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From Your Nutritional Education Site

1. Nerve Damage - Why R-Alpha Lipoic and Acetyl L-Carnitine
2. Stress & You Immune System
3. Newly Discovered Gut-to-Brain Connection Drives Sugar Cravings
4. Vaccination: Flu Shots or Virus Protection Shots

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Nerve Damage - Why R-Alpha Lipoic and Acetyl L-Carnitine

If you have nerve damage, R-Alpha lipoic acid and acetyl L-carnitine are two key supplements that you should add to your daily routine.

Why do these two supplements work together. Go to this link which has an explanation of each of these substances and how they may affect the nerves of the body. Alpha Lipoic Acid & Acetyl L-carnitine

Stress & Your Immune System

This is on our Immunity - The Ultimate Protection, a Health Immune System

When most people think of improving the immune system, they often think of getting more vitamin C or making diet changes. While these can be beneficial, there is one aspect that many forget about: stress.

When your body is in a stress state, it isn’t just mental—there’s something going on at a physical level. Your muscles get tense, and your body produces a number of hormones that flood your body and change the way it functions.

Temporary stress isn’t the issue here. Stress naturally comes and goes, and it can even be beneficial for the body in small amounts. However, chronic stress is a huge problem—especially when it comes to your immune system. When stress hormones flood your body, they begin to create several problems in the immune system.

If you feel like you are affected by chronic stress and your immune system is taking a hit, then you’re in the right place!

See more education on this and what to do Stress & Your Immune System

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Prescription Drug Abuse

Recreational use of prescription drugs is a serious problem with teens and young adults. National studies show that a teen is more likely to have abused a prescription drug than an illegal street drug.

Read more about this Prescription Drugs

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Newly Discovered Gut-to-Brain Connection Drives Sugar Cravings

A little extra sugar can make us crave just about anything, from cookies to condiments to coffee smothered in whipped cream. But its sweetness doesn’t fully explain our desire. Instead, new research shows this magic molecule has a back channel to the brain.

Like other sweet-tasting things, sugar triggers specialized taste buds on the tongue. But it also switches on an entirely separate neurological pathway – one that begins in the gut, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Charles Zuker and colleagues report on April 15, 2020 in the journal Nature.

In the intestines, signals heralding sugar’s arrival travel to the brain, where they nurture an appetite for more, the team’s experiments with mice showed. This gut-to-brain pathway appears picky, responding only to sugar molecules – not artificial sweeteners.

Scientists already knew sugar exerted unique control over the brain. A 2008 study, for example, showed that mice without the ability to taste sweetness can still prefer sugar. Zuker’s team’s discovery of a sugar-sensing pathway helps explain why sugar is special – and points to ways we might quell our insatiable appetite for it.

“We need to separate the concepts of sweet and sugar,” says Zuker, a neuroscientist at Columbia University. “Sweet is liking, sugar is wanting. This new work reveals the neural basis for sugar preference.”

Sweet Stuff
The term sugar is a catchall, encompassing a number of substances our bodies use as fuel. Eating sugar activates the brain’s reward system, making humans and mice alike feel good. However, in a world where refined sugar is plentiful, this deeply ingrained appetite can run amok.

The average American’s annual sugar intake has skyrocketed from less than 10 pounds in the late 1800s to more than 100 pounds today.

That increase has come at a cost: Studies have linked excess sugar consumption to numerous health problems, including obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Previously, Zuker’s work showed that sugar and artificial sweeteners switch on the same taste-sensing system. Once in the mouth, these molecules activate the sweet-taste receptors on taste buds, initiating signals that travel to the part of the brain that processes sweetness.

But sugar affects behavior in a way that artificial sweetener doesn’t. Zuker’s team ran a test pitting sugar against the sweetener Acesulfame K, which is used in diet soda, sweetening packets, and other products. Offered water with the sweetener or with sugar, mice at first drank both, but within two days switched almost exclusively to sugar water. “We reasoned this unquenchable motivation that the animal has for consuming sugar, rather than sweetness, might have a neural basis,” Zuker says.

Sugar Circuit
By visualizing brain activity when the rodents consumed sugar versus artificial sweetener or water, the researchers for the first time identified the brain region that responds solely to sugar: the caudal nucleus of the solitary tract (cNST). Found in the brain stem, separate from where mice process taste, the cNST is a hub for information about the state of the body.

The path to the cNST, the team determined, begins in the lining of the intestine. There, sensor molecules spark a signal that travels via the vagus nerve, which provides a direct line of information from the intestines to the brain.

This gut-to-brain circuit favors one form of sugar: glucose and similar molecules. It ignores artificial sweeteners – perhaps explaining why these additives can’t seem to fully replicate sugar’s appeal. It also overlooks some other types of sugar, most notably fructose, which is found in fruit. Glucose is a source of energy for all living things. That could explain why the system’s specificity for the molecule evolved.

Previously, scientists speculated that sugar’s energy content, or calories, explained its appeal, since many artificial sweeteners lack calories. However, Zuker’s study showed this is not the case, since calorie-free, glucose-like molecules can also activate the gut-to-brain sugar-sensing pathway.

To better understand how the brain’s strong preference for sugar develops, his group is now studying the connections between this gut-brain sugar circuit and other brain systems, like those involved in reward, feeding, and emotions. Although his studies are in mice, Zuker believes that essentially the same glucose-sensing pathway exists in humans.

“Uncovering this circuit helps explain how sugar directly impacts our brain to drive consumption,” he says. “It also exposes new potential targets and opportunities for strategies to help curtail our insatiable appetite for sugar.”

Source: Hwei-Ee Tan, Alexander C. Sisti, Hao Jin, Martin Vignovich, Miguel Villavicencio, Katherine S. Tsang, Yossef Goffer, Charles S. Zuker. The gut–brain axis mediates sugar preference. Nature, 2020; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2199-7

Vaccination: Flu Shots or Virus Protection Shots

This is a controversial subject, some not wanting to get sick, and others not wanting to put chemicals into their bodies.

We felt we should send you something to look at. Although the Covid-19 is said to be a virus and not the flu, we are still being told that a vaccination is being worked on and will fix the problem.

So here hs an opinion on the subject which makes sense, a flue vaccinatoin or virus vaccination. Find out more.

4 Reasons to Avoid Getting a Shot

It seems like EVERYONE is pushing the flu vaccine. Go into most any drug store and you’ll see ads for flu shots. Our local Safeway store will give you 10% off your grocery purchase if you buy the flu vaccine from them.

But is the flu vaccine effective?

At protecting your health?.

Many medical experts, including The Drs. Wolfson, feel that flu shots do more harm than good.

Here’s why we are against the flu vaccine for adults, children and the elderly (for everyone):

# 1 – It Weakens Your Immune System

Your immune system keeps infectious microorganisms out of your body and fights any that happen to get through and invade your body.

It’s your body’s natural defense system against the flu and the flu shot destroys it!

Researchers at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center found that getting the flu shot weakened immune system response in following years.

The US Center for Disease Control says, “Older people with weaker immune systems often have a lower protective immune response after flu vaccination compared to younger, healthier people. This can make them more susceptible to the flu.”

Not only does a weakened immune system increase the odds of getting the flu, it skyrockets the risks of getting other diseases.

# 2 – It Contains Ingredients Harmful to Your Body

Mercury, formaldehyde, detergent, flu virus…the list of junk in the flu vaccine goes on and on.

Does this sound like stuff you want injected into your body?

Mercury alone has been shown to cause cardiovascular issues, memory loss, ADD, digestive imbalances, depression and lots of other ailments.

Formaldehyde is known to cause cancer, according the CDC. As a cardiologist, the data on formaldehyde and blood vessel damage is of major concern. See the source here. Formaldehyde is extensively linked to dementia.

I think you’d agree that cancer and cardiovascular issues are much worse than the flu. They kill more people.

# 3 – It Doesn’t Work

Proponents of the flu shot say it has limited impacts, and they feel it works best when the flu vaccine is well matched with most circulating flu viruses.

Here’s what that means.

Drug companies each year develop flu vaccines based upon what they believe will be the strains of flu virus during the flu season. These vaccines are developed 8-10 months before they are needed, and are based upon projections and forecasts. You and I would call them “guesses.”

Why expose yourself to fight the flu? That makes no sense. And let’s say for a minute the science is wrong and that the flu shot doesn’t cause those diseases. Do you really want to take the chance for something that even its proponents claim is only effective 50% of the time? 

# 4 – There Are Natural Alternatives That Are More Effective

As we said earlier, the best way to combat the flu is with a healthy, strong, thriving immune system.

There are natural ways to strengthen the immune system. Yet main stream public health officials and drug companies never promote the proven ways to avoid the flu naturally.

Here’s our tips for naturally boosting your immune system.

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Sidebar:

Foundation for a Drug Free World

Almost everyone has been in contact with someone who has or had a problem with drugs. The more a person knows about these drugs, the less likely they are to try them.

The Truth About Drugs

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