FDA Working Hard to Protect You From - CHERRIES!

[Sue Copening]

 

Christine wrote such a great letter in her "Health eTips" newsletter I just had to reprint it here.  See below for how you can sign up for Christine's newsletter.

 

FDA Working Hard to Protect
You From - CHERRIES!

author:  Christine O'Brien
http://www.healthiertalk.com

As Will Rogers once said, "I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts."

 

And if those facts weren't so infuriating, maybe they would be funny.

 

Consider the latest bad joke our own FDA is playing on us. They now consider a fruit eaten for millennia -- cherries (yes, that's cherries) -- an "unapproved drug!"

 

Haven't heard about the FDA's courageous stand against the cherry, yet? Well, wait 'til you get a load of this one.

 

In 1999, a report in the Journal of Natural Products (published by the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society) concluded that tart cherries may relieve pain better than aspirin and other anti-inflammatory drugs.

 

Gout sufferers have known about this for decades. Even the intense pain and inflammation of an acute gout attack usually disappears completely after consumption of one to three pints of concentrated cherry juice over the course of just a few days.

 

Cherries and concentrated cherry juice work for other pain, too, although both have a lot of carbs and calories so it's better to use capsules of cherry concentrate for longer-term pain and inflammation relief. Capsules also have the advantage of reducing inflammation at just 1/10 the dosage of aspirin.

 

Cherries rival top-selling anti-inflammatory drugs

In the study mentioned above, the consumption of about 20 cherries reduced inflammation in a manner similar to that of aspirin or the "cox-2" inhibiting drugs, without the side effects of gastric bleeding or vitamin depletion associated with these drugs.

 

But when cherry growers began to cite this scientific research, the FDA sent warning letters to 29 companies that market cherries, threatening regulatory action if they didn't remove the science regarding the anti-inflammatory properties of cherries from their websites.

 

Does it seem like the FDA is being irrational to anyone else? What's worse is that irrational behavior combined with power can be very dangerous. But, unfortunately, this is nothing new.

 

For decades, the FDA has been a danger to you and your family's health. Nearly 20 years ago, the government's own General Accounting Office (GAO) wrote: "GAO found that of the 198 drugs approved by FDA between 1976 and 1985... 102 (or 51.5%) had serious post-approval risks...the serious postapproval risks... [included] heart failure, myocardial infarction, anaphylaxis, respiratory depression and arrest, seizures, kidney and liver failure, severe blood disorders, birth defects and fetal toxicity, and blindness."

 

That terrible record continues into the 21st century (Vioxx is just one example that springs immediately to mind).

 

And to add insult to injury, while it has been busy approving all those potentially lethal patent medicines, the FDA has also been actively fighting against your right to keep yourself healthy with foods and food supplements!

 

Picking on cherries is just one recent example. All the way back in 1949, former FDA commissioner Dr. George Larrick said: "The activities of... so-called health food lecturers have increasingly engaged our attention....[we are fighting] the good fight against dried vegetables, vitamins, and similar products."

 

And in 2007, the FDA even released a report on its own incompetence, titled "FDA Science and Mission at Risk."  You can find it easily online by entering the title into Google.

 

Real FDA reform is long, long overdue. But you can help get the process started. Some key natural health organizations have joined in an effort to reform FDA.

 

Please visit www.reformFDA.org
to read much more about this effort, and please consider signing the petition!

 

Your own health--and the health of all Americans--is at stake.

 

Yours in good health,

Christine O'Brien

 

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