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Monday, November 16, 2009

BLoX: Our body's homeland security in a bottle


What is Tiaga?

Tiaga is an Indian word meaning “shelf mushroom.” In North America, it the species of hard, woody fungus that grows predominantly on conifer (cone-bearing) trees. It is not listed as edible but is not toxic in any way. In fact, when ground up and used as a nutritional supplement, it has the following properties:

1. Bitter Triterpenes – these are the bitter elements in foods which excite liver function and
aid the body in removing toxins. Triterpenes also provide the precursors to Squaline, from
which the body creates DHEA.

2. Hypoglycemic Glycans and Proteoglycans – these help to regulate the production of insulin
and the regulation of blood sugar. Diabetics have experienced a reduction in blood sugar
levels and Hypoglycemics have experience a regulation of blood sugar.

3. Blood Pressure Stabilizer – angiotensin-I-converting enzyme inhibiters in Tiaga help the
body control blood pressure naturally.

4. Platelet Aggregation Inhibitors – Tiaga contains Adenosin, Guanosin and 5-deoxy-
5-methylsuphinyl adenosine; powerful aggregation inhibitors that are much more effective
than aspirin in preventing blood clotting in the vascular system.

5. Anti-tumor Polysaccharides – strong anti-tumor activities have been found in the gucanoid
compounds found in Tiaga. These compounds excite the production of Neutrophil White
Blood Cells, Macrophage White Blood Cells, and T-Killer White Blood Cells, as much as
2000 to 4000% within just 20 hours after taking Tiaga!

  • Chelative Effects – The chitinous fiber of Tiaga binds to intestinal wastes and metals, and removes them from the body.

  • Germanium – Highest naturally occurring source of this important oxygen catalyst! Tiaga creates a high-oxygen environment in your body fluids.

  • Tiaga is the main ingredient in BLoX.

    Sunday, November 15, 2009

    What is the health benefit of water?


    What is the health benefit of water?

    All my life, I heard that "your body is about 70% water". Why should you be drinking water for your health? Water is the second most important thing that our bodies need to survive, oxygen being the first. The body could survive for some time without food, but deprive it of water and it would only last a few days. Virtually every job that the body performs requires water. It would seem then, pretty logical that a health benefit of water would be to drink it!

    Here are only a few of the health benefits of water:

    * Water is required for digestion and absorption of food
    * Water is needed to regulate body temperature and blood circulation
    * Water in the bloodstream carries nutrients and oxygen to cells
    * Water is necessary for the kidneys to remove toxins and other wastes

    Have some water to improve your health! The health benefit of water is very powerful, but for a long time has been undervalued. Unfortunately, we generally haven't been very well educated about it. The main point of this article is to offer a basic understanding of why it's vital to be drinking water for your health.

    What is dehydration?
    The body uses about 10 - 12 cups of water a day, through such things as breathing, digestion, elimination and perspiration. So we need to replenish it daily or our bodies will become dehydrated.

    "Dehydrate" means "to lose water, become dry."

    I always thought I was dehydrated only when my lips started cracking and my mouth was super dry. Wrong answer! Those are signs that your body is extremely dehydrated. It only takes a small deficiency of water to throw the body into "dehydration mode."

    "Dehydration mode" makes it necessary for the body to ration an insufficient amount of water to run properly. The body must economize on its use of water to prevent it from being lost. Dehydration can definitely aggravate many health conditions.

    A health benefit of water would be the improvement of many conditions by drinking water for your health, such as:

    * Exhaustion
    * Constipation
    * Asthma
    * Headaches
    * Diabetes - blood sugar level management
    * Heartburn
    * Angina (chest pain)
    * Hypertension (high blood pressure)
    * Joint and muscle pain
    * Immune diseases
    * Depression can be helped by ensuring that you drink enough water for your health.

    I've had (or have) several of the health conditions listed above and from my personal experience and observation, all of them have been improved or alleviated when I drink enough water. Angina (chest pain) is at least partially caused by dehydration. Drink some water the next time you experience mild angina. The chest pain may subside and eventually vanish rather quickly!

    Drugs and drinking water for health
    If you take prescription and/or over-the-counter drugs, it's even more essential to drink enough water for your health. Not only are many drugs dehydrating but all drugs, no matter how well they appear to work, are toxic to the body. Your kidneys need plenty of water to help them flush out toxins, especially when it's getting overloaded with them.

    The secret to fat metabolism
    Another health benefit of water is its role in fat metabolism. The secret to fat metabolism is to drink adequate amounts of water! Why? The kidneys need water to filter out waste and toxins from our bodies. If we don't give our bodies the water it needs, the kidneys "dump" some of their workload on the liver.

    One of the liver's jobs is to assist in fat metabolism. If the kidneys can't do their job due to insufficient water (dehydration), some of their work is given to the liver. You may know what it's like if you have to do someone else's work. You can't do all of your own! When the liver is doing some of the kidney's job, the liver can't do its own job of metabolizing fat very well.

    So one specific health benefit of water, specifically Sxinney water is that you will have more energy from fat being metabolized or "burned" - and a lot of people would like some spare fat metabolized!

    Increasing your water intake gradually
    If you gradually increase the amount of water you drink every day, it's a lot more realistic than trying to "shoot for the moon" and go from a little bit of daily water consumption to at least 64 ounces (in other words, 2 quarts or half a gallon or about 2 liters). That's the minimum amount we're advised to drink per day. If you are overweight, your body needs more than that in order to "burn fat" and flush out the additional toxins from fat metabolism.

    The actual amount of water each person needs does vary and there is some dispute about it. Here's a simple check. If your urine is very light or clear, that's a good sign that you are drinking sufficient water.

    It takes a little bit of determination to increase your water intake if you're not used to it. However, discovering the health benefits of water is totally worth it!

    Things that stop us from drinking water for health
    It helps if you can take a look at what ideas you have that might be getting in your way of drinking plenty of water. For example, one of my friends said that she "hated water." That would get in your way!

    Actually, when you are dehydrated, you lose your natural sense of thirst. As you get your body more and more hydrated, your "natural thirst" will return.

    Not all water is the same. Tap water from the faucet contains all kinds of stuff that makes it not quite enjoyable to drink. Tap water can also defeat the purpose of drinking water for your health due to chemical additives and other toxins. Try different types of water and find one that makes you happy! This includes water that you filter at home of course.

    Water retention and bathroom attacks
    Drinking water may cause one to run off to the bathroom every 10 minutes. This is actually an excuse people use to not drink water which keeps one from the many health benefits of water.
    One way to solve this is by drinking a small amount, just 1 cup, at the beginning of each hour.

    The body will "let go" of the water it's been retaining during dehydration when it starts getting what it needs - so going to the bathroom frequently is only temporary until the body adjusts to being hydrated.

    Water retention isn't from too much water. It's from not having enough, causing the body to "hang on" to the little water it has. When you drink enough water, the body can let go of what it has been retaining.
    Substitutes for water? A myth about drinking water for your health is that coffee and sodas "count" as drinking water. Any drink that isn't just pure water has a different chemical structure than water and thus reacts differently in the body. But some great news is that that the water in fresh vegetables and fruits does indeed contribute towards hydrating the body.

    I used to be a diet soda junkie until I found out that artificial sweeteners are toxic, and discovered that I needed to drink water for good health. I've replaced diet sodas with SXinney water, and it was not difficult because I did it little by little and just kept at it.

    I also found that it's easy to drink the amount that my body needs when I keep the water bottle at my desk and just take a swig every once in a while. And I am definitely experiencing that I really want water now, my natural thirst has returned.

    Don't take my word for it, test this information for yourself! If you drink less than 8 cups per day, find out for yourself if increasing your water intake improves your health and energy levels.
    Make drinking enough water fun...

    This article is by no means a complete look into every health benefit of water. And the truth is, you can pump up the efficacy of your water by adding Liv SXinney and drinking it all day long!

    For more information, have a look at "The Healing Power of Water" - an eye opening and enlightening interview with Dr. Batmanghelidj M.D about the health benefit of water and why we don't really get this information from conventional doctors.

    The late Dr. Batmanghelidj was a pioneer in researching and clinically testing the health benefits of water and is the author of "Your Body's Many Cries for Water" and "Water for Health, For Healing, For Life."

    To our health! *clink*

    Food Toxicologist Touts Benefits of Chlorophyll

    Chlorophylls:
    Can These Green Food Pigments
    Prevent Some Cancers?

    George S. Bailey, Ph.D.

    Distinguished Professor of Food Toxicology

    OSU/LPI Affiliate Investigator

    Chlorophyll, the natural plant pigment that lends its color to grass, leaves, and many of the vegetables we eat, may play an important role in prevention of certain cancers. Researchers in the early 1980s discovered that chlorophylls and related chemicals can inhibit the ability of certain DNA-damaging chemicals to cause mutations in bacteria. How might this kind of "anti-mutagenic" activity be important in cancer prevention? Molecular geneticists now know that most if not all human cancers carry mutations in one or more genes that control the rates at which individual cells divide, differentiate, or die. According to current thinking, various combinations of mutations that upset this delicate balance to favor uncontrolled cell growth can then enable this irreversibly damaged cell to form a primary cancer in the lung, liver, blood, bone, skin, or another body organ. Therefore, it seems at least theoretically possible that the anti-mutagenic power of the chlorophylls might allow them to inhibit or reduce the formation of cancers in humans. Recent progress in our laboratory and elsewhere has brought this promise closer to realization.

    People in certain parts of Africa, China, and other developing countries with similarly warm, damp climates have the highest rates of liver cancer in the world. The two major risk factors are chronic hepatitis B viral infection, and exposure to aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) in the food supply. People exposed to both factors are at extremely high risk for liver cancer. Peanuts, corn, rice, and other grains and nuts stored under warm damp conditions can be infected with the mold Aspergillus flavus, which produces AFB1 as a secondary metabolite. AFB1 is one of the most potent cancer-causing chemicals, or carcinogens, ever discovered. Interestingly, AFB1 came to be recognized as a potential human liver carcinogen only after it was identified as the cause of outbreaks of liver cancer in rainbow trout hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest in the 1960s.

    Much of that pioneering work was carried out at Oregon State University by Professor Russel Sinnhuber who immediately recognized the promise of the rainbow trout as a model of exquisite sensitivity for the study of liver cancer. Postdoctoral fellows and graduate students in my laboratory have been using this model for the past 12 years in a search for means to reduce AFB1-based liver cancer risk.

    Dr. Roderick Dashwood, a postdoctoral associate who came to my lab in 1986, became interested in chlorophylls. Although their anti-mutagenic activity in bacterial assays was then well known, no one knew if chlorophylls could have a protective effect in animals. Rod discovered that rainbow trout fed AFB1 together with chlorophyll chlorophyllin, a simple water-soluble chlorophyll derivative, had greatly reduced damage to their liver DNA compared to trout receiving AFB1 alone. Would this reduce liver cancer development? That question was answered by a Ph.D. student, Vibeke Breinholt, who showed that even very modest dietary levels of chlorophyll chlorophyllin, roughly equivalent to the chlorophyll in one small helping of spinach, strongly reduced liver cancer in trout co-fed AFB1. Vibeke's results also showed clearly that this reduction could be directly attributed to reduced AFB1-DNA damage in the liver. These very exciting findings were the first ever to reveal a true cancer-protective effect by chlorophylls.

    Several important questions now remained before these findings might be taken to human trials: Was the effect unique to trout or would chlorophyll chlorophyllin inhibit cancer in other animals? How did the cancer inhibition come about and would this mechanism likely apply to AFB1-exposed humans? Could chlorophyll chlorophyllin inhibit cancers other than liver or caused by carcinogens other than AFB1 -- that is, might it have a potentially broader applicability? Would native chlorophylls in the plants we eat be as effective as the chlorophyll chlorophyllin derivative? The answers to most of these questions are now known. Rod Dashwood, presently at University of Hawaii, found that chlorophyll chlorophyllin in the drinking water could strongly reduce colon cancer development in rats exposed to heterocyclic amines, which are potent carcinogens isolated from meats broiled at high temperature. Others found similar protection against skin tumors in mice painted with polyaromatic hydrocarbons, and we have shown protection against stomach and liver cancer in trout treated with a carcinogenic hydrocarbon found in tobacco smoke. Subsequent work by Vibeke, Michael Schimerlik, and Tetsu Hayashi showed that chlorophyll chlorophyllin associated tightly with AFB1, even in the acidic environment of the stomach and at the temperature of the human body, which most likely explained the ability of chlorophyll chlorophyllin to greatly reduce bioavailability or uptake of AFB1 from the diet. John Groopman and Tom Kensler two colleagues at Johns Hopkins University, found that dietary chlorophyll chlorophyllin was as effective at preventing AFB1-DNA damage in the liver of rats as it was in trout. Such a simple and safe protective mechanism was almost sure to apply to humans!

    Based on these findings and the known safety of chlorophyll chlorophyllin, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences recently funded a research grant for Drs. Kensler, Groopman, and me to conduct a chlorophyll chlorophyllin intervention trial in a region of China where people are unavoidably exposed to high levels of AFB1 in their diet. In August I ventured to the little town of Daxin where Tom and I, with the help of local physicians from the Qidong Liver Cancer Institute, initiated the trial.

    After screening 500 volunteers, over 200 people were identified with high levels of chronic AFB1 exposure. Of these, 90 people will receive a green sugar pill and 90 will receive a green chlorophyll chlorophyllin tablet with each meal for four months. (The samples are all coded and nobody knows who gets what until the code is revealed at the very end). Blood and urine samples are being collected every second week. By analysis of these samples we hope to tell if chlorophyll chlorophyllin alters AFB1 uptake and liver DNA damage in people as it does in trout and rats. The experiment can detect a reduction of 20% or greater, and, of course, this is what we hope to see. On a personal note, those of us trained in the basic sciences rarely have an opportunity to see our work applied directly to the reduction of human disease and misery. It would be rewarding indeed to see the trout model applied full circle from the discovery of a major form of human cancer risk, to the discovery of a simple means for its prevention. By this time next year I hope to be able to tell you how this turns out.

    The Outcome Follows

    11.28.01 chlorophyll chlorophyllin Reduces Aflatoxin Indicators Among People At Risk For Liver Cancer

    A study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows that taking chlorophyll chlorophyllin greatly reduces the levels of aflatoxin-DNA damage byproducts in the body, which are indicators of exposure to carcinogenic aflatoxins and increased risk of liver cancer. chlorophyll chlorophyllin is a derivative of chlorophyll and is used as an over-the-counter diet supplement and as a food colorant. The results appear in the November 27, 2001 edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    “Our study shows that taking chlorophyll chlorophyllin three times a day reduced the amounts of aflatoxin-DNA damage by 55 percent, compared with taking a placebo,” says Thomas Kensler, PhD, professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Taking chlorophyll chlorophyllin or eating green vegetables, like spinach, that are rich in chlorophyll may be a practical way of reducing the risk of liver cancer and other cancers caused by environmental triggers,” explains Dr. Kensler.

    Dr. Kensler and his colleagues conducted a double-blind study among residents of Qidong, China. The people of the region have an extraordinarily high rate of liver cancer, which is due in part from routinely eating foods contaminated with carcinogenic aflatoxins. The aflatoxin is produced by molds found in foods like corn, peanuts, soy sauce, and fermented soybeans.

    For the study, researchers recruited 180 healthy adults. Half of the group was given 100 mg tablets of chlorophyll chlorophyllin to take three times a day with meals for four months. The other half was given a placebo. Urine and blood samples were taken over four months to determine the effects of chlorophyll chlorophyllin on excretion of aflatoxin-DNA damage products.

    According to the study’s results, the people who took chlorophyll chlorophyllin showed a 55 percent reduction in aflatoxin-DNA damage, compared to the placebo group.

    “Studies conducted by our co-author, George Bailey of Oregon State University, have suggested that chlorophyll chlorophyllin acts as an ‘interceptor molecule’ to block the absorption of aflatoxins and carcinogens in the diet,” explains John Groopman, PhD, professor and chairman of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Our study shows that chlorophyll chlorophyllin can effectively reduce aflatoxin levels, which should reduce the risk of liver cancer. Since chlorophyll chlorophyllin is found in many foods or can be easily added to the diet, it could be a safe and effective prevention method. The study adds to the evidence that green vegetables contain effective anticarcinogens,” adds Dr. Groopman.

    Follow up studies are planned to determine whether this early protective action of chlorophyll chlorophyllin extends to either delay the onset or reduce the incidence of liver cancer.

    Patricia Egner, Jin-Bing Wang, Yuan-Rong Zhu, Bao-Chu Zhang, Geng-Sun Qian, Shuang-Yuan Kuang, Stephen J. Gange, Lisa P. Jacobson, Kathy J. Helzlsouer, George S. Bailey, John D. Groopman, and Thomas W. Kensler assisted in the research and writing of the article “chlorophyll chlorophyllin intervention reduces aflatoxin-DNA adducts in individuals at high risk for liver cancer.”

    The study was funded by grants from the U.S. Public Health Service, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

    Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued for journalists and other members of the public. If you wish to quote any part of this story, please credit Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School Of Public Health as the original source.