothers were less accepting of these risks

In conclusion, the authors state:

“Parents commonly perceive and report that their child has experienced an AEFI. In this group of parents the subsequent expectation of an AEFI and vaccine safety concerns may be heightened. Further research should investigate parental understandings of differentiating an expected event from an adverse event as this could inform immunization risk communication and consumer AEFI reporting strategies.”

The latter paragraph tells you what they’re really after. Vaccinologists in charge of the US public health system are looking for ways to convince parents, and mothers in particular, of two things:

1. When your child suffers a health problem after vaccination, it really isn't caused by the vaccine, and that
2. Certain side effects, some of which may be severe and/or life threatening, are “normal” occurrences. Meaning, they want you to view side effects like convulsion and anaphylaxis as “expected events” rather than “adverse events,” which in and of itself would make vaccinations appear to be far safer than they are

The former has already been accomplished through pediatricians, who have been taught to dismiss anything bad that happens after vaccination as a "coincidence." But they have not yet convinced mothers of that myth. That will be much more difficult as they need to somehow eradicate a mother's gut instincts. Perhaps they can develop a vaccine for that... Until then, they are “investigating parental understandings” of the difference between adverse reactions they want you to think are normal, and adverse events worth blaming on the vaccine. Once they figure out how parents think about these things, your thinking will be used against you in their “immunization risk communications” and shape their adverse events reporting strategies.

Narcolepsy — A Confirmed Adverse Effect of European Flu Vaccines

A recent example of the devastating harm that can occur from a single dose of a vaccine and the side effects of the 2009-2010 H1N1 flu vaccine licensed in Europe, which caused some 800+ cases of narcolepsy in Sweden and other European countries¹⁴. According to a retroactive analysis recently published in the British Medical Journal¹⁵, the swine flu vaccine Pandemrix, which contained an oil in water adjuvant, AS03, resulted in a 10-fold increased risk of the sleep disorder. The authors write:

“'The increased risk of narcolepsy after vaccination with ASO3 adjuvanted pandemic A/H1N1 2009 vaccine indicates a causal association, consistent with findings from Finland. Because of variable delay in diagnosis, however, the risk might be overestimated by more rapid referral of vaccinated children.'

...Our attributable risk estimate of between one in 57 500 and 52 000 doses was lower than reported from Finland (one in 16 000), despite a similar odds ratio/relative risk and annual incidence before vaccine, which was 0.42 per 100 000 in our study (based on the 29 incident cases in 2008) and 0.31 in Finland between 2002 and 2009. This could be because of differences in population susceptibility or because proportionately more vaccine in Finland was given to adolescents, in whom incidence is highest.”

Why We Must Fight to Protect Philosophical Exemption to Vaccination

Informed consent to medical risk taking is a human right. You have the right to be fully informed about the benefits and risks of pharmaceutical products – like vaccines - and be allowed to make a voluntary choice about whether to take the risk without being punished for it. More than $2.5 billion dollars has been awarded to children and adults in America, who have been seriously injured by vaccines. Yet those rights are increasingly being taken away from us.

For example, last year in Vermont, the legal right to take a vaccine exemption for philosophical beliefs was threatened with bills promoted by two Vermont legislators, State Senator Kevin Mullin and State Representative George Till. They joined with the Vermont Health Commissioner, Dr. Harry Chen, to lead a crusade to take away philosophical exemption to vaccination but the bills went down in defeat after supporters of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) and Vermont Coalition for Vaccine Choice educated legislators and the public about the need to keep the philosophical exemption from being stripped from Vermont public health laws.

In the following video, Barbara Loe Fisher of the NVIC interviews Nicole, a Vermont mother, whose seven year old daughter, Kaylynne, died within 92 hours of a routine flu shot in December 2011. Nicole believes that parents should be fully informed and able to make voluntary decisions about vaccination for their children.

“If I would have known the reactions and symptoms of adverse reactions to vaccination, I would have had her seen immediately. If I would have known about the risks and symptoms, I would have been most likely able to save my daughter,” said Nicole. “I feel that Vermonters need to be educated and be able to make their own decisions on whether or not they want to vaccinate their children and pediatricians and physicians, as well, need to be more educated.”

While the NVIC led a successful effort with the Vermont parent group to preserve the philosophical exemption to vaccination in Vermont last year, legislators in Vermont are coming around again this session, attacking the philosophical and religious exemptions to vaccination. They now want to pass a law (HB138) that says that if vaccination rates in schools gets below 90 percent then both those exemptions will be suspended. VT legislators also have introduced a bill that would require pertussis vaccinations for childcare workers and teachers (HB 114).

Vaccinations? Know the Risks and Failures

The NVIC is currently running a billboard campaign in a few different states. In Illinois, the billboard is located on 1409 Roselle Road in Roselle, where it will remain until March 24. For other billboard locations, see the list below.

How to Protect Yourself During the Flu Season

Also be aware that one of the main staples for treating pain and cold symptoms, acetaminophen, is a leading cause for calls to the Poison Control Center, and accounts for 56,000 emergency room visits, 2,600 hospitalizations, and an estimated 458 deaths annually.¹⁶

Avoiding a serious case of influenza is not about vaccination but more about maintaining a healthy, well functioning immune system. By following these simple guidelines, you can help keep your immune system in optimal working order so that you're far less likely to acquire the infection to begin with or, if you do get sick with the flu, you are better prepared to move through it without complications and soon return to good health.

• Optimize Your Gut Flora. This may be the single most important strategy you can implement as the bacteria in your gut have enormous control of your immune response. The best way to improve your beneficial bacteria ratio is to avoid sugars as they will feed the pathogenic bacteria. Additionally, processed foods and most grains should be limited and replacing with healthy fats like coconut oil, avocados, olives, olive oil, butter, eggs and nuts. Once you change your diet then regular use of fermented foods can radically optimize the function of your immune response.
• Optimize your vitamin D levels. As I've previously reported, optimizing your vitamin D levels is one of the absolute best strategies for avoiding infections of ALL kinds, and vitamin D deficiency may actually be the true culprit behind the seasonality of the flu – not the flu virus itself. This is probably the single most important and least expensive action you can take. Regularly monitor your vitamin D levels to confirm your levels are within the therapeutic range of 50-70 ng/ml.

Ideally, you'll want to get all your vitamin D from sun exposure or a safe tanning bed, but you can also take an oral vitamin D3 supplement. According to the latest review by Carole Baggerly, (Grassrootshealth.org), adults need about 8,000 IU's a day. Be sure to take vitamin K2 if you are taking oral vitamin D as it has a powerful synergy and will help prevent any D toxicity. But be sure and get your level tested as that is the only way to know for sure.

• Avoid Sugar and Processed Foods. Sugar impairs the quality of your immune response almost immediately, and as you likely know, a healthy immune system is one of the most important keys to fighting off viruses and other illness. It also can decimate your beneficial bacteria and feed the pathogenic yeast and viruses. Be aware that sugar (typically in the form of high fructose corn syrup) is present in foods you may not suspect, like ketchup and fruit juice. If you are healthy then sugar can be consumed but the LAST thing you should be eating when you are sick is sugar. Avoid it like poison while you are sick.
• Get Plenty of Rest. Just like it becomes harder for you to get your daily tasks done if you're tired, if your body is overly fatigued it will be harder for it to fight the flu. Be sure to check out my article Guide to a Good Night's Sleep for some great tips to help you get quality rest.
• Have Effective Tools to Address Stress. We all face some stress every day, but if stress becomes overwhelming then your body will be less able to fight off the flu and other illness. If you feel that stress is taking a toll on your health, consider using an energy psychology tool such as the Emotional Freedom Technique, which is remarkably effective in relieving stress associated with all kinds of events, from work to family to trauma.
• Get Regular Exercise. When you exercise, you increase your circulation and your blood flow throughout your body. The components of your immune system are also better circulated, which means your immune system has a better chance of finding an illness before it spreads. Be sure to stay hydrated – drink plenty of fluids, especially water. However, it would be wise to radically reduce the intensity of your workouts while you are sick. No Peak Fitness exercises until you are better.
• Take a High Quality Source of Animal-Based Omega-3 Fats. Increase your intake of healthy and essential fats like the omega-3 found in krill oil, which is crucial for maintaining health. It is also vitally important to avoid damaged omega-6 oils that are trans fats and in processed foods as it will seriously damage your immune response.
• Wash Your Hands. Washing your hands will decrease your likelihood of spreading a virus to your nose, mouth or other people. Be sure you don't use antibacterial soap for this – antibacterial soaps are completely unnecessary, and they cause far more harm than good. Instead, identify a simple chemical-free soap that you can switch your family to.
• Tried and True Hygiene Measures. In addition to washing your hands regularly, cover your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze. If possible, avoid close contact with those, who are sick and, if you are sick, avoid close contact with those who are well.
• Use Natural Immune Boosters. Examples include oil of oregano and garlic. Unlike pharmaceutical drugs, they do not appear to lead to resistance.
• Avoid Hospitals. I'd recommend you stay away from hospitals unless you're having an emergency and need expert medical care, as hospitals are prime breeding grounds for infections of all kinds. The best place to get plenty of rest and recover from illness that is not life-threatening is usually in the comfort of your own home.

Protect Your Right to Informed Consent and Vaccine Exemptions

With all the uncertainty surrounding the safety and efficacy of vaccines, it's critical to protect your right to informed consent to vaccination and fight to protect and expand vaccine exemptions in state public health laws. The best way to do this is to get personally involved with your state legislators and the leaders in your community.

THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY.

Mass vaccination policies are made at the federal level but vaccine laws are made at the state level. It is at the state level where your action to protect your vaccine choice rights can have the greatest impact. It is critical for EVERYONE to get involved now in standing up for the legal right to make vaccine choices in America because those choices are being threatened by lobbyists representing drug companies, medical trade associations and public health officials, who are trying to persuade legislators to strip all vaccine exemptions from public health laws.

Signing up for NVIC's free Advocacy Portal at www.NVICAdvocacy.org gives you immediate, easy access to your own state legislators on your Smart Phone or computer so you can make your voice heard. You will be kept up-to-date on the latest state bills threatening your vaccine choices and get practical, useful information to help you become an effective vaccine choice advocate in your own community. Also, when national vaccine issues come up, you will have the up-to-date information and call to action items you need at your fingertips..

So please, as your first step, sign up for the NVIC Advocacy Portal.

Share Your Story with the Media and People You Know

If you or a family member has suffered a serious vaccine reaction, injury or death, please talk about it. If we don't share information and experiences with each other, everybody feels alone and afraid to speak up. Write a letter to the editor if you have a different perspective on a vaccine story that appears in your local newspaper. Make a call in to a radio talk show that is only presenting one side of the vaccine story.

I must be frank with you; you have to be brave because you might be strongly criticized for daring to talk about the "other side" of the vaccine story. Be prepared for it and have the courage to not back down. Only by sharing our perspective and what we know to be true about vaccination will the public conversation about vaccination open up so people are not afraid to talk about it.

We cannot allow the drug companies and medical trade associations funded by drug companies or public health officials promoting forced use of a growing list of vaccines to dominate the conversation about vaccination. The vaccine injured cannot be swept under the carpet and treated like nothing more than "statistically acceptable collateral damage" of national one-size-fits-all mandatory vaccination policies that put way too many people at risk for injury and death. We shouldn't be treating people like guinea pigs instead of human beings.

Internet Resources Where You Can Learn More

I encourage you to visit the following web pages on the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) website at www.NVIC.org:

• NVIC Memorial for Vaccine Victims: View descriptions and photos of children and adults, who have suffered vaccine reactions, injuries and deaths. If you or your child experiences an adverse vaccine event, please consider posting and sharing your story here.
• If You Vaccinate, Ask 8 Questions: Learn how to recognize vaccine reaction symptoms and prevent vaccine injuries.
• Vaccine Freedom Wall: View or post descriptions of harassment and sanctions by doctors, employers, school and health officials for making independent vaccine choices.

Connect with Your Doctor or Find a New One that Will Listen and Care

If your pediatrician or doctor refuses to provide medical care to you or your child unless you agree to get vaccines you don't want, I strongly encourage you to have the courage to find another doctor. Harassment, intimidation, and refusal of medical care is becoming the modus operandi of the medical establishment in an effort to stop the change in attitude of many parents about vaccinations after they become truly educated about health and vaccination.

However, there is hope.

At least 15 percent of young doctors recently polled admit that they're starting to adopt a more individualized approach to vaccinations in direct response to the vaccine safety concerns of parents. It is good news that there is a growing number of smart young doctors, who prefer to work as partners with parents in making personalized vaccine decisions for children, including delaying vaccinations or giving children fewer vaccines on the same day or continuing to provide medical care for those families, who decline use of one or more vaccines.

So take the time to locate a doctor, who treats you with compassion and respect and is willing to work with you to do what is right for your child.

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 Comments (97)

By Dr. Mercola

A wide range of vaccine stories have been featured in the news over the past few weeks – many, no doubt, published to propagandize the updated 2013 vaccination schedules for children and adults^{1, 2, 3} and to promote the seasonal flu vaccine.

Ironically, if not tragically, while increasing amounts of research highlight the many dangers of vaccinations and their ineffectiveness, the US government keeps insisting that everything is fine, "just get your shots and don't worry about it. We know what we're doing!"

But do they really? The evidence is overwhelmingly negative in this regard.

And, while suddenly paying lip service to vaccine safety, vaccine policymakers ignore the safest and most effective strategies that can naturally strengthen your immunity to help you stay well or move through illness with fewer complications if you do get sick.

For example, there are many far more effective ways to help prevent the flu and other flu-like diseases, such as dietary interventions, making sure your vitamin D and gut flora are optimized, being more meticulous about washing your hands, getting enough exercise and sleep, cutting back on processed foods and sugars, and ensuring your diet includes plenty of sulfur and zinc.

Flu Vaccine Effectiveness Waned Over 2011-12 Season

Propaganda scare tactics still do work, as demonstrated by the 25 percent uptick in 2012-2013 seasonal flu vaccine sales reported by Novartis.⁴ This despite the fact that not just one, but three recent studies published in the journal Eurosurveillance^{5, 6, 7} strongly challenge the claim that the flu vaccine will protect you against the flu.

According to CIDRAP:⁸

"All three studies suggest that during the 2011-12 flu season, the vaccine provided modest protection at first, but its effectiveness dropped sharply after 3 or 4 months.

A multicenter study by researchers in eight European countries indicated that overall vaccine effectiveness (VE) against influenza A/H3N2 in the first months of the season was 38%, but after mid-February, it dropped to -1%. 'The concept that vaccine protection can be so short-lived provides a challenge for public health policy,' says the British report."

Ludicrous Claim of the Week: Following Vaccine Schedule Required to Ensure Vaccine Safety

But that's not the only challenge facing public health policy. Over the past few years, the science simply hasn't held up when it comes to vaccinations in general.

Multiple scandals involving fraud and conflicts of interest have surfaced, and studies are increasingly showing that vaccines don't work all that well. In response, government health agencies, who are now little more than poorly disguised mouthpieces for the pharmaceutical industry, are beefing up the propaganda.

But despite blanketing the media with carefully chosen sound bites, repeated almost verbatim by multiple media outlet sources, the "evidence" of safety and effectiveness they bring to the table is flimsy at best.

One sound bite you'll keep hearing again and again now is the ludicrous claim that the best way to ensure vaccine safety is to strictly follow the vaccine schedule.

Take Mary Anne Jackson for example. Dr. Jackson is the Division Chief of Infectious Diseases at Children's Mercy Hospital of Kansas City, MO. Reading her statements to the New York Times, it is crystal clear that she is taking her cue cards directly from the Institute of Medicine's dubious new report.⁹ As reported by the New York Times:¹⁰

"The timing is specific for a reason. 'We want to prevent the vaccines from competing against each other... Sticking to the schedule also ensures that a child's immunity is likely to be maintained. These alternative schedules that are springing up have no data behind them,' Dr. Jackson told me. 'They're not rigorously tested. It's impossible to test all of them.'

...the most obvious problem with the exodus of parents from the recommended vaccination schedule is that it makes vaccine safety more difficult to monitor. 'We want to drill down as far as we can, and make vaccines as safe as we can,' said Dr. Jackson. 'We're not going find the one-in-a-million serious adverse event if you have thousands of different vaccine schedules out there.'"

To me, all of this sounds like both illogical and dangerous reasoning. They're essentially saying everyone needs to participate in the experiment in order to tease out potential harms. This is not safety. This is human experimentation. Safety of a vaccine should be addressed PRIOR to being added to the vaccine schedule. Ditto for the safety of giving multiple vaccines at the same time.

Immunization Schedule Guaranteed 'Safe,' IOM Panel Declares

Speaking with WebMD, Dr. H. Cody Meissner, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee was also undoubtedly reading his cue cards when he said:¹¹

"It's so important to adhere to these immunization schedules. People need to understand: These schedules are put together with great care and discussion and review of scientific data... It's critically important to adhere to the schedule..."

Fortunately, parents are slowly but surely waking up to the tragic fact that vaccine damage is real with a capital "R." If each and every dose of every vaccine on the schedule, alone and/or in combination with others, is indeed safe, then show us the research! I want to see the methodologically sound studies using true placebos as controls and conducted by investigators without conflicts of interest with industry or public health agencies for each and every one of those vaccine combinations.

The fact is, there aren't any studies like that. That kind of credible vaccine safety science doesn't exist. So it's no wonder that as many as 21 percent of American parents are now delaying or refusing some or all of the recommended childhood vaccines¹² for their children. More and more parents are seeing the very real effects of vaccine damage to children all around them, and they have good reason to exercise caution.

"In response to those fears – or, rather, the quantifiable impact of reduced vaccination that stems from those fears – the Department of Health and Human Services asked the I.O.M. to review all the current scientific evidence¹³ on the schedule, and to research ways to address parental concerns.

That friendly face on the recommended schedule is still lacking (that's up to individual pediatricians), but... the panel concluded that the current schedule is not only safe, but 'rather than exposing children to harm, following the complete childhood immunization schedule is strongly associated with reducing vaccine-preventable diseases,'" the New York Times reports:¹⁴

And, according to a recent NPR report¹⁵ on the IOM panel's findings:

"'...some parents still worry that the schedule of vaccinations – 24 immunizations by the age of 2 – can be dangerous. That worry is likely misplaced, according to a yearlong review of all available scientific data. Researchers from the Institute of Medicine found there is no evidence that the federally recommended timeline for childhood vaccines is unsafe.

According to family physician Alfred Berg of the University of Washington School of Medicine, who was a member of the IOM committee, the research team looked at a large number of medical conditions, including 'things like autoimmune diseases, which even captures diabetes, asthma, hypersensitivity, allergies, seizures, epilepsy, child developmental disorders including autism, and other learning disorders, communications disorders, intellectual disabilities, and even rare things like tics or Tourette's syndrome.'

None could be linked to the vaccination schedule. Parents should be reassured, says Berg.

...Even though this review finds that there's no reason to worry and that the current recommended schedule is completely safe, Berg says it still might be useful to know what happens to children who don't get their vaccinations on time – by comparing them to children who do. Preliminary research does show children who don't get vaccinated on time are hospitalized more often than children who are immunized according to federal guidelines."

It would be laughable if it wasn't so darn serious. As Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) has pointed out, the panel relied on fewer than 40 studies, which, she argues, "is not nearly enough science to give parents confidence that the current vaccine schedule is safe."¹⁶ Furthermore, to PROMISE that the schedule is "completely safe," as if it comes with an ironclad guarantee, is not only irresponsible, it's completely immoral.

Let me ask you: Who takes the blame and steps in to make things right when your child is harmed by a vaccine? NO ONE. You and you alone are left holding the tattered pieces of your life. As a parent, you are legally and morally responsible to provide for your minor child's health and well being. You are the one left to mourn and cope with what has happened to your child and pay the medical bills, the special tutoring bills and whatever additional expenses you may face after your child is injured by a vaccine or combination of vaccines.

How much is that ironclad guarantee you were promised really worth then?

If all vaccines are "completely safe," when taken alone and together, why did Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court completely shield drug companies selling vaccines in the U.S. from all vaccine injury lawsuits in civil courts when vaccines cause injury and death? Ironically, while the NPR¹⁷ reports (above) that children who don't get vaccinated on time are hospitalized more often than those who get their shots according to schedule, the New York Times¹⁸ pointed out research demonstrating the complete opposite:

"...But following an alternative vaccination schedule does not appear to present a health risk for an individual child. In fact, a study of under-vaccination published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics¹⁹ found that children who were under-vaccinated because of parental choice had lower rates of outpatient and emergency department visits, even among the studied population consisting of children enrolled in and receiving primary care from managed care organizations – in other words, not the children of parents who shunned medical care altogether."

Adult Vaccination Rates 'Too Low' CDC Says

In related news, vaccination coverage for American adults is "too low," the CDC says,²⁰ and in an effort to improve the numbers the agency has created a new webpage²¹ that will tell you what vaccines you need when and where to get them, because "immunizations are not just for kids!" According to CDC data, a mere 16 percent of adults over the age of 60 are vaccinated against shingles, and only about 20 percent over 65 have received the pneumococcal vaccine.

Similarly, only 13 percent of American adults have been vaccinated against pertussis (whooping cough). Meanwhile, last summer Australia stopped providing free pertussis vaccinations for parents to protect their newborns – a practice known as "cocooning" – after it was determined the practice doesn't work. According to news.com.au:²²

"...the national Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC) had determined vaccinating parents was not effective in protecting newborns, after two pharmaceutical manufacturers made submissions to the PBAC.

'The PBAC, which is totally independent and very expert, has determined that there is no clinical effectiveness of this strategy,' Professor Brook [Department of Health divisional executive director] said. He said this had made it clear the cocooning strategy should not be continued. So all jurisdictions who have been in this program will be effectively ceasing the cocooning strategy as of the end of June this year [2012]."

In the US however, the discovery that the pertussis vaccine is ineffective has simply led them to add more booster doses to the schedule. The updated 2013 vaccine schedule includes additional doses of pertussis vaccine for both adolescents and pregnant women. Women are now advised to get a pertussis vaccine during each and every pregnancy. The CDC and AAP also now suddenly claim that egg-based seasonal flu vaccine is safe for those with egg allergies. Here again, the irresponsibility is staggering.

You Cannot Vaccinate Your Way Out of Disease and Death...

Why do those promoting the complete safety of vaccines keep trying to deceive the public by reassuring us with absolute statements of vaccine safety and effectiveness when truths like this keep breaking through?

• The widespread use of influenza vaccine is not an effective public health policy because vaccinated persons, especially seniors, are still gettting the flu;
• Whooping cough is spreading through vaccinated populations and "cocooning" pertussis vaccine strategies do not work

Their answer? Just add more! Increase the number of pertussis doses, and quadruple the flu vaccine dose for seniors. This is not good medicine. And it's certainly not safe medicine.

Look... we cannot win the war against disease by trying to eradicate microorganisms in a misguided attempt to make certain viruses and bacteria extinct. It doesn't work that way! When there was an attempt in the past century to kill certain bacteria with widespread use of antibiotics in animals and humans, what happened? The bacteria found a way to mutate and survive and now we have a serious problem with antibiotic resistant bacterial infections.

Microorganisms find ways to survive, and we end up with progressively more aggressive and difficult-to-treat diseases. We've taken a wrong turn with over-use of antibiotics and vaccines and it's time to mend our ways before matters get any worse than they already are.

For example, one of the most recent examples of the devastating harm that can occur from widespread use of a single vaccine dose are the side effects of the 2009-2010 flu vaccine, which caused some 800+ cases of narcolepsy in Sweden and other European countries.²³ As reported by Reuters on January 31:²⁴

"The findings, which have not yet been published in full, are the first firm evidence in Britain that the flu vaccine, called Pandemrix, is linked to narcolepsy cases in children. Research in Finland, Sweden and Ireland has already found clear associations... In a research summary... seen by Reuters, the British researchers say 'the increased risk of narcolepsy after Pandemrix suggests a causal association consistent with reports from Finland and Sweden.'

The abstract shows that the research team, led by Liz Miller, a consultant epidemiologist at the UK Health Protection Agency (HPA), found an almost 10-fold increased risk in cases of the sleep disorder in children seen in sleep centers who had been immunized with Pandemrix."

Meanwhile, Norwegian researchers²⁵ blame vitamin D deficiency for the latest flu epidemic in the Netherlands. That's right:

"'According to the study, these flu epidemics experience a steep rise in infection and mortality rates as soon as exposure to sunlight (and the corresponding synthesis of vitamin D) drops,' Medical News Today reports.²⁶

'This is not only true of the outbreak of flu epidemics but also of the way in which they unfold. Seasonal differences are particularly apparent in the number of deaths. In winter, when vitamin D deficiency is at its greatest, the number of deaths is 20 to 600 times higher than during a summer epidemic, the Norwegian study reveals.

...Vitamin D acts as an antibiotic and strengthens the immune system. UV radiation exposure stimulates the production of vitamin D in the skin. In the winter months, when the sun's zenith is too low in the sky for vitamin D synthesis to take place, the body's vitamin D level drops, as a result of which its protective effect is unable to fully develop', explains Professor Johan Moan."

Why We Must Fight to Protect Philosophical Exemption to Vaccination

Informed consent to medical risk taking is a human right. You have the right to be fully informed about the benefits and risks of pharmaceutical products – like vaccines - and be allowed to make a voluntary choice about whether or to take the risk without being punished for it. More than $2 billion dollars has been awarded to children and adults in America, who have been seriously injured by vaccines. Yet those rights are increasingly being taken away from us.

For example, in Vermont, last year for the first time, the legal right to take a vaccine exemption for philosophical beliefs was threatened. Two Vermont legislators, State Senator Kevin Mullin and State Representative George Till, have joined with the Vermont Health Commissioner, Dr. Harry Chen, to lead a crusade to take away philosophical exemption to vaccination with two bills in before the state House and Senate that were defeated last spring because of the grassroots action taken by NVIC and the Vermont Coalition for Vaccine Choice.

In the following video, Barbara Loe Fisher of the NVIC interviews Nicole, a Vermont mother, whose seven year old daughter, Kaylynne, died within 92 hours of a routine flu shot in December 2011. Nicole believes that parents should be fully informed and able to make voluntary decisions about vaccination for their children.

“If I would have known the reactions and symptoms of adverse reactions to vaccination, I would have had her seen immediately. If I would have known about the risks and symptoms, I would have been most likely able to save my daughter,” said Nicole. “I feel that Vermonters need to be educated and be able to make their own decisions on whether or not they want to vaccinate their children and pediatricians and physicians, as well, need to be more educated.”

While the NVIC led a successful effort with the Vermont parent group to preserve the philosophical exemption to vaccination in Vermont last year, legislators in Vermont are coming around again this session, attacking the philosophical and religious exemptions to vaccination. They now want to pass a law (HB138) that says that if vaccination rates in schools gets below 90 percent then both those exemptions will be suspended. VT legislators also have introduced a bill that would require pertussis vaccinations for childcare workers and teachers (HB 114).

How to Protect Yourself During the Flu Season

Aside from avoiding the flu vaccine, also beware that one of the main staples for treating pain and cold symptoms, acetaminophen, is a leading cause for calls to the Poison Control Center, and accounts for 56,000 emergency room visits, 2,600 hospitalizations, and an estimated 458 deaths annually.²⁷

Avoiding a serious case of influenza is not about vaccination but more about maintaining a healthy, well functioning immune system. By following these simple guidelines, you can help keep your immune system in optimal working order so that you're far less likely to acquire the infection to begin with or, if you do get sick with the flu, you are better prepared to move through it without complications and soon return to good health.

• Optimize Your Gut Flora. This may be the single most important strategy you can implement as the bacteria in your gut have enormous control of your immune response. The best way to improve your beneficial bacteria ratio is avoid sugars as they will feed the pathogenic bacteria. Additionally, processed foods and most grains should be limited and replacing with healthy fats like coconut oil, avocados, olives, olive oil, butter, eggs and nuts. Once you change your diet than regular use of fermented foods can radically optimize the function of your immune response.
• Optimize your vitamin D levels. As I've previously reported, optimizing your vitamin D levels is one of the absolute best strategies for avoiding infections of ALL kinds, and vitamin D deficiency may actually be the true culprit behind the seasonality of the flu – not the flu virus itself. This is probably the single most important and least expensive action you can take. Regularly monitor your vitamin D levels to confirm your levels are within the therapeutic range of 50-70 ng/ml.

Ideally, you'll want to get all your vitamin D from sun exposure or a safe tanning bed, but as a last resort you can take an oral vitamin D3 supplement. According to the latest review by Carole Baggerly (Grassrootshealth.org), adults need about 8,000 IU's a day. Be sure to take vitamin K2 if you are taking high dose oral vitamin D as it has a powerful synergy and will help prevent any D toxicity. But be sure and get your level tested as that is the only way to know for sure.

• Avoid Sugar and Processed Foods. Sugar impairs the quality of your immune response almost immediately, and as you likely know, a healthy immune system is one of the most important keys to fighting off viruses and other illness. It also can decimate your beneficial bacteria and feed the pathogenic yeast and viruses. Be aware that sugar (typically in the form of high fructose corn syrup) is present in foods you may not suspect, like ketchup and fruit juice. If you are healthy then sugar can be consumed but the LAST thing you should be eating when you are sick is sugar. Avoid it like poison while you are sick.
• Get Plenty of Rest. Just like it becomes harder for you to get your daily tasks done if you're tired, if your body is overly fatigued it will be harder for it to fight the flu. Be sure to check out my article Guide to a Good Night's Sleep for some great tips to help you get quality rest.
• Have Effective Tools to Address Stress. We all face some stress every day, but if stress becomes overwhelming then your body will be less able to fight off the flu and other illness. If you feel that stress is taking a toll on your health, consider using an energy psychology tool such as the Emotional Freedom Technique, which is remarkably effective in relieving stress associated with all kinds of events, from work to family to trauma.
• Get Regular Exercise. When you exercise, you increase your circulation and your blood flow throughout your body. The components of your immune system are also better circulated, which means your immune system has a better chance of finding an illness before it spreads. Be sure to stay hydrated – drink plenty of fluids, especially water. However, it would be wise to radically reduce the intensity of your workouts while you are sick. No Peak Fitness exercises until you are better.
• Take a High-Quality Source of Animal-Based Omega-3 Fats. Increase your intake of healthy and essential fats like the omega-3 found in krill oil, which is crucial for maintaining health. It is also vitally important to avoid damaged omega-6 oils that are trans fats and in processed foods as it will seriously damage your immune response.
• Wash Your Hands. Washing your hands will decrease your likelihood of spreading a virus to your nose, mouth or other people. Be sure you don't use antibacterial soap for this – antibacterial soaps are completely unnecessary, and they cause far more harm than good. Instead, identify a simple chemical-free soap that you can switch your family to.
• Tried and True Hygiene Measures. In addition to washing your hands regularly, cover your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze. If possible, avoid close contact with those, who are sick and, if you are sick, avoid close contact with those who are well.
• Use Natural Remedies. Examples include oil of oregano and garlic. These work against bacteria, viruses, and protozoa in your body. And unlike pharmaceutical antibiotics, they do not appear to lead to resistance.
• Avoid Hospitals. I'd recommend you stay away from hospitals unless you're having an emergency and need expert medical care, as hospitals are prime breeding grounds for infections of all kinds. The best place to get plenty of rest and recover from illness that is not life-threatening is usually in the comfort of your own home.

Protect Your Right to Informed Consent and Vaccine Exemptions

With all the uncertainty surrounding the safety and efficacy of vaccines, it's critical to protect your right to informed consent to vaccination and fight to protect and expand vaccine exemptions in state public health laws. The best way to do this is to get personally involved with your state legislators and the leaders in your community.

THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY.

Mass vaccination policies are made at the federal level but vaccine laws are made at the state level. It is at the state level where your action to protect your vaccine choice rights can have the greatest impact. It is critical for EVERYONE to get involved now in standing up for the legal right to make vaccine choices in America because those choices are being threatened by lobbyists representing drug companies, medical trade associations and public health officials, who are trying to persuade legislators to strip all vaccine exemptions from public health laws.

Signing up for NVIC's free Advocacy Portal at www.NVICAdvocacy.org gives you immediate, easy access to your own state legislators on your Smart Phone or computer so you can make your voice heard. You will be kept up-to-date on the latest state bills threatening your vaccine choices and get practical, useful information to help you become an effective vaccine choice advocate in your own community. Also, when national vaccine issues come up, you will have the up-to-date information and call to action items you need at your fingertips.

So please, as your first step, sign up for the NVIC Advocacy Portal.

Share Your Story with the Media and People You Know

If you or a family member has suffered a serious vaccine reaction, injury or death, please talk about it. If we don't share information and experiences with each other, everybody feels alone and afraid to speak up. Write a letter to the editor if you have a different perspective on a vaccine story that appears in your local newspaper. Make a call in to a radio talk show that is only presenting one side of the vaccine story.

I must be frank with you; you have to be brave because you might be strongly criticized for daring to talk about the "other side" of the vaccine story. Be prepared for it and have the courage to not back down. Only by sharing our perspective and what we know to be true about vaccination will the public conversation about vaccination open up so people are not afraid to talk about it.

We cannot allow the drug companies and medical trade associations funded by drug companies or public health officials promoting forced use of a growing list of vaccines to dominate the conversation about vaccination. The vaccine injured cannot be swept under the carpet and treated like nothing more than "statistically acceptable collateral damage" of national one-size-fits-all mandatory vaccination policies that put way too many people at risk for injury and death. We shouldn't be treating people like guinea pigs instead of human beings.

Internet Resources Where You Can Learn More

I encourage you to visit the following web pages on the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) website at www.NVIC.org:

• NVIC Memorial for Vaccine Victims: View descriptions and photos of children and adults, who have suffered vaccine reactions, injuries and deaths. If you or your child experiences an adverse vaccine event, please consider posting and sharing your story here.
• If You Vaccinate, Ask 8 Questions: Learn how to recognize vaccine reaction symptoms and prevent vaccine injuries.
• Vaccine Freedom Wall: View or post descriptions of harassment and sanctions by doctors, employers, school and health officials for making independent vaccine choices.

Connect with Your Doctor or Find a New One that Will Listen and Care

If your pediatrician or doctor refuses to provide medical care to you or your child unless you agree to get vaccines you don't want, I strongly encourage you to have the courage to find another doctor. Harassment, intimidation, and refusal of medical care is becoming the modus operandi of the medical establishment in an effort to stop the change in attitude of many parents about vaccinations after they become truly educated about health and vaccination.

However, there is hope.

At least 15 percent of young doctors recently polled admit that they're starting to adopt a more individualized approach to vaccinations in direct response to the vaccine safety concerns of parents. It is good news that there is a growing number of smart young doctors, who prefer to work as partners with parents in making personalized vaccine decisions for children, including delaying vaccinations or giving children fewer vaccines on the same day or continuing to provide medical care for those families, who decline use of one or more vaccines.

So take the time to locate a doctor, who treats you with compassion and respect and is willing to work with you to do what is right for your child.

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By Dr. Mercola

A robust and growing body of research clearly shows that vitamin D is absolutely critical for good health and disease prevention.

Vitamin D affects your DNA through vitamin D receptors (VDRs), which bind to specific locations of the human genome. Scientists have identified nearly 3,000 genes that are influenced by vitamin D levels, and vitamin D receptors have been found throughout the human body.

Is it any wonder then that no matter what disease or condition is investigated, vitamin D appears to play a crucial role?

This is why I am so excited about the D*Action Project by GrassrootsHealth.¹ It is showing how we can take action today on known science with a consensus of experts without waiting for institutional lethargy.

It has shown how by combining the science of measurement (of vitamin D levels) with the personal choice of taking action and, the value of education about individual measures that one can truly be in charge of their own health. In order to spread this health movement to more communities, the project needs your involvement, your health activism. This is an ongoing campaign during the month of February, and will become an annual event.

The D*Action Project

I believe this is a truly critical project that is already having an enormous impact not just on your own health and those participating, but the health of people everywhere through the growing community involvement as well as individual participation.

Since vitamin D affects virtually every aspect of your health, from bone health to heart health to the prevention of cancer and much more, determining the optimal serum levels for disease prevention for you could quite literally result in a health revolution. It requires two measurements:

1. Vitamin D serum levels, and
2. Health status

With these two measurements, you can effectively begin to measure vitamin D performance, and discover how vitamin D affects your health. For example, at which vitamin D level will you achieve maximum protection against pain? Colds and flu? Heart disease and cancer? Once this is established, taking a great degree of control of your health will be as simple as getting your vitamin D levels tested, and if you find you’re too low, you’ll have the tools to optimize your levels.

The key to turning our crippled health care system around is to shift from disease management into disease prevention and health optimization mode.

D*Action is an important step in a MAJOR health movement with the power to change our flawed medical paradigm, which right now is married to the pharmaceutical industry via the revolving doors between Big Pharma and our regulatory agencies. The individual is left powerless in this paradigm, because, aside from expensive pills (which kill over 106,000 people each year when taken as prescribed), it has little more to offer.

This health movement has already begun.

D*Action has multiple concurrent vitamin D programs going on. The D*Action International project is open to anyone, any age, anywhere in the world. The Protect our Children NOW! campaign is geared toward using the results of randomized trials to take action now to reduce preterm births and other complications of pregnancy.

This program is already coalescing into community political action groups, so that when the study in any community (a 24 month project) is completed, they can use the information obtained to push for public health recommendations that will benefit ALL pregnant women and their children. And, the Breast Cancer Prevention project, another subset, is open to women 60 and over with no current cancer or current treatment.

So, I encourage you to participate in the D*Action Project. Not only will you be able to take control of your own health by participating, you’ll also become part of one of the most profound public health projects of the 21st Century.

Why Measuring Vitamin D Performance Matters

Measuring vitamin D performance is about more than just getting your vitamin D levels tested every few months. It’s also about discovering the impact of vitamin D on your health at various serum levels, and setting goals for your health.  How can D*Action help you get healthier?

Let’s consider an analogy: If you want to win a bike race, you record the start time, the end time, and measure the time it took you to get from point A to point B. You can also measure how many revolutions per minute you make with your pedals to determine the revolution rate required to achieve your timed result. Without these measurements, you won’t know what kind of effort it took to get you to the finish line, or how long it took you to get there.

Without these measurements, you're not in charge because you don’t know what it takes to achieve the desired result. Now, let’s say you want to improve your race performance. If you already know how many revolutions per minute you needed to make it from start to finish line in a certain amount of time, you now know how much faster you have to pedal in order to beat your own time. There is a growing demand to be able to know how to improve and control your own health, and to do this, you need to know:

1. What factors can be measured
2. How to measure them
3. How to affect change or alter that which is being measured
4. How to get feedback on the changes, both at individual and group levels, and
5. The true cost, weighed against the benefit of the measurement

This knowledge, and the related tools, must be made available to everyone, as these pieces are required to be successfully in charge of health behavior. Now, let’s apply these five criteria to the vitamin D performance measurements, to get an idea of how it can benefit you:

1. The vitamin D serum level can be measured with reasonable accuracy, and the serum level is the measure associated with health effects. You can also measure the vitamin D status of many different health conditions at different points in time, to correlate vitamin D status with improved or worsened condition.
2. Vitamin D is measured using a blood test, which can be done via a dried blood sample or a blood serum sample. A structured health questionnaire is used to track changes in health status.
3. The actions that can be taken to affect change in vitamin D status would be a combination of UVB exposure (sun or safe tanning bed) and oral vitamin D3 supplementation.
4. After measuring both your vitamin D level and your level of health (such as improvement or decline of a health condition or disease), you’ll be able to get personalized feedback on how one affects or relates to the other. New software applications are in development now to allow participants quick access to their own health performance information and recommendations.

Many measures of health are most useful when both individual scores and group scores are kept--an individual has only one picture of health conditions and can't necessarily answer questions about a condition not his/hers without a group picture. For example, the question “What's my chance of getting (a particular disease) at this serum level?” can only be answered from group information.

5. The cost/benefit picture for vitamin D testing is extremely compelling. More than 75 percent of the world's population is vitamin D deficient and most don't know it! It is estimated that roughly 35 percent of health care costs could be reduced by having a serum level in the 40-60 ng/ml range.

The cost of healthcare per person in the US was $13,710 in 2011. If that was reduced by 35 percent, that would amount to $4,798-worth of savings. The cost of the vitamin D measurement and feedback systems per person is $130 per year, equating to a net 37-times’ return on investment.

Optimizing Vitamin D is One of Your Most Cost Effective Health Strategies

Many families have seen a rise in the proportion of their income spent on healthcare expenses. For many, the costs now exceed what they spend on food! Measuring your vitamin D performance and taking steps to optimize your level is one of the easiest and least expensive things you can do for your health, and could help you rein in out-of-control health care expenses.

GrassrootsHealth D*Action is an integrated set of performance and feedback systems to give you complete control of your individual vitamin D performance systems, which will help you gain a total picture of your health. There’s no doubt in my mind that the D*Action programs can be a major key to help turn the current health paradigm from 'treatment' to 'prevention.’

It’s truly exciting to consider that, within our lifetime, we will be able to prevent the majority of breast cancer, for example.

The D*Action Breast Cancer Prevention project began last year, and is a major step in that direction. While it still needs four more years’ worth of data to be complete, the women enrolled in the project are already exhibiting fewer cases of breast cancer than would be expected within the general population. To learn more about this breast cancer prevention project, please see this previous article. (Women 60 and over with no current cancer or current treatment are eligible for the breast cancer prevention study. You can sign up here if you're eligible.)

Join the D*Action Project!

I’m a firm believer that the D*Action project can help create a massive sea change in how we address common health problems. I hope you’ll become a part of it. To participate, simply purchase the D*Action Measurement Kit and follow the registration instructions included. As a participant, you agree to test your vitamin D levels twice a year during a five year program, and share your health status to demonstrate the public health impact of this nutrient. There is a $65 fee each 6 months for your sponsorship of the project, which includes a test kit to be used at home, and electronic reports on your ongoing progress. You will get a follow up email every six months reminding you "it's time for your next test and health survey."

Please note that 100 percent of the proceeds from the kits go to fund the research project. I do not charge a single dime as a distributor of the test kits. Please note, we cannot ship this test to the state of New York!

Tens of Thousands of Studies Attest to Vitamin D’s Health Impact

According to a January 17 press release by Orthomolecular Medicine,² 3,600 medical papers with vitamin D in the title or abstract were published in 2012 alone, bringing the grand total to 33,800. That’s a lot of studies on vitamin D. The Top 16 vitamin D papers of 2012 selected by a panel of vitamin D experts focused on vitamin D’s beneficial impact on:

Pregnancy outcomes (reduced risk of Cesarean section and pre-eclampsia)	Autism
Childhood language impairment	Cardiovascular disease
Type 1 diabetes	Type 2 diabetes
Bacterial and viral infections	Cancer
Falls and bone fractures	All-cause mortality

Our Healing Sun — Beyond Vitamin D

Interestingly, sun exposure in and of itself is starting to experience a revival, as researchers are taking another look at the health benefits of sunshine, over and beyond vitamin D. For example, according to one 2012 study³:

“The number of studies reporting on the association between sunlight exposure, vitamin D and cancer risk is steadily increasing. We reviewed all published case-control and cohort studies concerning colorectal, prostate, breast cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) and both sunlight and vitamin D to update our previous review and to verify if the epidemiological evidence is in line with the hypothesis that the possible preventive effect of sunlight on cancer might be mediated not only by vitamin D but also by other pathways.

We found that almost all epidemiological studies suggest that chronic (not intermittent) sun exposure is associated with a reduced risk of colorectal, breast, prostate cancer and NHL. In colorectal and to a lesser degree in breast cancer vitamin D levels were found to be inversely associated with cancer risk. In prostate cancer and NHL, however, no associations were found...

[I]t is concluded that the evidence that sunlight is a protective factor for colorectal, prostate, breast cancer and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is still accumulating. The same conclusion can be drawn concerning high vitamin D levels and the risk of colorectal cancer and possibly breast cancer. Particularly in prostate cancer and NHL other sunlight potentiated and vitamin D independent pathways, such as modulation of the immune system and the circadian rhythm, and the degradation of folic acid might play a role in reduced cancer risk as well.”

As discussed in a recent article by Sayer Ji⁴, five noteworthy properties of sunlight exposure, beyond vitamin D production, include the following. (There are many more, however. To learn more, see this previous article.)

1. Pain-killing (analgesic) properties
2. Increased subcutaneous fat metabolism
3. Regulation of human lifespan (solar cycles appear to be able to directly affect the human genome, thereby influencing lifespan)
4. Daytime sun exposure improves evening alertness
5. Conversion to metabolic energy (i.e. we may “ingest” energy directly from the sun, like plants do)

In the following TED Talk, dermatologist Richard Weller discusses recent research by his team, which shows that nitric oxide, a chemical transmitter stored in huge reserves in your skin, can be released by UV light, and confer great benefit for your cardiovascular system.

Revised and Updated Recommendations for Optimizing Your Vitamin D Levels

Research on vitamin D is moving swiftly, so you’d be well advised to stay on top of the latest developments as recommendations are refined and updated. I will review some of the most important recent developments here, so you may want to share this article with your friends and family. First, it’s important to remember that sun exposure is the best way to optimize your vitamin D levels as your body has built-in “fail-safe” mechanisms that prevent detrimental side effects from occurring.

Last year, I created a video to help you determine if you can get enough vitamin D from sun exposure in your area at different times of the year. Based on additional information received, I now believe that my previous position was too strict... The good news is, you can likely get vitamin D under far less ideal conditions than previously suggested.

The radiation from the sun that reaches the earth's surface (and hence your body) is partially filtered out by the atmosphere. I had previously stated that UVB rays will only penetrate the atmosphere when the sun is above an angle of about 50° from the horizon, and that when the sun is lower than 50°, the ozone layer will absorb vitamin D-producing UVB-rays while allowing the longer, and more harmful, UVA-rays to get through, which would defeat the purpose of spending time in the sun.

This recommendation is likely too strict. According to experts in the field, you can likely get sufficient amounts of UVB radiation when the sun is as low as 30 degrees above the horizon, or whenever the temperature is warm enough to expose large amounts of skin.

I thank John Hochman, MSME, for bringing this to my attention. According to Dr. Ola Engelsen with the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, the creator of a calculator⁵ that takes a number of factors into consideration give you an estimate of how many minutes of exposure you need to produce the equivalent of 1,000 IU’s of vitamin D, the sun must be more than 15 degrees above the horizon during cloudless conditions.

If You Take Vitamin D Supplements, Remember to Take Vitamin K2

Second, based on the latest investigations by Carole Baggerly, director of GrassrootsHealth, there is a chart showing the average adult dose required to reach healthy vitamin D levels based upon the measured starting point. Many experts agree about 35 IU's of vitamin D per pound of body weight could be used as an estimate.

Here, it’s important to remember that if you’re taking high dose vitamin D supplements, you ALSO need to take vitamin K2. The biological role of vitamin K2 is to help move calcium into the proper areas in your body, such as your bones and teeth. It also helps remove calcium from areas where it shouldn’t be, such as in your arteries and soft tissues. Vitamin K2 deficiency is actually what produces the symptoms of vitamin D toxicity, which includes inappropriate calcification that can lead to hardening of your arteries. The reason for this is because when you take vitamin D, your body creates more vitamin K2-dependent proteins that move calcium around in your body. Without vitamin K2, those proteins remain inactivated, so the benefits of those proteins remain unrealized.

So remember, if you take supplemental vitamin D, you're creating an increased demand for K2. Together, these two nutrients help strengthen your bones and improve your heart health.

While the ideal or optimal ratios between vitamin D and vitamin K2 have yet to be elucidated, Dr. Kate Rheaume-Bleue, author of Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox: How a Little Known Vitamin Could Save Your Life, suggests that for every 1,000 IU's of vitamin D you take, you may benefit from about 100 micrograms of K2, and perhaps as much as 150-200 micrograms (mcg).

Individual Variables that Affect Your Vitamin D Levels

Now, going back to optimizing your vitamin D through sun exposure, the production of previtamin D3 in your skin varies depending on several factors, such as:

Antioxidant levels and diet in general	Age
Skin color and/or current tan level	Use of sunscreen
Latitude and altitude (elevation)	Cloud cover and pollution
Ozone layer	Surface reflection
Season	Time of day
Weight

 

Keep in mind that while 35 IU’s of vitamin D3 per pound of body weight per day may put you closer to the ballpark of what most people likely need, it is impossible to make a blanket recommendation that will cover everyone's needs due to the multi-variable factors listed above. The only way to determine your optimal dose is to get your blood tested. It’s the serum level that really matters, and ideally, you'll want to maintain a vitamin D serum level of 50-70 ng/ml year-round.

Besides location, which has a major impact on how much vitamin D you can produce, your skin color is another really important factor. African Americans are actually at greater risk of vitamin D deficiency, because if you have dark skin, you may need as much as 10 times more sun exposure to produce the same amount of vitamin D as a person with pale skin!

Yes, You have to Show Some Skin...

Many people are under the mistaken idea that you can get enough vitamin D just from exposing your forearms and face for a few minutes a day. This claim is patently false, as clearly demonstrated in a recent study⁶. As reported by the Vitamin D Council⁷:

“[R]esearchers in South Korea... studied the effect of brief sun exposure on vitamin D levels in 20 young women for four weeks. The study was conducted between October and November at latitude 37 degrees north, about the latitude of Washington DC. Initial mean 25(OH)D levels were 11 ng/ml and no woman had levels greater than 20 ng/ml to begin the study. The women were told to get 20 minutes of midday sun exposure on their hands, forearms and face every weekday for four weeks. Facial sunblock and sunglasses were permitted.

Guess how much 25(OH)D levels increased after a month of daily sun exposure? Vitamin D levels did not increase at all; in fact, they were a little lower than when the study began!”

For most of us, exposing face and forearms is grossly inadequate to move vitamin levels into a healthy range. For optimal benefit, strive to have at least 40 percent of your skin uncovered.

If you have light-colored skin, you can use the color of your skin to tell you when you’ve had enough sun and it’s time to get in the shade (or cover up using a long-sleeved shirt, pants, and a hat). Stay out just long enough so that your skin turns the very lightest shade of pink. Continuing UV exposure beyond the minimal dose required to produce skin redness will not increase your vitamin D production any further. In Caucasian skin, this equilibrium will typically occur within 20 minutes or so of ultraviolet exposure during ideal conditions. It can take 3 to 6 times longer for darkly pigmented skin to reach the equilibrium concentration of skin vitamin D.

Take a Moment and Join D*Action Now!

The research is clear — Vitamin D is absolutely critical for your health, playing a crucial role in a wide range of human disease states, including longevity itself. I urge you to become an active participant in your health by joining the D*Action project and measure your vitamin D performance and become an advocate in your community

This project’s aim is to will help people everywhere to take control of their health with the information that’s known right now and, to initiate community action for everyone. Activists are needed to participate. To participate, simply purchase the D*Action Measurement Kit and follow the registration instructions included. The full purchase price goes to fund the D*Action project.

100% of proceeds go to support Grassroots Health to end the Vitamin D deficiency epidemic.
Please note, we cannot ship this test to the state of New York.

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By Dr. Mercola

The cold and flu season got off to an early start this year in the US, and everywhere you turn, you’ve undoubtedly seen ads and media reports urging you to get the flu vaccine.

Meanwhile, scientific reviews by the independent Cochrane Database^{1, 2} published last fall again refuted pervasive “expert” health and media claims that the flu vaccine is the most effective way to protect yourself against the flu, and that it is a safe way of doing so...

Fortunately, there are many alternatives available, from optimizing your vitamin D levels and taking zinc at the first sign of infection, to incorporating immune boosting foods into your daily diet.

Why the Flu Vaccine is Your Least Effective Option...

Last fall, the Cochrane group released two new scientific reviews on flu vaccines. Their review of all trials comparing vaccinated versus unvaccinated adults³ found that, at best, vaccines might be effective against only influenza A and B.

This represents only about 10 percent of all circulating viruses. Under ideal conditions, where the vaccine completely matches the circulating viral configuration, 33 healthy adults need to be vaccinated to avoid one set of influenza symptoms.

In average conditions (partially matching vaccine) 100 people need to be vaccinated to avoid one set of influenza symptoms.

They also found that vaccine use did not affect the number of people hospitalized or working days lost, but did cause one case of Guillain-Barré syndrome (a major neurological condition leading to paralysis) for every one million vaccinations. So please, carefully weigh the risks versus benefits before you opt for vaccination. Also do your research on risk free alternatives, such as those discussed here.

Garlic – As Good or Better Than Tamiflu?

A recent article by PreventDisease.com⁴ highlighted the use of garlic, which has natural antiviral, antibiotic, and antifungal activity.

“Forget the flu shot. A soup based on more than 50 cloves of garlic, onions, thyme and lemon will destroy almost any virus that enters its path including colds, flu and even norovirus,” John Summerly writes.

Garlic has long been hailed for its healing powers, especially against infectious diseases like cold and flu. This is likely due to its immune boosting effects. According to the featured article:

“...Compounds in this familiar bulb kill many organisms, including bacteria and viruses that cause earaches, flu and colds. Research indicates that garlic is also effective against digestive ailments and diarrhea... A recent and significant finding from Washington State University shows that garlic is 100 times more effective than two popular antibiotics at fighting disease causing bacteria commonly responsible for foodborne illness.”

The respected research organization The Cochrane Database, which has repeatedly demonstrated that the science in support of the flu vaccine is flimsy at best, has also reviewed studies on the alternatives, such as the use of garlic.⁵ Unfortunately, such research is harder to come by, as there’s no financial incentive driving it.

Still, in the singular study identified by the Cochrane group, those who took garlic daily for three months had fewer colds than those who took a placebo, and, when they did come down with a cold, the duration of illness was shorter – an average of 4.5 days compared to 5.5 days for the placebo group.

While this may not seem overly impressive, it’s still better than the results achieved by the much-advertised flu drug Tamiflu. If taken within 48 hours of onset of illness, Tamiflu might reduce the duration of flu symptoms by about a day to a day and a half. That's the extent of what this $100-plus treatment will get you. It’s virtually identical to just taking garlic on a regular basis...

However, some patients with influenza are at increased risk for secondary bacterial infections when on Tamiflu, which of course would defeat the plan of being able to jump out of bed a day sooner. Furthermore, adverse events reported include pediatric deaths, serious skin reactions, and neuropsychiatric events, including suicide committed while delirious – side effects you won’t experience if you’re taking garlic.

Furthermore, there are plenty of reasons to doubt the veracity of Tamiflu’s claims. In 2009, conflicts of interest within WHO were unearthed, showing links between Roche, the manufacturer of Tamiflu, and those responsible for creating pandemic flu planning guidelines. Tamiflu is currently on the organization's list of "essential medicines." But the Cochrane team could find "no evidence" to suggest that Tamiflu actually reduces complications in cases of influenza. In fact, eight out of 10 clinical trials on Tamiflu are still “missing in action,” as Roche has doggedly refused to release them.

Kind of makes you wonder why, doesn’t it?

If you love garlic, the featured article includes a hearty garlic soup recipe, consisting of unpeeled garlic cloves, olive oil, organic grass-fed butter, cayenne, ginger, onions, thyme, coconut milk, organic veggie broth, and lemon wedges. For the recipe, please refer to the original article.⁶ If you don’t enjoy garlic, you could opt for a high-quality supplement.

Understanding What Causes Colds and Influenzas Can Help You Prevent Them

Both colds and various influenzas are caused by a wide variety of viruses (not bacteria). While the two ailments typically affect your respiratory tract, there are some differences between them. Common symptoms of a 'regular cold' include runny nose, congestion, cough, and sore throat. The symptoms of the flu tend to be far more severe, as the influenza viruses are capable of causing severe lung infection, pneumonia and even respiratory failure. They also tend to affect your joints – hence that allover achy feeling.

The following video offers an excellent, rapid-fire cliff-notes-type education on flu viruses, where the “H” and “N” flu classifications come from and their transmission, along with common flu symptoms. (Bear in mind that I obviously do NOT recommend or advise getting a flu vaccine, which is listed as one of the prevention methods at the end of this video.)

The most common way these viruses are spread is via hand-to-hand contact. For instance, someone with a cold blows their nose then shakes your hand or touches surfaces that you also touch. However, the key to remember is that just being exposed to a cold virus does not mean that you're destined to catch a cold. If your immune system is operating at its peak, it should actually be quite easy for you to fend off the virus without ever getting sick. If your immune system is impaired, on the other hand, they can easily take hold in your body.

So, it's important to understand that the reason you catch a cold or flu is because your immune system is impaired. It's not an inevitable event based on exposure alone. Lifestyle factors that can depress your immune system, alone or in combination, include:

• Eating too much sugar and grains. The average person consumes about 75 grams of fructose per day (primarily in the form of high fructose corn syrup found in virtually all processed foods), and when fructose is consumed at that level it can devastate your immune system.

One of the ways it does this is by unbalancing your gut flora. Sugar is 'fertilizer' for pathogenic bacteria, yeast, and fungi that can set your immune system up for an assault by a respiratory virus. Most people don't realize that 80 percent of your immune system actually lies in your gastrointestinal tract. That's why controlling your sugar intake is CRUCIAL for optimizing your immune system.

It would be wise to reduce your total sugar intake, and limit your fructose consumption to below 25 grams a day if you're in good health, or below 15 grams a day if you have high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, or are insulin resistant or are seeking to recover from an acute illness like the flu.

• Vitamin D deficiency. In the largest and most nationally representative study⁷ of its kind to date, involving about 19,000 Americans, people with the lowest vitamin D levels reported having significantly more recent colds or cases of the flu -- and the risk was even greater for those with chronic respiratory disorders like asthma. At least five additional studies also show an inverse association between lower respiratory tract infections and vitamin D levels.
• Insufficient sleep. If you aren't getting enough restorative sleep, you'll be at increased risk for a hostile viral takeover. Your immune system is also the most effective when you're not sleep-deprived, so the more rested you are the quicker you'll recover. You can find 33 secrets for a good night's sleep here.
• Insufficient exercise. Regular exercise is a crucial strategy for increasing your resistance to illness. There is evidence that regular, moderate exercise can reduce your risk for respiratory illness by boosting your immune system. In fact, one study⁸ found that people who exercised regularly (five or more days a week) cut their risk of having a cold by close to 50 percent. And, in the event they did catch a cold, their symptoms were much less severe than among those who did not exercise.

Exercise likely cuts your risk of colds so significantly because it triggers a rise in immune system cells that can attack any potential invaders. Each time you exercise you can benefit from this boost to your immune system. Ideally, establish a regular fitness program, such as Peak Fitness, now, to help you ward off colds and other illness. Exercise can also help boost your immune system acutely, by increasing your body temperature. This helps kill off invading pathogens, similarly to the fever your body produces when sick.

• Using ineffective strategies to address emotional stressors. Emotional stressors can also predispose you to an infection while making cold symptoms worse. Finding ways to manage daily stress as well as your reactions to circumstances beyond your control will contribute to a strong and resilient immune system. Effective strategies include a variety of energy psychology tools, such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).

Zinc – Another Trusted Cold-Fighter

A Cochrane Database Review of the medical research on zinc found that when taken within one day of the first symptoms, zinc can cut down the time you have a cold by about 24 hours. The review included 15 randomized control trials, consisting of 1,360 participants of all age groups. Zinc was also found to greatly reduce the severity of symptoms.

The review stopped short of recommending any specific dose of zinc, citing the need for further studies to establish optimal formulations and durations of treatment. However, some of the studies showed the beneficial qualities of zinc in fighting the common cold used between 50 and 65 mg a day. The people taking lozenges were more likely to experience adverse effects than those taking syrup, including a bad taste in their mouth and nausea.

Zinc was not recommended for anyone with an underlying health condition, like lowered immune function, asthma or chronic illness.

Also keep in mind that any time you isolate one mineral and ingest it independently of the others, the potential exists for imbalance, or in the worst case, overdose. Therefore, I wouldn't currently recommend taking more than 50 mg a day, and I do not recommend taking large doses of zinc on a daily basis for preventive purposes as you could easily develop a copper imbalance that way. You can also activate the "Reverse Effect" in which too much of a good nutrient can actually cause the opposite of what it's supposed to do. So leave zinc for acute, short-term use only. Foods like garlic, on the other hand, can safely be consumed regularly to maintain a robust immune system.

“Let Food Be Thy Medicine”

As mentioned earlier, the first thing you want to do when you feel yourself coming down with a cold or flu is to avoid ALL sugars and processed foods. (I also recommend avoiding all artificial sweeteners, as they can have a detrimental effect on immune function as well.) Sugar is particularly damaging to your immune system -- which needs to be ramped up, not suppressed, in order to combat an emerging infection. This includes fructose from fruit juice, and all types of grains (as they rapidly break down to sugar in your body).

Make sure to drink plenty of pure water. Water is essential for the optimal function of every system in your body and will help with nose stuffiness and loosening secretions. You should drink enough water so that your urine is a light, pale yellow. Ideally, you’ll want to address nutrition, sleep, exercise and stress issues the moment you first feel yourself coming down with something. This is when immune-enhancing strategies will be most effective. Foods that will help strengthen your immune response include:

Raw, grass-fed organic milk, and/or high-quality whey protein	Fermented foods such as raw kefir, kimchee, miso, pickles, sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables	Raw, organic eggs from pastured chickens	Grass-fed beef in small quantities of a few ounces	Coconuts and coconut oil
	Organic vegetables	Garlic. Ideally consumed raw and crushed just before eating	Turmeric, oregano, cinnamon, cloves	Mushrooms, especially Reishi, Shiitake, and Maitake

Does Chicken Soup Really Work?

Short answer, yes, chicken soup can be helpful against cold and flu symptoms. Chicken contains a natural amino acid called cysteine, which can thin the mucus in your lungs and make it less sticky so you can expel it more easily.

Processed, canned soups won't work as well as the homemade version, however. For best results, make up a fresh batch yourself (or ask a friend or family member to do so) and make the soup hot and spicy with plenty of pepper. The spices will trigger a sudden release of watery fluids in your mouth, throat, and lungs, which will help thin down the respiratory mucus so it's easier to cough up and expel. Making it from scratch is easy. Below, I demonstrate a simple recipe for making your own chicken soup and stock

• Put the chicken bones in a large stock pan (use bones from organically-raised chicken)
• Cover the bones with water
• Bring to a boil and lower the heat
• Simmer for about an hour or longer

Vitamin D – An Excellent Cold and Flu Prevention Strategy

Vitamin D is an amazingly effective antimicrobial agent, producing 200 to 300 different antimicrobial peptides in your body that kill bacteria, viruses and fungi. So optimizing your levels will not only help send a cold or flu virus packing, it can prevent them from invading your body in the first place. Contrary to flu vaccines, this recommendation has been steadily gaining scientific validation. In fact, there’s compelling evidence suggesting cold and flu may actually be symptoms of vitamin D deficiency.

Dr. John Cannell, founder of the Vitamin D Council, was one of the first to introduce the idea that vitamin D deficiency may actually be an underlying cause of influenza, which would help explain its apparent benefits as a flu-fighter. His hypothesis was published in the journal Epidemiology and Infection in 2006,⁹ which was followed up with another study published in the Virology Journal in 2008.¹⁰ His hypothesis received further support and confirmation when, in the following year, the largest and most nationally representative study of its kind to date discovered that people with the lowest blood vitamin D levels reported having significantly more recent colds or cases of the flu.¹¹

In another study, published in 2010,¹² researchers investigated the effect of vitamin D on the incidence of seasonal influenza A in schoolchildren. Over the course of a year, influenza A occurred in just 10.8 percent of the children in the vitamin D group, compared with 18.6 percent of the children in the placebo group. According to the authors:

"This study suggests that vitamin D3 supplementation during the winter may reduce the incidence of influenza A, especially in specific subgroups of schoolchildren."

Revised and Updated Recommendations for Optimizing Your Vitamin D Levels

Research on vitamin D is moving swiftly, so you’d be well advised to stay on top of the latest developments as recommendations are refined and updated. I will cover the latest developments here, so you may want to share this article with your peers. First, it’s important to remember that sun exposure is the best way to optimize your vitamin D levels as your body has built-in “fail-safe” mechanisms that prevent detrimental side effects from occurring. Last year, I created a video to help you determine if you can get enough vitamin D from sun exposure in your area at different times of the year.

Based on additional information received, I now believe that my previous position was too strict... The good news is, you can likely get vitamin D under far less ideal conditions than previously suggested.

The radiation from the sun that reaches the earth's surface (and hence your body) is partially filtered out by the atmosphere. I had previously stated that UVB rays will only penetrate the atmosphere when the sun is above an angle of about 50° from the horizon, and that when the sun is lower than 50°, the ozone layer will absorb vitamin D-producing UVB-rays while allowing the longer, and more harmful, UVA-rays to get through, which would defeat the purpose of spending time in the sun.

This recommendation is likely too strict. According to experts in the field, you can likely get sufficient amounts of UVB radiation when the sun is as low as 30 degrees above the horizon, or whenever the temperature is warm enough to expose large amounts of skin.

I thank John Hochman, MSME, for bringing this to my attention. According to Dr. Ola Engelsen with the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, the creator of a calculator¹³ that takes a number of factors into consideration give you an estimate of how many minutes of exposure you need to produce the equivalent of 1,000 IU’s of vitamin D, the sun must be more than 15 degrees above the horizon during cloudless conditions.

If You Take Vitamin D Supplements, Remember to Take Vitamin K2

Second, based on the latest investigations by Carole Baggerly, director of GrassrootsHealth, the average adult dose required to reach healthy vitamin D levels is around 8,000 IU's of vitamin D per day if you're taking an oral supplement. For children, many experts agree they need about 35 IU's of vitamin D per pound of body weight. Here, it’s important to remember that if you’re taking high dose vitamin D supplements, you ALSO need to take vitamin K2.

The biological role of vitamin K2 is to help move calcium into the proper areas in your body, such as your bones and teeth. It also helps remove calcium from areas where it shouldn’t be, such as in your arteries and soft tissues. Vitamin K2 deficiency is actually what produces the symptoms of vitamin D toxicity, which includes inappropriate calcification that can lead to hardening of your arteries. The reason for this is because when you take vitamin D, your body creates more vitamin K2-dependent proteins that move calcium around in your body. Without vitamin K2, those proteins remain inactivated, so the benefits of those proteins remain unrealized.

So remember, if you take supplemental vitamin D, you're creating an increased demand for K2. Together, these two nutrients help strengthen your bones and improve your heart health.

While the ideal or optimal ratios between vitamin D and vitamin K2 have yet to be elucidated, Dr. Kate Rheaume-Bleue, author of Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox: How a Little Known Vitamin Could Save Your Life, suggests that for every 1,000 IU's of vitamin D you take, you may benefit from about 100 micrograms of K2, and perhaps as much as 150-200 micrograms (mcg). So, if you take 8,000 IU's of vitamin D3 per day, that means you'd need in the neighborhood of 800 to 1,000 micrograms (0.8 to 1 milligram/mg) of vitamin K2.

Lastly, remember that your vitamin D requirements are highly individual, as your vitamin D status is dependent on numerous factors, so while 8,000 IU’s of vitamin D3 per day may put you closer to the ballpark of what most people likely need, it is impossible to make a blanket recommendation that will cover everyone's needs. The only way to determine your optimal dose is to get your blood tested. Ideally, you'll want to maintain a vitamin D serum level of 50-70 ng/ml year-round. For an in-depth explanation of everything you need to know before you get tested, please read my latest updates in Test Values and Treatment for Vitamin D Deficiency.

Other Supplements that Send Pathogens Packin'

There are a number of supplements that can be beneficial for colds and influenza, but I believe they should be used only as an adjunct to other healthy dietary and lifestyle measures discussed in this article. Some of the more helpful options for cold and flu – above and beyond vitamin D, garlic, and zinc – include:

Vitamin C: A very potent antioxidant; use a natural form such as acerola, which contains associated micronutrients.	A tea made from a combination of elderflower, yarrow, boneset, linden, peppermint and ginger: Drink it hot and often for combating a cold or flu. It causes you to sweat, which is helpful for eradicating a virus from your system
Oregano Oil: The higher the carvacrol concentration, the more effective it is. Carvacrol is the most active antimicrobial agent in oregano oil	Medicinal mushrooms, such as shiitake, reishi, and turkey tail
Propolis: A bee resin and one of the most broad-spectrum antimicrobial compounds in the world; propolis is also the richest source of caffeic acid and apigenin, two very important compounds that aid in immune response	Olive leaf extract: Ancient Egyptians and Mediterranean cultures used it for a variety of health-promoting uses and it is widely known as a natural, non-toxic immune system builder

So please, carefully review the evidence against flu vaccines, and consider using all-natural immune boosting lifestyle strategies as your first line of defense against colds and flu. As you can see, there are many alternatives available, from optimizing your vitamin D levels and taking zinc at the first sign of infection, to incorporating immune boosting foods like garlic into your daily diet.

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By Dr. Mercola

Welcome to a new year! If 2013 is anything like 2012, we're in for a wealth of valuable breakthroughs that can help you and your family live healthier, happier, and longer lives.

We discussed many downright revolutionary topics during this past year, from the remarkable health benefits of high intensity interval training, to shocking new evidence of harm from consuming genetically engineered foods, to the avalanche of rapidly-mounting evidence supporting vitamin D and probiotics for optimal health — both physical and mental — and much more.

In case you missed any of our most engrossing headliners, here's a list of the Top 10 most viewed articles from 2012.

#10: Eating This Can "Tear Holes" in Your Gut

- Allowing various gut contents to flood into your bloodstream where they wreak havoc on your health, causing bloating, gas and abdominal cramps as well as fatigue, skin rashes, joint pain, allergies, psychological symptoms, autism and more. Stop eating it now...

Grains contain anti-nutrients and lectins that can damage your gut, and humans did not historically consume them until relatively recently. We're often told whole grains are healthy, but the high-fiber bran portion of the grain — the part that makes a whole grain — actually contains many of the anti-nutrients.

There's a sizeable body of scientific evidence showing that grains, as well as legumes, can cause leaky gut and associated symptoms. Eliminating grains (and sugars) from your diet, while introducing traditionally fermented foods, can help prevent leaky gut as well as other health conditions.

#9: Breaking News Alert: First-Ever Lifetime Feeding Study Finds Genetically Engineered Corn Causes Massive Tumors, Organ Damage, and Early Death

- It's popular, controversial, and now a breaking story from France proves it to be a cancer trigger. (Even though its backers still say it's fine.) If this food can give healthy rats cancer, why would you want to bring that risk on yourself?

A two-year long French feeding study designed to evaluate the long-term health effects of a genetically engineered (GE) corn found that rats fed Monsanto's maize developed massive breast tumors, kidney and liver damage, and other serious health problems. The major onslaught of diseases set in during the 13th month. Rats only live a few years while humans live around 80 years, so naturally we will notice these effects in animals long before we see them in humans.

The gigantic human lab experiment is only about 10 years old, so we are likely decades away from tabulating the human casualties. This is some of the strongest evidence to date that we need to exercise the precautionary principle ASAP and avoid these foods.

Female rats that ate genetically engineered corn died 2-3 times more than controls, and more rapidly, while the male GE-fed rats had tumors that occurred up to a year-and-a-half earlier than rats not fed GE corn. I believe it is crucial that we implement the precautionary principle as rapidly as possible as this study confirms it is difficult to predict precisely what GE foods might do to the youths of today, as many are eating a fair amount of GE ingredients practically from day one.

Total Video Length: 00:07:54

#8: Sidestep These Veggies, Even if They're Organic

- They may contain hidden ingredients that have been the source of several outbreaks of food poisoning in recent years. Here's the best way to ensure you avoid eating this "rubbery" substance that could poison you...

Most people are well aware that fresh conventionally-grown produce is more or less contaminated with pesticides. Less known is the now-common practice of coating fresh fruits and vegetables — including organic varieties — with edible plastic coatings to increase shelf life.

So-called modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) involves controlling or modifying the atmosphere surrounding the product to slow spoilage. This can be accomplished by coating the food with an edible film. Four basic materials used for edible films are lipids, resins, polysaccharides and proteins, to which a variety of antimicrobials, plasticizers and texturizers are added. These types of coatings present several potential health hazards, the most severe of which is the potential to promote the growth of foodborne pathogens if misapplied.

#7: One of the Worst Ways to Eat Eggs

- Free range eggs may be an ideal food, being one of the least expensive and best proteins you can eat. But cook them like this and it'll oxidize the cholesterol in the yolk, which could cause damage to your body and be problematic if you have high cholesterol.

Eggs generally come from one of two sources: confined animal feeding operations (CAFO's), where the hens are typically kept caged indoors, or smaller farms where the hens are not confined but rather allowed to pasture freely. Hens' natural diet consists of seeds, green plants, insects, and worms. CAFO birds are primarily fed a diet of corn and soy-based feed; most of which is genetically engineered.

The difference in diet makes the eggs they produce vastly different nutritionally.

You can tell the eggs are free range by the color of the egg yolk. Foraged hens produce eggs with bright orange yolks. Dull, pale yellow yolks are a sure sign you're getting eggs form caged hens that are not allowed to forage for their natural diet. Free range eggs are truly an ideal food; it's not only one of best proteins you can get, it's also one of the least expensive. They're best eaten raw, or soft-boiled. Scrambled eggs are the most damaged, and will not provide the same health benefits as raw or partially cooked eggs.

#6: If You Take Oral Vitamin D You MUST Avoid Making This Serious Mistake

- You may be innocently making this mistake - sometimes with your doctor's blessing. It can mean the difference between a 6% lower mortality risk and a 2% higher risk.

Optimizing your vitamin D levels may be one of the most important steps you can take in support of your long-term health, but it's critical to understand the differences between the two types of vitamin D available in supplement form.

A meta-analysis of 50 trials looking at mortality rates for "doctor recommended" synthetic vitamin D2 supplements versus natural vitamin D3 shows a six percent risk reduction among those who used D3, compared to a two percent increased risk among those who used D2. Research has also shown that vitamin D3 is approximately 87 percent more potent in raising and maintaining vitamin D concentrations and produces 2- to 3-fold greater storage of vitamin D than does D2. D3 is also converted into its active form 500 percent faster.

Plant-based food sources that contain vitamin D provide vitamin D2. Only animal-based food sources, such as fish, egg yolk, and raw milk, contain D3. Keep in mind that the IDEAL way to optimize your vitamin D levels is by exposing large amounts of skin to sunlight or a safe tanning bed, but if you choose to use an oral supplement, make sure you're taking vitamin D3.

Also be aware that if you take high doses of supplemental vitamin D, you also need to make sure you're getting enough vitamin K2, as these two nutrients work in tandem. Vitamin K2 deficiency is actually what produces the symptoms of vitamin D toxicity, which includes inappropriate calcification that can lead to hardening of your arteries. While the ideal or optimal ratios between vitamin D and vitamin K2 have yet to be elucidated, Dr. Kate Rheaume-Bleue, author of Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox: How a Little Known Vitamin Could Save Your Life, suggests that for every 1,000 IU's of vitamin D you take, you may benefit from about 100 micrograms of K2, and perhaps as much as 150-200 micrograms (mcg). The latest vitamin D dosing recommendations, which call for about 8,000 IU's of vitamin D3 per day if you're an adult, means you'd need in the neighborhood of 800 to 1,000 micrograms (0.8 to 1 milligram/mg) of vitamin K2.

That said, the most important factor is not the dosage but rather your vitamin D serum level, which should ideally be between 50-70 ng/ml. When taking an oral vitamin D supplement, you should take enough to reach and maintain this therapeutic level.

#5: Avoid This Popular Exercise as it Shrinks Your Muscle and Accelerates Aging

- Instead of a growth hormone spurt, you get a Cortisol spurt - reversing all your effort. Plus, it decreases your insulin sensitivity, thus increasing your flab. If that's not bad enough, it shrinks your muscle and hypes up aging. Don't let your valuable time and energy go to waste like that...

Dr. Doug McGuff, M.D., an emergency room physician, is also an expert in one of my passions of exercise, namely high-intensity interval training. He's a proponent of high-intensity interval training using weights as opposed to cardio equipment, which can achieve many of the same results.

High-intensity exercise, which engage your fast-twitch muscle fibers, is required if you want an effective aerobic workout, and can cut your workout time from an hour on the treadmill down to as little as 12-15 minutes.

Your fast-twitch fibers are largely glycolytic and store a lot of glucose. When these muscles are recruited, it creates the stimulus needed to grow muscle. At the same time, it enlarges the glucose storage reservoir in the muscle, which enhances your insulin sensitivity. Long, slow, distance-type of exercise can actually cause your intermediate and fast-twitch fibers to begin to atrophy. Aside from losing muscle mass, this also promotes onset of loss of insulin sensitivity. Overall, conventional cardio has repeatedly been shown to be one of the least effective forms of exercise.

Download Interview Transcript

#4: How to Starve Cancer Out of Your Body

- Eating these four foods FEEDS cancer cells... Deny it by refusing to supply it these cancer-promoting foods. Then layer these three supplements, which each individually slash your cancer risk at least 50%. Combining these strategies could get your risk to near zero - what's not to like about that?

In this interview, Dr. Christine Horner, a board certified general- and plastic surgeon, shared her extensive knowledge about breast cancer — its causes and its cures, and the pro's and con's of various screening methods. There are many all-natural cancer-prevention strategies, and research shows that most of them can cut your risk in half! Consequently, by implementing multiple strategies, you can virtually eliminate your risk of cancer as well as other chronic disease.

Your diet is the one of the best ways to either feed or prevent cancer. Processed foods, soft drinks, red meat from CAFO-raised animals, trans fats, all forms of sugar, and any food containing or contaminated with xenoestrogens promote cancer growth. Meanwhile, plant foods, particularly cruciferous vegetables and flax seed as well as many herbs and spices, are cancer-preventive. Healthy fats of particular importance for cancer prevention are omega-3 and omega-9, which effectively slow down tumor growth in estrogen-sensitive cancers such as breast-, prostate- and colon cancers.

Download Interview Transcript

#3: Why this Single Organ Powerfully Dictates Whether You're Healthy or Sick

- The importance of sending correct messages and feeding this organ with vitality-promoting foods cannot be overstated, it's so profound. Yet for most people this balance is dramatically skewed - negatively. Here's how to reverse course and see a dramatic jump in your health starting today...

The importance of your gut flora and its influence on your health cannot be overstated. It's truly profound. Your gut serves as your second brain, and even produces more serotonin — known to have a beneficial influence on your mood — than your brain does. It is also home to countless bacteria, both good and bad. These bacteria outnumber the cells in your body by at least 10 to one, and maintaining the ideal balance of good and bad bacteria forms the foundation for good health — physical, mental and emotional.

Most disease originates in your digestive system. This includes both physical and mental disease. Once you heal and seal your gut lining, and make your digestive system work properly again, disease symptoms will typically resolve.

The Gut and Psychology Syndrome (as well as Gut and Physiology Syndrome — both referred to as GAPS) Nutritional Program, created by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, a Russian-trained neurologist with a full-time medical practice in the UK, is designed to restore the integrity of your gut lining by providing your body with the necessary building blocks needed for healthy enterocyte reproduction, and restoring balance to your gut flora.

Dr. McBride has made the important connection between damaged gut flora in women and developmental problems in their children, especially autism. These GAPS children, who are born with damaged gut flora, are also far more prone to vaccine damage. I believe this may be a major driving force behind our skyrocketing autism rates. Fortunately, there's a solution. Restoring proper gut function to pregnant mothers and their babies is really one of the most profound interventions one could have for having a non-brain-damaged child.

In terms of Gut and Physiology Syndrome, we're talking about all forms of autoimmunity and inflammatory diseases and conditions, such as:

Multiple sclerosis	Type 1 diabetes	Rheumatoid arthritis	Osteoarthritis
Lupus	Crohn's disease	Ulcerative colitis	Chronic skin conditions
Kidney problems	Urinary conditions	Allergic and atopic conditions	Degenerative conditions
Chronic fatigue syndrome	Fibromyalgia	Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)	Inflammatory bowel diseases

 

If you're suffering from any of these conditions, or virtually any other health challenge, you'd be wise to implement the GAPS program. While Dr. McBride's book is called Gut and Psychology Syndrome, the nutritional protocol for addressing physiological and psychological conditions is identical.

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#2: NEW Urgent Warning to All Cell Phone Users

- If you're in the habit of tucking your phone in a pocket, or on your belt, heads up - you'll be appalled when you view this new 2-minute video... Seeing is believing if you still harbor any doubt that cell phones can potentially cause cancer.

If you think the jury's still out on whether cell phones can be dangerous to your health, then you might want to take the time to listen to this video from the Environmental Health Trust. Dr. Devra Davis, author of "Disconnect--The Truth About Cellphone Radiation," has been researching the safety hazards of radiation emanating from your cell phone.

The biological impact of your cell phone is not related to its power, which is quite weak, but rather to the erratic nature of its signal and its ability to disrupt resonance and interfere with DNA repair. Serving as an illustrative warning of the potential for your cell phone to cause cancer is the case of a young woman with no other predisposing risk factors for cancer who developed multi-focal breast cancer directly beneath the area of her breast where she'd been tucking her cell phone into her bra. Earlier research has shown that wearing a cell phone on your hip may weaken an area of your pelvis, and cell phone radiation has also been found to affect men's sperm count, and the quality and motility of their sperm.

As a general rule, you'll want to avoid carrying your phone anywhere on your body. The most dangerous place to be, in terms of radiation exposure, is within about six inches of the emitting antenna, especially when it is put next to soft tissue such as in your pants or shirt pocket, or worse yet, in a woman's bra.

#1: 97% of Terminal Cancer Patients Previously Had This Dental Procedure

- While this German physician made this stunning observation over 40 years of treating terminal cancer patients, it sheds light on cancer. You or a loved one may be affected as this dangerous procedure is done 41,000 times a day in the US. The good news is... there's a fix.

Do you have a chronic degenerative disease? If so, the root cause of your illness could possibly be traced back to your mouth. Nearly every dentist will tell you getting a root canal is completely safe, despite the fact that scientists have been warning of its dangers for more than 100 years.

During a root canal, there is no way to sterilize your tooth; after the root canal, dangerous bacteria can hide out in the tooth and are unreachable with antibiotics. Root-canaled and filled teeth harbor bacteria that can morph into very toxic forms, which then can migrate to other tissues in your body and cause serious medical conditions, including diseases of your heart, kidneys, bones, and brain.

There is no other medical practice that permits leaving a dead body part inside your body, because it triggers your immune system to attack. If you have a diseased tooth, or if you've already had a root canal, I highly recommend consulting a biological dentist about have it extracted.

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