A Green Site
By Mark Schauss | March 31, 2009
Yahoo, has a nice little site dedicated to promoting a greener environment. Try going to it to learn what you can do to improve our world.
One article I likedwas about water filters. It states that if a person were to get 8 glasses of water a day via bottled water, it would cost $1,400 a year. The same water from your tap would cost 49 cents. In today’s economy, that sounds like an easy way to save some serious cash. Not only that but think of all the bottles that won’t go to the landfill or end up needing to be recycled.
The article also has a link to a site that should be visited by anyone who drinks bottled water regularly. It is called Break the Bottle Water Habit. There you can calculate how much you waste drinking water in a bottle. If that doesn’t break your habit, nothing will.
Topics: Opinion, Our World, Websites | No Comments »
How to Eat
By Mark Schauss | March 30, 2009
Michael Pollan, author of the must read books, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and The Botany of Desire, was interviewed by Daniel DeNoon over at WebMD recently. He made a fantastic list of 7 rules for eating which I think everyone should follow. If you do, it is sure to improve your health dramatically.
The 7 rules are:
- Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. “When you pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes, or eat something with 15 ingredients you can’t pronounce, ask yourself, “What are those things doing there?”
- Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can’t pronounce.
- Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad.
- Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot. “There are exceptions — honey — but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren’t food.” Pollan says.
- It is not just what you eat but how you eat. “Always leave the table a little hungry,” Pollan says. “Many cultures have rules that you stop eating before you are full. In Japan, they say eat until you are four-fifths full. Islamic culture has a similar rule, and in German culture they say, ‘Tie off the sack before it’s full.'”
- Families traditionally ate together, around a table and not a TV, at regular meal times. It’s a good tradition. Enjoy meals with the people you love. “Remember when eating between meals felt wrong?” Pollan asks.
- Don’t buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.
Following these rules just makes sense.
Topics: Food, Health | 1 Comment »
Possible Cautionary Use of Glycine in Prostate Cancer
By Mark Schauss | March 17, 2009
In the February 12, 2009 issue of Nature, researchers led by Sreekumar reported on the correlation between the progression of prostate cancer and the amino acid sarcosine. Sarcosine is derived from glycine and methionine through methylation pathways. Functionally low levels of vitamin B2, aka riboflavincan cause a build-up of sarcosine as well as low folic acid levels.
What ramifications this study has in the treatment of prostate cancer is unclear but it should help in possibly slowing the progression through the denial of glycine and possibly methionine in the diet.
In my comment about B2, I mention functional deficiency. I do this as opposed to a measured deficiency. The difference is that while person A and B may have the same levels in their blood, plasma or whatever fluid you are testing, person B may be functionally deficient because they may need more of the nutrient due to things like genetic polymorphisms, stress, environment or other factors. So while measuring nutrient levels may be helpful, they may not be as clinically relevant as functional markers like sarcosine.
Topics: Health, Healthcare, Laboratory Tests, Opinion, Research, Supplements | 1 Comment »
Pesticides in Your Fruit and Vegetables – When to Buy Organic
By Mark Schauss | March 12, 2009
As anyone who has ever been to one of my lectures can tell you, one of my favorite websites is the one for the Environmental Working Group. Well they just upped their usefullness by posting a listing of the fruits and vegetables with the highest and lowest levels of pesticides. If you print out the pdf file, you can cut out a shopper’s guide to carry in your wallet or purse. The data they used was an analysis of over 87,000 tests for pesticide residues.
The worst “dirty dozen” pesticide laden fruits and vegetables were, in order, peach, apple, bell pepper, celery nectarine, strawberries, cherries, kale, lettuce, imported grapes, carrot and pear. The suggestion is, if you want to eat these items, you must go organic.
The Clean 15 as they put it, those with the lowest detectable pesticide levels are: onion, avocado, sweet corn, pineapple, mango, asparagus, sweet peas, kiwi, cabbage, eggplant, papaya, watermelon, broccoli, tomato and sweet potato.
Handy information to have at your disposal. Thanks to them and the website Foodnews.
Topics: Environment, Food, Health, Our World, Toxicity | 1 Comment »
Organic and Locally Grown Food May Not be Humanities Answer
By Mark Schauss | March 11, 2009
Mother Jones is one of those cutting edge journalism magazines that uncovers truths in the world that are not so apparent. In a brilliantly written article by Paul Roberts, he makes the case that buying organic and locally grown foods while noble ideas, may not fix the food problems our world has. One quote from the article I love is “Our industrial food system is rotten to the core. Heirloom arugula won’t save us.”
We presently have 6.5 billion people on our planet with estimates that 2 billion are starving. It is a reality which we must face. Somehow we muct feed everyone yet do it in a sustainable, ecologically intelligent manner and frankly, after reading the article, organic and locally grown foods don’t fit the bill. This is not to say that eating organic and buying locally grown foods are bad, I actually prefer eating and buying my family’s food this way. We just need to understand the realities of our broken down system and what is best for our planet and for us as citizens of the world.
Now I know that this will anger some purists but let me quote Mr. Roberts again, “…the risks of pragmatism must be weighed against the risk of perfectionism. We can’t wait for the perfect solution to emerge; we need to start transforming the food system today….” We need to act before it becomes critical and so much of a problem that only drastic measures are available. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of intervention.
Topics: Environment, Food, Life, Our World | No Comments »
A New Podcast
By Mark Schauss | February 17, 2009
After taking a 2 1/2 month hiatus, I’ve gotten back into the “studio” and begun a new series of podcasts starting with the one today which is on a lab test I recommend everyone do at least once if not more over, the Environmental Pollutants Biomarker urine test from US Biotek, available from Lab Interpretation LLC.
One of the issues a lot of health care practitioners have made me aware of is the difficulty in actually pronouncing the test metabolites and knowing what they mean. I hope that this podcast helps with that as well as the upcoming series on the markers found in urine organic acid testing which I find invaluable in assessing functional metabolism. This type of testing really helps to determine the needs for a vast array of nutrients, amino acids and minerals as well as the functionality of the citric acid cycle (aka Kreb’s cycle).
Topics: Environment, Health, Laboratory Tests, Petrochemicals, Podcast, Research, Solvents | 1 Comment »
Court Say No To Vaccine Autism Link – Justice or Just Playing By The Rules
By Mark Schauss | February 13, 2009
Just yesterday, a special US federal court declared Thursday that MMR vaccines were not a cause of autism. I wanted to find a way to put the ruling into context when I ran into two posts by a friend, Dr. Andrew Cutler, author of Hair Test Interpretation: Finding Hidden Toxicities and “Amalgam Illness:” Diagnosis and Treatment, that was on the Autism-Mercury Yahoo newsgroup.
The first one:
“Any lawyer will tell you that we have a legal system, not a justice system. The thing to do is stick to helping your kid, and view this as a political problem. Once the judges think the politicians want them to find that vaccines cause autism, they’ll reverse themselves. Until then no amount of evidence will suffice.”
The second one:
“just like white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan were overjoyed by the Dred Scott and Plessey v. Ferguson rulings of the United States Supreme Court, blog ravers today are overjoyed by the vaccine court ruling. Hopefully everyone will take it upon themselves to drown the blogs in reality.
Points to make:
The Kangaroo court proceedings allowed the plaintiffs to COMPLAIN, but denied them the right to discovery so they had no means of actually gathering and presenting any evidence in support of their case; and The Kangaroo court conspired with the government’s pseudoexperts to redefine the burden of proof, changing it from the 50% that is ‘a preponderance of the evidence’ to the 95% that the perpetrators demanded, so that when even the perpetrator’s own studies showed the plaintiffs were right the court denied them justice and ruled against them.
In a legal sense this is the same as if OJ Simpson had gotten to automatically prevail in the civil case wherein he was found responsible for Nichole’s death because he had been found “not guilty” in a criminal case where proof was required beyond a reasonble doubt.
This is a great example to use since most of the blog ravers think OJ is guilty of killing his wife.”
Sometimes things need to be said in a forceful and bluntly honest way. Thank you Andy!!!
Topics: autism, Health, Neurological Disorders, Opinion, Politics | No Comments »
List of Problem Foods
By Mark Schauss | January 23, 2009
What foods are high in PCBs, hormones, and pesticides? Here is a link to a sitethat lists the 10 worst foods. As with any list of this kind, you need to weigh the risks and make your own decisions. Still the advice about avoiding non-organic strawberries (I don’t believe the stuff about feeding them NutraSweet though) and bell peppers is eye opening.
One of the books mentioned in the blog is The Omnivore’s Dilemma which is an absolute must read. Michael Pollan writes a masterful book about the problems with our food chain. But be forewarned, it can very depressing at times.
Topics: Environment, Food, Health, Life, Our World, Toxicity | 1 Comment »
More Disturbing Evidence of Global Warming
By Mark Schauss | January 22, 2009
This weeks issue of the highly respected journal Science, will have a disturbing report on the effect of global warming on the world’s forests. A preview is found here from CNN. Scientists have been looking at the forests for a 50 year period and as Phillip van Mantgem the lead author of the study says, “It’s not a happy story, but, an important one,” said “These are beautiful places. They do change and respond to their environment, sometimes quickly.”
Maybe the new administration can help to reverse the environmental disasters that the preceding President put into place rapidly. As with the economy, things are likely to get worse before they get better. We should all hope that it isn’t too late.
Topics: Environment, Global Warming, Life, Opinion, Our World, Politics | 6 Comments »
Not All CFL Bulbs Are The Same
By Mark Schauss | January 19, 2009
I recently received a newsletter from the Environmental Working Group, a lobby group for the environment in Washington D.C., which had some very important information in it. There is a lot of talk about the use of compact fluorescent light-bulbs but there is a problem with some of them because of excessive mercury. Which ones are the best? This report gives you the answer.
One of the important items that EWG talks about in the link above is the need by the Obama Administration to upgrade the Energy Star rating system for electronic products as it was set aside under outgoing President Bush. Here are the main points of the proposal EWG has made and hopefully will be put into effect soon:
- Lowering the maximum mercury content in each CFL bulb to 3 milligrams (mg). This measure would save 225 pounds of mercury for every 100 million bulbs.
- Creating a tiered (“Platinum,” “Gold,” “Silver”) rating system to reward creative companies that produce the highest efficiency, longest-lived bulbs with the lowest mercury content.
- Updating minimum requirements every 2 years instead of every 5 years, to take advantage of rapidly changing technology and fierce competition among bulb makers vying for bigger shares of the green-products market.
- Adopt an independently verifiable mercury content limit for CFL bulbs. Energy Star requires only that the manufacturers file a statement about bulb mercury content with the National Electrical Manufacturers Association.
The sad thing about today’s Energy Star program is that many light bulbs sold in the U.S. which bear the symbol that they are energy efficient cannot be sold in Europe as they contain too much mercury. Even more frustrating is that CFLs do not need the mercury to work.
In the past, I’ve been criticized by some because they claim that any mercury is too much. The research I have done shows that by using these bulbs you actually reduce mercury in the atmosphere. Here is the reason given by the people at EWG to back up my assertion:
Coal-fired electrical plants are a major source of mercury emissions, totaling 104 tons of mercury across the U.S. annually. Energy Star calculates that each CFL bulb generates 70 percent less mercury pollution than a comparable incandescent bulb.
Not only that, but the amount of other toxins that are spewed into our atmosphere would go down as well by reducing the energy needed to light our homes. Do yourself a favor and read the report and get the bulbs that have the least amount of mercury. That way you can vote with your wallet. That is something businesses really listen to.
Topics: Environment, heavy metals, Mercury, Opinion, Our World, Research, Toxicity | 2 Comments »