There is Nothing that Creates More Anxiety and Fear of the Unknown Than Being Told – You Have Breast Cancer part 10
There is Nothing that Creates More Anxiety and Fear of the Unknown Than Being Told – You Have Breast Cancer part 10
DM: That was earlier this year?
CB: That was November of 2010.
DM: So last year. Their revised report on vitamin D.
CB: Yeah. They stated in their report that 10,000 International Units a day is called a no observed adverse event level. In other words, even the IOM didn’t see anything wrong. They couldn’t find anything. The process for going to well anybody can take is a little bit better than throwing a dart. But they’re throwing a dart said, any adult can take 4000 IU a day and that’s considered the upper limit.
DM: Even though there were no reported adverse effects for below 10,000?
CB: Right. But they added a safety factor. On the good side that means if somebody just is totally – you know, I’m not going to test. I’m not going to do any of these sorts of things. I can’t afford to. I don’t want to whatever, go take 4000 IU a day.
DM: But more or likely it should be closer to 8000 or 6000.
CB: If we’re aiming again at that serum level, our data showed that it’s going to take
about 8000 a day for the majority of the population to get above 40.
DM: That’s interesting. This is the data from your study.
CB: It is.
DM: Is this still open?
CB: This is published.
DM: Is it still open?
CB: Sure. We’re running it ongoing. That was just the first paper. It was published in February.
DM: How many people are enrolled in the study currently?
CB: Currently, we have 8000.
DM: That’s a lot of people.
CB: Yes. We want lots of people.
DM: So this trial of 8000 people, you are able to provide some very beneficial data. I wasn’t aware that you had published that, that 8000 is the dose that most people need to a therapeutic level.
CB: To get to 40 nanograms. So that you can say it as a population level, don’t worry about testing almost everybody.
DM: That is a very profound recommendation maybe one of the highlights of this interview. The new dose is 8000. Can you tell us a little bit more about your trial? We’ve been promoting people to enroll in it.
CB: Thank you.
DM: Curiously, it just kind of shocks me that people objected to the fact that they had to pay for their test. They thought it was some type of revenue generating when all they are being charged for was the wholesale cost of the test which is less than what they would pay for if they went to the doctor. It’s just kind surprising to me since everything else in the study has been funded.
CB: Most studies – and people come in with this mindset – most studies that people get involved in scientific studies are funded by the government or some external thing. We have no government funding.
DM: Right. This is all privately.
CB: This is all funded either by yours truly. All of these participants…
DM: Are people who are donating to the project.
CB: Yes, exactly.
DM: So there is no government funding at all.
CB: That is right. The funding has to cover the test cost. It has to cover the publication and the writing and the consulting fees that we have to pay to get the thing out the door which are substantial.
DM: So this is not a profit generating…
CB: No. We are a non-profit in more ways than one.
DM: You have run many businesses and you know how to earn a profit. The design and intention of this project is nothing to do with revenue generation, absolutely nothing. You have done that. You’ve been there. You have generated that revenue you need to, to live a healthy life.
CB: I think people don’t understand that what they are paying when they help do this is they really are helping sponsor a major public health effort as opposed to paying for a test. Paying for a test who cares. Alright, I can complain about that. But we really wanted to reframe that and to helping people realize that their sponsorship and their doing this test and answering this questionnaire is helping us carry this message to the next step, to really change public health practices around the world.
We don’t need more clinical trials or yes, you can need more clinical trials but what really is needed right now is exactly what we’re doing which is a massive population trial where you get lots of people taking higher doses, getting more sunshine and getting their levels higher. So you can see what’s going to happen. We track the outcomes very seriously in all the time and we do pay attention on any adverse events. There haven’t been any.
There is Nothing that Creates More Anxiety and Fear of the Unknown Than Being Told – You Have Breast Cancer part 9
There is Nothing that Creates More Anxiety and Fear of the Unknown Than Being Told – You Have Breast Cancer part 9
DM: Because of your educational efforts both professionally and in a lay version, the demand for that test started skyrocketing because people understood how important it was.
CB: Sure. And the science is there.
DM: They obviously don’t have an unlimited budget so they decided to put the breaks on that and they stopped paying for it.
CB: They had stopped paying for it. This is not the same in all the provinces though. We are still making considerable headway with keeping the provinces in charge. We’re alsostartingtorunsomemajorresearchprojectsinotherprovinces. Wehavejust started one in Calgary. We will be starting another one soon in Vancouver where groups of doctors get together both in Calgary and in Vancouver. They’re working with our breast cancer prevention study to demonstrate very clearly that if we get women’s vitamin D levels up, the breast cancer rate is going go to go down but we have to document this.
One other thing I might add though, one of my ongoing passions, what drives you or whatever is – I’ll call it a sense of freedom. The minute that I feel constrained and I can’t do what I think is best for me or something like that, I start breaking the bounds and starting my own businesses. Dr. Banner again from Canada, his group out of the Ontario Medical Association, the college of surgeons, have recently issued a document aimed at the Complimentary Medicine Association section saying, you can’t do anything. You can’t do any procedure that hasn’t had a randomized clinical trial to support it. The call is on to save the complimentary medicine people in Canada. It’s grotesque.
DM: Using that as an illustration, you have to wonder what they would recommend to someone who was in an airplane that was crashing and had a parachute because you know to the best of my knowledge there has not been a randomized controlled trial that says using a parachute will decrease your risk of dying when you’re jumping from a plane. It’s just insane that they can’t use common sense.
CB: I know. It is insane. In that particular situation it’s also insane because just in general practice, a regular physician, not a so-called complimentary medicine, they do all kinds of things that don’t have randomized trials. They use drugs off label. They do all kinds of things.
DM: Sure. Standard protocol.
CB: There is this going on.
DM: It’s a double standard.
CB: It is very much so but it’s active.
DM: I strongly agree with your promotion of getting vitamin D testing and having Canadians do that. Canada is particularly important because as most people know, it’s north of the United States. They have far less therapeutic window probably four months where they can actually get significant vitamin D from exposure and even less the further north you go in Canada. Really, the solution for this to not use testing is just get the sun. But Canadians can only do two to four of the year so they can’t but for those who don’t want to do testing – essentially I don’t think you can’t overdose from the sun. As far as I know, you can’t.
CB: That’s what the science says.
DM: There may be some people who will argue that but practically it’s almost impossible because the UVA will actually lower excess of vitamin D. You have just to be concerned about the sunburn of course.
If you’re going to take the pills, well, then you can’t do it without the testing but you’re going to need at least 4000 probably close 6000 and maybe 8000 to 10,000 for most people test. It’s still even really low risk at those doses of overdosing. Because a few years ago even when Dr. Cannell was one of the leaders who started this. He was so careful. He tested hundreds of people before he would even go over 1000 units a day, you know, just stepping over because of the flawed research that most of us believed that was done in India that brought this concern about vitamin D toxicity from oral supplementation.
CB: Part of that research is something that Grassroots Health has now contributed to along with its thousands of people that are participating in the action study. We just published our very first paper thanks to all these beautiful participants in February. We have people in this study now that are taking 50,000 IU a day and they’re not reaching a potential toxicity level of 200 nanograms per milliliter. The study reported data on about over 3500 people.
DM: This is vitamin D3 orally?
CB: Yes. Not all orally because the people can tan as well. The message in the study is get your serum level up not how. We have quite a number of tanners in the study.
DM: But the 50,000 units you referenced was.
CB: Of course. The 50,000 definitely is a supplement.
One very significant thing shown by this research was that even with taking the supplement, the curve for the increase in the vitamin D level does not go linearly. It is curvilinear and it curves down which is why it’s even hard to get toxic with a supplement. We had the first level at which there were any impending signs was when somebody who was taking 40,000 IU a day.
One more thing, the Institute of Medicine has been under great attack for their curious recommendation about intake but they stated in their report….
There is Nothing that Creates More Anxiety and Fear of the Unknown Than Being Told – You Have Breast Cancer part 8
There is Nothing that Creates More Anxiety and Fear of the Unknown Than Being Told – You Have Breast Cancer part 8
CB: It’s very inexpensive.
DM: It’s probably one of the least expensive supplements on the market.
CB: Right. It is inexpensive but I think the biggest answer probably again in a region of the world is going to be food fortification. That is one of my goals which is okay, let’s get ourselves supplemented. Let’s get up here and let’s make this a mass thing please. But I think that there needs to be a bigger push towards making the sun our friend again because it hasn’t been. It’s been scare tactics to make it, it’s the cancer creator of skin cancer. And yet the skin cancers that are associated with the sun; the basal and squamous cell can be cut off and burned off and we don’t even track them in the U.S. because they are so numerous.
DM: Right, and relatively non-dangerous.
CB: Right.
DM: I interviewed a Dr. Stephanie Seneff – you may or may not be familiar with her. She’s a full professor out at MIT for the last three decades and has recently become passionate about health and vitamin D and cholesterol. She theorizes that there maybe this interaction with the sun and vitamin D and sulfate and that when you get the vitamin D generated by UVB exposure, it actually interacts with the sulfate in your skin and forms vitamin D sulfate.
CB: Interesting.
DM: It’s a whole different mechanism of action which is not formed when you swallow it.
CB: No, of course not.
DM: She thinks that has a big role in it but there is just very little research on this.
CB: There is very little right now.
DM: That’s really one of the most exciting areas of this – this just goes back to the basics. For centuries, thousands of years, people have recognized the value of the sun. Certain cultures worship the sun. I’m not suggesting that we worship it but we should at least respect it and understand that it has an important influence on our own health personally instead of avoiding it like the plague.
CB: There are many cultural patterns where – in some Indian cultures, the first thing that happens with the newborn is the very first dawn, the grandmother has this role of taking that always naked infant out and holding the infant up towards the sun to be blessed by the sun. This is the first day of that child’s life. When you start walking across the country and you see these things – there are also some rituals that were described from early Egypt. They had devised meditation practices and religious practices out in the sun facing exactly the right way to get the UVB rays at exactly the right time of day for the right amount of time not to burn. These were religious practices.
DM: That is fascinating.
CB: It’s just like whoa. It’s time to re-look very definitely. I totally agree.
DM: You have been passionate about this for a number of years. One of your early projects actually involved working with Canada. They have a socialized health system compared to the U.S. In some ways there is certainly some benefits of that with respect to implementing projects on a large public health perspective scale. Can you share with us your experience with that and what happened in the current project.
CB: Sure. We’re doing lots of great things in Canada. Initially in Canada I have been on many speaking tours. I speak all over the U.S. and all over the world actually just talking about vitamin D and its importance. They have quite a cadre of very interested physicians there that are very interested in doing something about this. Dr. Robert Banner, who is chair of the Complimentary Medicine section of the Ontario Medical Association – actually, their group took a position endorsing our call to action saying, we as complimentary medicine people are going to endorse it because we want us to be healthy.
I worked with the government of Ontario to counsel with them. Their issue with vitamin D is the cost of the testing. Testing does cost money.
DM: A lot more than the supplements.
CB: Yes. They had a lot of people taking the test. They called it delisting the test or not paying for these tests anymore. I counseled with them about whether or not they really should be doing that. At the very least, keep the testing paid for and therefore some of your key conditions whether it’s pregnancy or infancy or heart disease, I mean, pick some diseases if you want to, whatever. But they have chosen to do otherwise. So I had that experience.
DM: So it was compensated for and no charge…
CB: It was being paid for but now no longer is.
DM: And just at the request of the individual.
CB: Yes.
There is Nothing that Creates More Anxiety and Fear of the Unknown Than Being Told – You Have Breast Cancer part 7
There is Nothing that Creates More Anxiety and Fear of the Unknown Than Being Told – You Have Breast Cancer part 7
CB: Thanks you.
DM: I had one specific question and I would like to dialog with you on it because it’s been a concern of mine. I couldn’t agree more. Obviously, I have been promoting vitamin D for a long time now and I share your passion. I think that’s the central issue.
CB: I know you do.
DM: Our approach is to educate people and share the message. I think we were really one of the central roles to help catalyze this at least from a media perspective. But what is obvious to me is that there is an important subset of this because the tendency in American culture is to take a magic pill for everything – a pill solves something. So it’s great because there is a vitamin D solution but that’s not the way that it occurs in nature. I mean, yes, you can get oral vitamin D. It definitely happens and we do have the ability to increase our levels that way.
But the way that we mostly get it is through exposure to the sun. That’s a different mechanism than swallowing a pill. I don’t think any expert would disagree that it’s better to get that vitamin D from the sun and then secondarily through a safe tanning bed which is still superior to a pill. But then if there is no resort of course then the oral. It seems to me there is something magical that occurs that is actually beyond the level of vitamin D which is used as an arbiter or as a measure.
The question that I have is it actually useful – I mean, certainly you don’t have any other choice but do you get the same benefit from getting your level to 40 to 60 from the sun as you do by swallowing a pill and especially as it relates to your major focus which is the impact on cancer. I’m concerned and I’m not sure that there is a (indiscernible 15:31) of treatment, maybe prevention but in the treatment I just don’t think it works. I could be wrong. That’s my fear.
So I really encourage – my new passion and mission is to get people away from swallowing those pills and if for any way, shape, or form to get to the real source, to get the UVB exposure. That’s a long-winded question but take as long as you want to respond to that.
CB: I think that it is obvious that the reason that we have this deficiency is because we have become an industrialized nation. That may sound like, but that was a long time ago. It wasn’t that long ago. What we’ve done is we’ve come inside. We cover up. Even in San Diego where I live, when they measured my level it was 18 nanograms per milliliter.
DM: Dangerous. For those who don’t know, San Diego is considered I think the sunniest city in the country.
CB: It’s pretty sunny.
DM: Or close to it. It’s definitely top.
CB: It’s very nice. When we did a scientific test of what it’s going to make body to get enough sun in San Diego with the weather we have with my age – age has a factor in how much you absorb – we came to a test conclusion that it was going take 15 to 20 minutes a day in the prime time of UV between 10 and 2 during the day, each and everyday – and here was the hooker for me – with 40% of my body exposed. For me outside that was just not going to happen because it was chilly. San Diego is chilly at least along the coast of it where I live. But that doesn’t change the question and the source.
I think there are two major questions that go through my mind. One is what else you’ll be getting from the sun? That’s the big one to me because I think that you can get your serum level up with supplements of some kind or another. You can get it up with the sun. I think at that level, we got to say, to me I think it’s the same. On the other hand, I think the UVB does other things. And there is only recently some new research coming out to say, what else does the sun do?
DM: Well, enlighten us.
CB: What else of course…I don’t know. It’s like it’s barely there. The scientists that do this kind of research with the skin are just starting to ask the question which is like, you know, there is probably more to the sun than vitamin D. I encourage people to take advantage of the sun. The only message I have about the sun is don’t burn. That’s it.
DM: Yeah.
CB: Other than if you want to get that UVB, you really have to be out between 10 and 2 not evening walks and stuff like that. I think that’s ideal.
DM: That’s the key. I noticed you are concerned about yourself going out there because of the temperature but in my observation is even though it’s chilly – I tend to go to subtropical areas in the winter to get the sun but there are still chilly days but I noticed that if the sun is shining on you, you can tolerate relatively low temperatures even low 60s to even high 50s if the sun is directly on you. So it’s not that uncomfortable.
CB: The other thing that I have a major question about which we have talked about with our scientist panel is, what’s the ultimate public health step? I mean, if you think about the world which has a very severe vitamin D deficiency epidemic yet you have taken supplements, it’s ludicrous. I mean, that’s people who can pay the money kind of job.
DM: It’s still pretty inexpensive.
There is Nothing that Creates More Anxiety and Fear of the Unknown Than Being Told – You Have Breast Cancer part 6
There is Nothing that Creates More Anxiety and Fear of the Unknown Than Being Told – You Have Breast Cancer part 6
After that, I was sufficiently appalled, incensed, angered – I mean, you name the emotion I had – that I knew that something had to be done. I mean something had to be done. I have a lot of resources. I’m blessed with those resources – friends that actually work in the cancer industry. A son that works at MD Anderson who is a very known biostatistician that I highly respect and adore. It’s like, okay guys, you got to help me figure out a way out of this because we just cannot have people, women especially particularly with breast cancer survive and live these long lives with these side effects because the side effects do not go away. You’re not curing cancer with this. I spent the next two years – I mean, I get up in the morning and I’m on my scientific papers and I read them and I download them and I call people. I talk to people. I read about all kinds of alternative treatments.
On February 12, 2007 – this day will go down in my memory forever – I went to the doctor and was called based on some tests that I had osteoporosis. I said, “Why? I’m not heavy. I workout every day. I do all these good things.” She says, “Maybe you have a vitamin D deficiency.” I said, “What’s that?” I went home back to work for me which was researching what could be done about this. I still apologize to my friends now saying it took me two hours before I keyed in vitamin D and cancer but it did. I just decided to see what’s out there. And to this day, I get goose bumps thinking about what I saw. It was Dr. Cedric Garland from the UC San Diego…
DM: Which is where you’re from.
CB: It’s where I’m from. Morris Cancer Center had just published a paper saying that the risk of breast cancer could be cut by 50% if people had vitamin D serum levels – this is a blood level of how much vitamin D you’ve got – somewhere about 40 to 50 nanograms per milliliter. I just sat there and looked at that and I started crying which is kind of like, this can’t be true. I have friends at UCSD of course. I picked up the phone and I said, “Is this guy a flake? This is unreal.”
DM: It can’t be.
CB: It can’t be. I’m a very skeptical scientist. She says, “Oh no Carole, he is not a flake. He’s been doing this research for 30 years.” I said, “What? Thirty years, and I’m just finding out about it?” She says, “At this point in time, he’s really very depressed.” I said, “Why on earth is he depressed?” She said, “Because he thinks nobody is listening.” Can you imagine that? I said out loud I’m listening. I knew that I had some wherewithal to get something going – starting businesses and running stuff like that.
DM: It’s one of your experiences and your expertise.
CB: Yes. So in May of that year (2007) there was one of the best cancer conferences I have been to sponsored by the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland on vitamin D and cancer.
For two solid days, I listened to reports by scientists from all over the world talking about vitamin D and cancer. Not all of them were things to jump up and down about but there was so much there that was so positive from what they were doing with rats, from what they were doing with all kinds of experiments that at the end of the session, when the session leader asked a group of scientist, what’s next? I was waiting for the action item. The action item that they had was – we need to do more research.
I sat there for a minute. I was an invited guest. I’m not a vitamin D researcher. I listened to people talk a minute and they had these absolutely beautiful microphones coming up on the table to everybody and if you wanted to speak you just press the button. To this day, I swear the microphone little button throbbed and I pressed it and I stood up. I only had a very few words. I just asked them, where is your sense of urgency? And I sat down.
The meeting was over and almost immediately, I had fully half of the scientists in that room come up to me and say, how can we help? Talk about other goose bumps. It’s like here is a group of people who got a message and they want to get it out and they can’t get it out. It wasn’t just Dr. Garland. I said at that point in time I said, I don’t know. I don’t know what the message is yet. So Leo and I took off in our motor home and did a four-month trip.
DM: That’s your husband.
CB: Yes of course. Leo Baggerly, my delightful husband and partner. Leo is a physicist – that’s how I met him by the way – and researcher as well. He currently works with the kinetics of vitamin D. It’s easy to get excited about this project.
DM: Excellent.
CB: We took off in our motor home to go meet with the scientists around the country and in Canada to see what is the message. If I’m going to take on a public health project, what do we need to say? At that time, as there is now, this ongoing stuff about what dosage should I take was still the same which is like, shall I take 2000 IU? Shall I take 20,000 IU? What should I do? But that wasn’t what they come up with.
Every single one of them agreed. Every one of them, we now have 40 on this panel, that the focus should be on the serum level not the dosage. The reason being, if you focusontheserumlevel,youcanhavepeopletakewhateverittakestogetthere. It does take something different for everybody. Everybody’s human body just responds differently. So we had our message. Our message for entire campaign was get your serum level to 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter. That’s it. That’s really it.
DM: It’s a good action item.
CB: With that level, we really can reduce the incidence of cancer, heart disease, you name it. You get in that band of demonstrable evidence saying that you can prevent diseases. That’s how I got into it.
DM: Thank you for that explanation.
CB: It’s kind of long.
DM: No. It’s important to have a frame. It may not be obvious even from your explanation because you may appear to be a lay person so to speak but since you have committed essentially nearly four years now full time and interacting with your panel of experts which are some of the leading experts in vitamin D in the world.
CB: They are indeed.
DM: You’re doing this full time and you’re obviously very intelligent. You have an academic background. So it doesn’t take too long to get up to speed. You really do have a level of knowledge that is extraordinary, really at an expert level. We’re delighted to have you here and share your wisdom in that.
There is Nothing that Creates More Anxiety and Fear of the Unknown Than Being Told – You Have Breast Cancer part 5
There is Nothing that Creates More Anxiety and Fear of the Unknown Than Being Told – You Have Breast Cancer part 5
A Special Interview with Carole Baggerly By Dr. Mercola
DM: Dr. Joseph Mercola CB: Carole Baggerly
Introduction:
DM: Welcome everyone. This is Dr. Mercola. Today, I am joined with Carole Baggerly who is the director and founder of an organization called Grassroots Health which is primarily focused on educating and creating more awareness about the importance and the value of vitamin D and also developing and substantiating some research to support the use of that.
Carole, you got a really fascinating history personally and academically that sort of suits you really quite well for this role. I’m wondering if you can share with our viewers what your history is that makes you so appropriately suited for this task?
CB: As you were saying that the funny thought that came to mind most immediately was that which makes me most suited for this task is actually having been a mother taking care of all the things that one cares about with children and the intensity and the drive. Academically, I have a background in physics and mathematics.
DM: Hardcore science.
CB: I spent about four years running my own business in the aerospace industry. We were a software interface to help the aerospace companies become more efficient with doing business with their suppliers and their trading partners. That plays an enormous role in this because part of what we’re doing with the whole vitamin D project is running a massive information technology study which I know how to do. Also, there is an awful lot of interfaces with experts and people who have vested interest in making this work.
DM: Just as a little side tangent, what was your specific role in that aerospace company?
CB: I ran it. I owned it. DM: So you’re responsible for all the moving parts making sure they worked.
CB: Yes. It’s still in existence. It’s a leading aerospace supplier of electronic data interchange services.
DM: Terrific.
CB: It still is.
DM: So you were running your business and doing very well and very happy and providing good value for many people including the aerospace industry and then something happened personally I would assume that redirected your efforts into this area.
CB: Actually in 2001 I had retired. I had started actually another business which both my husband and I have a big interest in which is various incendiary peace related activities and mediation. In 2005, I had breast cancer and that changed the world significantly. Would you like me to tell about that?
DM: Absolutely. Just to sort of put a frame on this. I mean you’re a woman and most of the people viewing this would be women in the United States and breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer in the Western world.
CB: It is. DM: It’s a significant issue that many people watching this today are struggling with or
have or will have. CB: Unfortunately. DM: I’m sure they will be interested in your experience.
CB: I was diagnosed with breast cancer in February of 2005. I had treatment for breast cancer. I had a mastectomy. I had radiation and I had chemo. I had the whole ball of wax.
DM: Cut, poison, burn.
CB: My total conclusion at that time or even during that time was that it was barbaric. I had no idea – I mean, back again kind of put that peace thing in mind. All of a sudden I realized the violence that was being done to my own body. That was just like – this is unacceptable.
One of the interesting things there just short whatever is I had a tumor that was literally 5 cm. That is an enormous sized tumor which was not detected by a mammogram. It was only much later that the doctor happened to tell me that well, you know, there are a lot of women that have dense breast and we don’t get that image with the mammogram and it turns out that those women with dense breasts occupy maybe 40% to 50% of all tissues that they look at. So it’s enormous.
DM: Just about half. CB: It’s about half.
DM: That is 2-1/2 inches which is bigger than a golf ball.
CB: That’s about 2-1/2 inches. It was enormous. It was a stage 3 cancer which is a sizeable progression up the ladder of severity. The surgery was not too bad. The mastectomy was pretty bad but regardless, that wasn’t the thing. I was doing the chemo. And then at one point during the chemo I was taking a particular drug that was so painful. It was Paclitaxel and it caused extreme peripheral neuropathy which is pain in the hands and the feet. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t feel. I just cried because my leg hurt so much.
I talked to the doctor about it and he says, you have only got two more treatments of that left. I did one and I said, I’m not going to do the next one, and he walked out of the room. That was my first score about the mental investment of a doctor in the treatment as opposed to the patient. I was appalled. I asked the nurse to send him back because I had some questions and she said, write them down. That was just kind of like shocking, stunning, I mean, just like hello. That was one. I did not take the last treatment because it was too painful and because I had also read that from time to time those side effects don’t go away. That’s one of the things you also learn as you go through those.
I then chose to do the radiation therapy. That is an angle they have certainly improved it so it doesn’t quite go head on but still I had no thyroid left. One day, I went home and I literally had sunburn on my back so you know the radiation is going all the way through. On my last session of that, I was literally laying there exposed bleeding on the table. I also did not have the full extent of radiation treatment.
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 9
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 9
I tell this gut-wrenching story because we have no idea what the future will bring. Kingdoms rise, and kingdoms fall. The United States of America has been a great civilization—the shining city upon a hill—since we fought for our independence after our country was formed on July 4, 1776. I realize that I would have never been born if Lady Liberty hadn’t opened her arms to my grandmother back at Ellis Island, so I am eternally grateful.
Now I have my own family to look after and care for. I married Nicki in 1999, and we have three children ages seven and under, so following through on the deep desire in my heart to produce my own food and provide places of refuge is very real to me. Whenever Nicki and I talked through my vision, she was on board, especially as we discussed what was happening to our nation in recent years.
We felt as though the scales were coming off our eyes and could clearly see the world around us. We agreed that our economy is based on paper money that is backed by absolutely nothing, and most of us use a piece of plastic to buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have from someone who doesn’t even own them. With federal deficits flying through the roof and state governments straining to balance their budgets, it all seems like a house of cards.
If history is a guide, it reminds us that it wouldn’t take much—a run on the banks, a stock market collapse, a cataclysmic event or, God forbid, a major terrorist attack on a U.S. city—to see it all start tumbling to the ground.
What is Wealth?
As God spoke to me about Joseph, I was prompted to do a study in Scripture about what He considers wealth. I read that Abraham grew wealthy with cattle, gold, and silver. Isaac planted a field and reaped a hundredfold harvest. Jacob, through his wisdom and discernment, grew his flocks and herds. Job was blessed “twice as much” later in life with sheep, camels, and donkeys. God describes His own wealth in Psalms by saying, He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. After reading that, I realized that it probably would be a good idea to own cattle on a hill or two myself. I also knew I needed to find sustainable
sources of water since water is even more important for life than food. I began a nationwide search to find the right land while crisscrossing the country on a forty-five foot tour bus that was part of a six-month promotional tour for my book, Perfect Weight America, during the first half of 2008.
We looked at properties in Idaho, California, and North Carolina but didn’t find what we were looking for. In the fall of 2009 after a long search, we found just the right place—seven different pieces of property totaling 8,600 acres in southern Missouri’s Ozark mountains and north Georgia’s Blue Ridge mountains.
Talk about being “all in.”
The best part about my God-given vision is that the dream to produce the world’s healthiest foods and beverages, to provide water, food, shelter, clothing and protection to people who need it most, to offer places of refuge and best of all hope to a lost and dying world, isn’t mine alone.
This is my invitation for you to join me in my mission to transform the health of this nation and world, one life at a time.
You, too, can live beyond organic.
- Glen
Glen B. Stewart
Healer 2.0
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 8
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 8
Pharaoh believed everything Joseph said and put him in charge of all the land in Egypt as well as the food storage program.
During the seven years of “plenty,” Joseph made sure that enough food was set aside to see Egypt through the coming famine. Sure enough, when the rains didn’t fall and crops failed throughout the entire known world, people came from all countries to buy grain from Joseph—including Joseph’s brothers.
When the contingent from Canaan arrived, they were led into a palace chamber where Joseph heard requests for food and grain. When his brothers walked in, Joseph recognized them, but they didn’t know who he was because it had been more than a decade since they had seen him.
The brothers all bowed to him because he was an important person—just as Joseph had dreamed years earlier.
After a few meetings with his brothers, Joseph couldn’t keep it in any longer. “I am Joseph!” he said. “Is my father alive?”
But his brothers couldn’t answer him because they were afraid.
“Come here,” Joseph said. “I am your brother, the one you sold. Do not worry, and do not be angry at yourselves for selling me because God has put me here to save people from starving.” He also said one of my favorite lines in the Bible: “What you meant for bad, to hurt me, God has meant for good!”
How is that for an unbelievable attitude?
So Joseph sent his brothers back with food and provisions, and eventually his father, his brothers, and their families came to live in Egypt with Joseph, where they had all the food that they needed.
Not only did Joseph’s provision save the lives in his family, but there is evidence in Scripture that this worldwide famine caused starvation among people everywhere and the only ones who survived were those who obtained food through Joseph by his God-given wisdom.
God used Joseph to save the world. Today, we believe that the story of Joseph was a foreshadowing of the One who was to come that would bring spiritual salvation to the world, Jesus our savior.
Jordan, you need to be a Joseph.
What did that mean?
When I first heard that voice in the stillness of my heart, I went back and reread the story of Joseph in the last thirteen chapters of Genesis. I was struck by the wisdom that God gave Joseph to store up food during seven years of plenty in advance of the seven years of famine that were coming. I’m sure that many people in Pharaoh’s court thought Joseph was nuts, but because of his foresight and trust in God that he was given the right interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream, there would be enough to eat in the land of Egypt and in Joseph’s own family. The future nation of Israel would be saved.
So the Lord told me to be a Joseph, a person who could provide food, hydration, shelter, and protection to people in coming years.
I’m thirty-six years old, and those of us in Generation X don’t think much about impending doom or the end of the world. We have known only economic prosperity throughout our short lives, although the Great Recession of the last few years have given many of us pause that the U.S. economy will never be as vibrant as the decade from the late-1990s to 2008.
The point is that no one is immune from great hardship and difficulties, and those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. In fact, those in my own family experienced great tragedy at the hands of outside forces.
My late grandmother, Rose, was born in 1922 in a pastoral Polish village that could have doubled as the set for Fiddler on the Roof. She was the youngest of seven children born to Gidalia and Simma Catz.
Her Jewish family faced growing harassment during that uneasy era following World War I, and then Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany in 1933. He moved quickly to pass repressive anti-Jewish laws—and persecution of Jews intensified elsewhere throughout Europe.
Amid this hostile environment, Rose’s family talked about fleeing Poland. Fortunately for them, there was still time to get out. Thirteen-year-old Rose joined her parents and several siblings and immigrated in 1935 to the United States, where the family settled in Queens, New York. They were among the last wave of European Jews to arrive in America prior to World War II.
Two of my great-aunts—my grandmother’s oldest sisters, Sonya and Dora— were already married with their own families and felt they didn’t need to come to America. They had husbands and jobs, and they believed their government would protect them from the likes of Hitler.
After the war, we learned what happened to Sonya and Dora as well as their families. During the Nazi blitzkrieg that swept Poland in 1939, they were rounded up by the SS and paraded through the streets along with other Jewish families. Then the children—screaming with fright—were separated from their parents and shot before their horrified eyes. Next, the women were ordered to gather, and they were gunned down in front of their husbands.
And then all the men stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the machine guns.
It’s hard to believe that such inhumanity could happen, but this massacre—the forerunner of Hitler’s “Final Solution” for European Jewry—happened less than seventy-five years ago. In the annals of time, this is a blink of an eye.
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 7
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 7
I’m Jewish, and one of my favorite stories in the Tenach, or Old Testament as we call it today, is about Joseph. It’s one of the great stories in history.
Joseph was born in Canaan many centuries ago—long before Moses or Jesus came to this earth. He was the eleventh of twelve sons born to Jacob and the son of the love of Jacob’s life, Rachel.
Joseph must have been something special because his father clearly favored him over his older brothers and showed everyone how he felt by giving Joseph an elegant robe “of many colors.”
Jacob’s favoritism of Joseph caused jealousy in the family, and his older brothers didn’t react well. They barely spoke to Joseph and let it be known that they hated him with a passion. They grumbled among themselves and couldn’t say a kind word about him.
One day, when Joseph was in his late teens, he told his brothers about a strange dream he had.
“Guess what, guys? Last night I dreamt we were tying up bunches of grain out in the field when suddenly my bunch stood up while all of yours gathered around and bowed to mine.”
The brothers looked at each other in disgust, but Joseph continued. “Then I had another dream that the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowed down to me.”
“Who do you think you are?” one of his older brothers said. “Do you think that you are better than all of us? Do you think that we would ever bow down to you?”
This made the brothers dislike Joseph even more.
A few days later, Jacob asked Joseph to run an errand for him—check on his brothers out in the fields, which were quite a distance away.
When the brothers saw Joseph approaching, they hatched a plan to kill him. But Reuben, the oldest brother, calmed the hotheads down. “Let’s not kill him,” he said. “Just throw him in a well out here in the field.” Reuben suggested this because he was secretly planning to come back and rescue Joseph when the other brothers had left for the day.
Joseph had a rude reception upon his arrival. His brothers grabbed him, yanked off his beautiful robe, and threw him into the empty well. A little while later, a band of Ishmaelite traders passed through the fields, saying they were on their way to Egypt, where they planned to sell their goods.
“Why don’t we sell Joseph to these people?” said one of the brothers. “That way we never have to see him again, but we don’t have to kill him.”
The other brothers liked the idea, and Reuben wasn’t there to stop them. So Joseph was placed on the auction block, and off he went—hands and feet bound—to Egypt. Once there, Joseph found out that he belonged to an important man named Potiphar, an assistant to the Pharaoh of Egypt.
Meanwhile, back at home, the rest of the brothers had to create a storyline about what happened to Joseph since his parents—especially his father, Jacob—would be worried sick about him.
One of the brothers took Joseph’s beautiful robe, dipped it in animal blood, and returned to Jacob. When the father saw this, he cried out, “Some animal has killed my son!” Then he fell to his knees in tears, and he was inconsolable for days.
What happened to Joseph? Well, he started out as a slave, but the Lord was with him and no matter where Joseph was placed, he chose to do what was right. So Potiphar made him his helper and put him in charge of everything he owned.
Things were looking better for Joseph, but then he got royally messed with when Potiphar’s wife accused him of making unwanted advances towards her. It was her word against his, and she won—despite the horrible lie she told. Joseph was thrown into prison and languished there for years until one day when Pharaoh heard that Joseph had an uncanny ability to interpret dreams. Pharaoh had a crazy dream that he couldn’t figure out, and nobody could explain it to him.
Joseph was brought before Pharaoh, who asked him, “Can you understand dreams?” “I can’t, but the God I serve gives me the wisdom,” Joseph replied. So Pharaoh described his troubling dream, which Joseph immediately explained. “God is warning you,” he began. “There will be seven years where nothing will grow and there won’t be food for anyone.”
This wasn’t what Pharaoh wanted to hear. “What can I do?” he asked. “God has shown you what to do. There will be seven years that will be very good prior to those bad years. So good that there will be extra food for everyone. So you should set aside a portion of each year’s harvest. That way you’ll have enough to get you through the lean years.”
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 6
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 6
Frequently people would walk in and comment about how my recommendations—from a stock boy, mind you—had helped them. What an opportunity to live my purpose by sharing my struggles and how I became victorious!
While working at the health food store, I also began an exhaustive study on nutrition and natural health. Due to my passion for digestive health, I focused a great deal on probiotics like the Lactobacilli, Bacilli, and Saccharomyces species. After meeting with hundreds of people in the health food store—and hearing from hurting folks following the publication of my story in the Townsend Letter—I knew there was a real need to take the very nutrients and compounds that improved my health and formulate them into whole food nutritional supplements. I named my first formula Primal Defense®.
While I was in no position to start an organic, sustainable ranch and farming operation at this point, I could do the next best thing: put whole food nutrients and compounds into nutritional supplements that would empower extraordinary health. Thus, Garden of Life was born.
Since I also had a deep desire to transform people’s health one life at a time, I decided to share my healing story with the world. In 2002, I wrote my first book Patient, Heal Thyself, sharing the message of health and hope with more than 1.1 million copies in print. I can’t tell you the number of people who contacted me to say, “Jordan, reading your story was like looking in a mirror. You went through exactly what I’m going through now. Our stories are so similar. Your journey from sickness to health made me believe I could get well and by following your suggestions, I am so much better.”
Since then, I’ve authored twenty books and shared this message live in front of hundreds of thousands of people on five continents and forty-four states throughout this great country. I’ve hosted a pair of TV programs—Extraordinary Health and Perfect Weight America—that have aired on several cable networks. I’ve been interviewed and featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and on TV programs such as Good Morning America, Fox & Friends, and Inside Edition. I’ve appeared on dozens of faith-based TV programs sharing the message of health and hope.
In the meantime, Garden of Life grew beyond my wildest dreams. By the mid-2000s, our products were being sold in sixty-seven countries and in more than 10,000 health food stores and thousands of doctors’ offices.
During my various speaking tours, I would drive by and sometimes visit ranches and farms while I was on the road. Nearly every time I stepped on a working farm or ranch, I was disappointed in what I saw. American agriculture had become “agribusiness,” which is a commonly used term that reflects the big corporate nature of many farm enterprises throughout the fruited plain. Huge machinery, chemical fertilizers, and automation had taken over, and the business model could be summed up in a simple sentence: produce the biggest yields possible for the lowest possible cost. If this means dousing your crops with pesticides and herbicides, feeding your livestock genetically modified cornmeal, or picking your fruits and vegetables before they ripen and then gassing them before going to market, then so be it.
Plain and simple, food has become a manufactured commodity these days; all one has to do is watch a few episodes of Unwrapped on the Food Network to see firsthand how America’s “favorite” foods are processed and packaged. But even before our food is mass-produced in some industrial bakery or far- off factory, the ingredients have been sprayed with pesticides, pumped up with additives and preservatives, and stripped of vital nutrients.
More often than not, I would visit local and organic farms, not conventional farms, in search of healthy dairy and meat products. And while these producers were always much more conscientious than those at the large farms, a lack of resources usually kept these small farmers from producing foods and beverages of the highest quality and safety.
My travels across the U.S. continent added more fuel to the fire burning deep in my gut to one day produce the world’s healthiest foods and beverages, without chemicals and preservatives, and as God intended. Food whose quality would go beyond organic.
And then the Lord spoke to me with words I’ll never forget.
Jordan, you need to be a Joseph.