Some pretty neat stuff is going on in Australia, which can be of benefit to everyone. This post by a professional botanist and horticulturist Down Under advises on a wide variety of important news about herbs and veggies. The most interesting to me are his comments on the New Super Broccoli.

Go ahead and take a look. This is fun, informative, and even eye-opening.

GardenMessenger

Amongst this research are two “Super Broccoli” projects, as the scientists have named them. The first is the development of “Environmentally Friendly Super Broccoli”. Researchers have identified cross breeding possibilities …. CLICK ON THE LINK TO READ MORE

Good botany to you,
Dr. D

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The worst way to treat hay fever is with prescription drugs. There are plenty of natural ways of treating hay fever. Here are some of the best.

The good news about advice in this article is that all ingredients for how to treat hay fever are widely available at all good supplement stores. Read on.

Natural Hay Fever Remedies and Cures | Zen to Fitness

… their bottles- Sadly is lacks all the good stuff. So you will probably have t checkout your local markets or Natural food stores to get hold of some raw honey, it costs a bit more but is really worth it and will last you a long time if you use it sparingly. … Vitamin C- There is also evidence to show that high doses of Vitamin C can help with hey-fever. I personally found that taking 1-2grams of Vitamin C daily to help a lot when dealing with bad bouts of hay-fever. …

All the best in natural health,
Dr. D

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Flu season is all year long. Actually, there was never any such thing as a flu season. It was made up by the media. Regardless, here are some great natural ways to handle the swind flu and other flus with vitamins and herbs. Great research!

Vitamins and Herbs for Flu

All the best in natural health,
Dr. D

Make loose tea yourself for maximum benefits for flavor and health. Making herbal tea requires just a couple of things to watch for. It is easy and fast and fun!

See what I mean in the video that I found, below:

How to Make Tea with Loose Herbs

All the best in natural health,
Dr. D

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Heartburn does not come from too much stomach acid. Unlike antacids, common heartburn remedies can actually stop heartburn without side effects. One well-known natural remedy for heartburn can stop this problem permanently. Here is what you can expect.

The Heartburn Industry

This is a ridiculous industry. Heartburn is treated as a problem of too much stomach acid, which irritates the esophagus by acid reflux. This basic premise is the foundation for a multibillion antacid industry.

Having too much acid is not the problem. In fact, adding antacids to your stomach ruins the carefully balanced pH that you require for good digestion and absorption. Furthermore, the long term side effects of antacids make the original problem worse. Side effects commonly include severe damage to the digestive system, chronic esophagitis, ulcers, and cancer of the esophagus.

Antacids are simply not worth the short term illusion of relief in exchange for ruining your digestive system and your health.

Natural Heartburn Remedy Herbs

Each of the following has been used in folk medicine and has been shown to be helpful in modern scientific studies.

Artichoke

Leaf extracts from the globe artichoke (Cynara scolymus) have been shown to increase bile acid output and improve digestion. Dosages range from 4-5 capsules, each containing 325 mg of standardized leaf extract, for up to 6 weeks.

Licorice Root

Root extracts from licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra), standardized for a 100 mg daily dose of the active ingredient, glycirrhetinic acid, enhanced symptomatic relief and increased healing of esophagitis and esophageal ulceration.

Peppermint and Caraway

Oils of peppermint (Mentha piperita) and caraway (Carum carvi), mixed together in an enteric form, showed a significant reduction in pain from non-ulcer dyspepsia. Dosage was one capsule per day, standardized to contain 90 mg of peppermint oil and 50 mg of caraway oil.

Probiotics – Friendly Bacteria for Digestive Health

Normally your GI tract contains several pounds of friendly bacteria, consisting of up to 500 different strains when you are healthy. Antibiotics, antacids, and synthetic chemicals in food and water damage these bacteria, which leads to digestive problems such as heartburn.

Certain fermented foods, such as yogurt, now offer small benefits to the digestive system by supplying one or two strains of living bacteria in low amounts, which help to replenish the population of friendly bacteria.

According to the latest research, however, the best way to replenish your friendly bacteria is to supplement with a sufficiently potent probiotic product. Look for the best results from products that offer at least 10-15 strains of bacteria, in amounts of 15 billion or more cells per dose.

When your digestive system hosts a healthy population of friendly bacteria, you may not even need herbs to take care of heartburn because it will simply disappear.

All the best in natural health,
Dr. D

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Herbal remedies for blood pressure are outstanding. Garlic alone can normalize blood pressure within 3 weeks. Here are the best hypertension herbal remedies.

Herbal Remedies for High Blood Pressure

It has compounds in it which work to relax blood vessel walls. Scientists have also found that it lowers LDL cholesterol. If you’re taking medication to lower blood pressure, tell your doctor before taking this herb.

Beware Misinformation About Blood Pressure

I always say that the impact of an herbal remedy on human health is in direct proportion the the misinformation, propaganda, and hysteria that the mainstream medical community puts out against it. You will find all kinds of scary stuff about herbal remedies for blood pressure. They are just scare tactics that are designed to make you go running to your doctor for a set of drug prescriptions. You have no chance of healing if you take those poisons into your body.

Just food for thought,
Dr. D

Do you ever wonder if all the anti-aging resveratrol mania is out of hand? Well, it is. Here are some red flags to watch out for.

If you have about 10 minutes right now, watch this video to prep yourself for my comments on this topic. It is a phenomenal video about resveratrol research. Just don’t believe any of it.

RESVERATROL! ABC News!

Resveratrol is a Great Antioxidant

Just to keep the record straight, I am all for the benefits of plant natural products for human health. My professional background has been in plant natural products chemistry for more than 35 years, so I am automatically biased in favor of them. However, the hysteria over different substances makes my whole field look bad.

The Problem with Reductionist Thinking

The video above, and all the commentary about resveratrol for that matter, comes from looking at small, single variable explanations for scientific results. This is called reductionist thinking. The long-running joke about reductionist scientists is that they (we!) study smaller and smaller details until we finally know everything about nothing. The whole field of molecular genetics is built around reductionist thinking. That is the nature of the beast.

Goals of Resveratrol Research

If you watched the video you may have noticed that resveratrol was repeatedly referred to as a drug. This is great news in some ways. However, you can bet your bottom dollar that this non-patentable natural product will not be the final product of this research.

What we have here is a high-powered Harvard research lab with financial backing by a high-powered vulture capitalist, er, venture capitalist. The primary goal of this team is to develop something that will be profitable, pay the investment back, and make a lot more money to boot.

These are the very same goals of pharmaceutical drug research. Notice that human health is just a side issue here. The purpose of drug research is to make money, not to make people healthier. Ditto for resveratrol research.

Leap of Faith

When I was doing research with brain cancer, one of my colleagues once said, “Applying results from studies of laboratory animals to humans is like taking a leap of faith the size of the Grand Canyon.” Virtually all of the research on resveratrol that has generated so much excitement is based on lab animals and yeast. Equivalent studies on humans would take a lifetime. Let’s get real real!

By the way, humans have about 30,000 or so genes. The impact of one substance on one gene does not possibly explain how anything works in a whole person.

A complete critique of resveratrol mania could occupy a whole book. I hope my brief comments at least get you started thinking a little more clearly on this issue. It will serve you well for judging all kinds of wild science in the headlines.

My Recommendations

I see nothing wrong with taking resveratrol supplements. Indeed, I encourage it. I encourage you to take antioxidant supplements in general, even including red wine itself. However, if the issue that you want to address is anti-aging or any other health-related concern, I suggest that you find out what the whole-person scientific research says about getting healthy, staying healthy, and living a full and long life.

Sorry to say that I don’t have any recommendations that I can make any money on. Well, I could make some fake recommendations for the purpose of selling you my book, if I had one, or of selling you some supplements. However, I think it is much more important to tell you something that will truly benefit your health. It is this:

Get and read the following two books (cheap used copies at Amazon, I am sure):

“Healthy at 100″ by John Robbins

“The China Study” by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell

Better yet, if you are looking for instant information on these books, you can visit the following two websites:

Healthy at 100

T. Colin Campbell Foundation

All the best in natural health,
Dr. D

Nattokinase enzyme reverses heart disease without side effects. So why would anyone suggest that it might cause brain hemorrhage? This would be a pretty serious nattokinase side effect. Here is the truth:

Does Nattokinase Cause Brain Hemorrhage?

One study of a person taking aspirin who then added natto (400 mg/day for 7 days) to his meds and had an intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) (brain hemorrhage) concluded that nattokinase caused the problem.

Determining cause and effect is the most difficult thing for any scientist to do. The article above mostly serves as a great exercise by jumping to an unwarranted conclusion. If nattokinase actually caused brain hemorrhage, we’d have a lot of natto lovers in Japan dropping dead way too young. I suppose that I would classify this worry in the category of paranoia or propaganda, I’m not sure which.

Dr. D