Dr Mercola: Top 10 Articles of 2013

January 01, 2014 

Story at-a-glance

• Dr. Mercola shares the 10 most-read articles of 2013
• The year’s most captivating articles covered some of the most cutting-edge advances in natural health, like how to use intermittent fasting to live longer and a ketogenic diet for cancer recovery
• Other articles that made the top 10 contained empowering health information, such as how to gain insights into your health by looking in the toilet and the top foods you should avoid eating, plus much more

By Dr. Mercola

Happy New Year! Today, we embark on a new year and a fresh start in our continued journey toward better health and happier lives. But before we leave 2013 behind, let’s revisit the top 10 articles of the past year, based on number of page views.

These are the articles that captivated you most, and they cover some of the most cutting-edge advances in natural health -- like how to use intermittent fasting to live longer and a ketogenic diet for cancer recovery.

There are some classics in there, too, including how to gain insights into your health by looking in the toilet and the top foods you should avoid eating, plus much more.

If you haven’t yet read these top 10 articles, you’re in for a treat. And be sure to stay tuned to the newsletter for more empowering health wisdom as 2014 unfolds.

10. What You Can Learn About Your Health by Analyzing the Color and Smell of Your Urine

Urine can reveal important information about your body’s waste elimination process, providing clues about your overall health status.

Your urine changes color depending on what foods you eat, what medications and supplements you take, how much water you drink, how active you are, and the time of the day.

But some diseases can also change the color and other characteristics of your urine, so it’s important to be alert and informed.

With so many variables, you can’t always be sure of what’s causing any particular urine characteristic, short of laboratory testing. However, urine’s character gives you some clues to potential problems that may be developing, giving you time to do something about it.

9. The Unsavory Truth of the McRib and Other Fake Foods, and Why Russia Banned US-Raised Meat

Over the past couple of years, we’ve learned the unsavory truth about “pink slime,” reconstituted meat, and how the use of meat glue cheats you out of your hard-earned money at the grocery store and threatens your health.

We’ve also learned that fast-food fare, such as McDonald’s hamburgers, contain so many chemicals and so few real food ingredients that a burger fails to show signs of decomposition after more than a decade...

The famous McDonald’s McRib also came under closer scrutiny, and turned out to be something less than mouthwatering. Meanwhile, Russia banned US meat supplies after discovering it contains ractopamine.

This is a beta-agonist drug that increases protein synthesis, thereby making the animal more muscular and, consequently, reducing the fat content of the meat.

8. Why Conventional Medicine Won’t Allow Cancer to Be Cured

Over the last 100 years, a number of natural cancer treatments have been developed and used successfully to treat patients in the US and other countries.

All have been vehemently discounted, silenced, and pushed under the rug by the medical monopoly, with physicians and researchers attacked, smeared, sent to prison, and professionally ruined for daring to defy the medical establishment.

A fascinating documentary exposes the corruption of the cancer industry and the extreme measures they will undertake to discredit, imprison, and professionally destroy any physician who treats cancer patients naturally.

7. The Benefits of a Ketogenic Diet and Its Role in Cancer Treatment

Dr. Thomas Seyfried is one of the leading pioneer academic researchers in promoting how to treat cancer nutritionally. His work confirms that sugar is the primary fuel for cancer, and that by restricting sugar and providing an alternate fuel, namely fat, you can dramatically reduce the rate of growth of cancer.

A ketogenic diet, which calls for minimizing sugar and other carbohydrates and replacing them with healthy fats and moderate amounts of high-quality protein, can offer hope against cancer, both for prevention and treatment. When combined with calorie restriction, the end result will put your body in a metabolic state that is inhospitable to cancer cells.

Download Interview Transcript

6. 10 American Foods That Are Banned in Other Countries

Americans are slowly waking up to the sad fact that much of the food sold in the US is far inferior to the same foods sold in other nations. In fact, many of the foods you eat are BANNED in other countries. This includes farm-raised salmon, Hawaiian (GMO) papaya, artificial food dyes, arsenic-laced chicken, ractopamine-tainted meat, bromate-containing drinks and bread, olestra, carcinogenic preservatives, and rBGH-laced milk. Seeing how the overall health of Americans is so much lower than that of populations in other industrialized countries, you can’t help but wonder whether toxic foods such as these might play a role in our skyrocketing disease rates.

5. Intermittent Fasting Finally Becoming Mainstream Health Recommendation

Two health books released in 2013 revealed how intermittent fasting can help you normalize your weight, prevent many chronic diseases, and increase longevity. The “8-hour diet” is a type of scheduled eating plan where you simply restrict your normal daily eating to an eight-hour window of time, without cutting calories. Research has shown that this simple lifestyle tweak can significantly modify body composition, including reduce fat mass. Research has also shown that intermittent fasting quickly improves insulin’s ability to manage blood sugar and that fluctuations in food consumption appear to be required for optimal metabolic function.

4. The Many Health Benefits of Avocado

Avocados, which are actually classified as a fruit, are rich in monounsaturated fat that is easily burned for energy. They also provide close to 20 essential health-boosting nutrients, including potassium, vitamin E, B-vitamins, and folic acid. Previous research has found avocado can help optimize cholesterol levels within as little as one week, and contains compounds that appear to inhibit and destroy oral cancer cells along with those that protect against liver damage.

Interestingly, the way you peel an avocado matters, as the greatest concentration of antioxidants is in the dark green fruit closest to the peel. To preserve the most nutrients, you basically want to peel the avocado with your hands, as you would a banana.

3. Ketogenic Diet May Be Key to Cancer Recovery

Current conventional cancer treatment typically involves chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Chemotherapy is a cytotoxic poison, and radiation is devastating to the human body. More often than not, the treatment is what eventually kills the patient. Even more astounding, in terms of treatment, is that natural strategies may be effective. For instance, cancer may respond to diet alone.

The ketogenic diet can have a dramatic (and rapid) effect on cancer. All of your body’s cells are fueled by glucose. This includes cancer cells. However, cancer cells have one built-in fatal flaw – they do not have the metabolic flexibility of your regular cells and cannot adapt to use ketone bodies for fuel as all your other cells can. So, when you alter your diet and become what’s known as “fat-adapted,” your body starts using fat for fuel rather than carbs. When you switch out the carbs for healthy fats, you starve the cancer out, as you’re no longer supplying the necessary fuel – glucose – for their growth.

Total Video Length: 25:29

2. What You See in the Toilet Can Give You Valuable Insights Into Your Health

The shape, size, color, and other fecal features can tell you a great deal about your overall health, how your gastrointestinal tract is functioning, and even give you clues about serious disease processes that could be occurring, like infections, digestive problems, and even cancer.

If you know what to look for, you may be able to detect health problems early enough to stop them in their tracks, including serious diseases like celiac disease, hepatitis, urinary tract infections and stones, malabsorption disorders, inflammatory bowel disease, pancreatitis, cancer, and others. So if you’re one to poop and scoot quickly out of the bathroom without looking in the toilet, then you might want to slow down and look down.

1. The 9 Foods You Should Never Eat

Many foods have been heavily promoted as being healthy when they are nothing more than pernicious junk foods. In the featured article are nine staple foods that are far less “good for you” than you’ve been led to believe. These include some surprises – like canned tomatoes, vegetable oil, and non-organic potatoes – as well as a section on how to identify truly healthy food to nourish your body.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/01/01/top-10-articles-of-2013.aspx