Kirlian Photography Demonstrates Organic Uncooked Food Have Stronger Energy Fields

By Ethan A. Huff 

Food is food, some might claim, and it does not really matter whether or not it is cooked or raw, conventional or organic. The nutritive value remains the same regardless. Or does it? A recent report from Activist Post explains that, based on analysis using a technique known as Kirlian photography, researchers have discovered that the energy fields surrounding raw, organic produce are stronger and more uniform than the energy fields surrounding cooked, conventional produce.

This discovery was made possible by an earlier one stumbled upon by the late Semyon Kirlian, a Russian inventor, back in 1939. Kirlian learned that, when connected to a source of voltage, an object placed in contact with a photovoltaic plate will produce a corresponding image of that object on the plate. And the resulting image will also contain a visual display of the object’s electrical “aura,” of sorts, that both surrounds and emanating from it.

The theory behind this energy field, of course, is that the stronger and more vibrant it is, the healthier and more “alive” the object. And based on this theory, it has been observed that the energy field of an apple, for instance, is the strongest right after it has first been picked. The longer it remains off the tree and is allowed to ripen, the weaker its energy field becomes.

In the documentaryThe Beautiful Truth, which was released in 2008, a team of scientists used Kirlian photography to analyze various foods. They found that organic foods emitted a clearly more vibrant and harmonious energy field than conventional foods. Raw foods also fared better in the energy department than cooked and pasteurized foods, the latter of which appeared duller and less uniform than their raw counterparts.

You can view a roughly two-minute clip from the film where the Kirlian technique is used here:

If this energy field is truly indicative of a food’s “life source,” then it appears as though whole, clean foods eaten as close as possible to the way nature intended are more life-giving than over-processed, pesticide-ridden foods. It also means that simply counting calories and looking at ingredient content are not enough to determine the true nutritional capacity of food.

Source: www.naturalnews.com

Families with high-deductible health insurance plans are more likely to put off care, study finds

Families who have health plans with high deductibles and who have members with chronic health conditions are far more likely to put off or forgo care entirely due to cost, a study has found. The odds of those families delaying or forgoing care were three to four times more likely than families with traditional plans.

Those were the key findings of a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Using a mail and phone survey, researchers talked to families with employer-sponsored insurance in Massachusetts between April and December 2008. Respondents included 208 families with high-deductible plans and 370 families with traditional plans.

For adults with high-deductible plans and with incomes less than four times the federal poverty level, the probability they would delay or forgo care was 40 percent. For adults in the same income bracket with traditional plans that probability was only 15.1 percent. (Read more)

Judge continues to block graphic images on cigarette packs

Getting graphic labels on cigarette packages continues to be an uphill battle for the Obama administration, as a skeptical judge sided with cigarette makers who say "they can't be forced to spread the government's anti-smoking advocacy with 'massive shocking, gruesome warnings' on products they legally sell," reports The Associated Press.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of Washington, D.C., has already decided that the cigarette makers will probably succeed in their lawsuit, because he has ordered the government to not enforce the requirement that the labels appear on cigarette packages next year.

The labels, approved by the Food and Drug Administration, "included color images of a man exhaling cigarette smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his throat; a plume of cigarette smoke enveloping an infant receiving a mother's kiss; a pair of diseased lungs next to a pair of healthy lungs; a diseased mouth afflicted with what appears to be cancerous lesions; a man breathing into an oxygen mask," among others, AP reports.

Leon has indicated he thinks the labels go overboard in their efforts to convey the dangers of cigarettes. He has ruled they are too large; they were intended to cover the top half of packs. "It sounds like they are headed to a place," he said Wednesday, "where you have to watch a 10-minute video before you can even buy a pack of cigarettes." (Read more)

More complaints lodged about Medicaid managed care; lawmakers demand answers

Complaints continue to pile up about the state's new Medicaid managed care plans, which cover about 560,000 Kentuckians. Lawmakers are hearing gripes from providers who say they are not getting paid, and from patients and clinics who say the three managed-care companies take too long to give permission for certain care.

"It's a drastic change to the system," Neville Wise, the state's acting Medicaid commissioner, told the Senate Health and Welfare Committee yesterday. "We didn't expect the level of issues that we had."

Sen. Julie Denton, a Louisville Republican who chairs the committee, "expressed outrage about a case in which she recently called the president of one company trying to get care authorized for a battered domestic violence victim who sought treatment at a Lexington clinic on a Friday afternoon," reports Deborah Yetter of The Courier-Journal.

Despite Denton's call to Coventry Health Care, the woman was not able to get a scan for a shoulder injury until the following Monday. "This woman had to go in pain all weekend because she couldn't get the services she needed," Denton said. "This is not acceptable, and this is only one instance that I know of."

Denton also asked about late payments to providers. "The payment issues have gone on way too long, and it should have been better," Wise responded.

Kentucky moved to three managed care companies Nov. 1, in an effort to save the state money and balance the Medicaid budget. (Read more)

Journalists invited to apply for free, four-day obesity fellowship

Kentucky journalists wanting to expand their knowledge on obesity, one of the most critical and widespread health issues in the state and nation, should apply for the fellowship "Obesity Issues: The Complete Skinny on Why We're Getting Fatter, What it Means, and What We Can Do About It."

The four-day fellowship, a collaboration between the National Press Foundation and the Colorado Center for Health and Wellness, includes round-trip transportation to Denver, lodging and most food costs. The application deadline is Feb. 13. Sixteen fellows will be chosen.

Fellows will learn about the biology of obesity; environmental factors; the relationship between obesity and chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, disease and Alzheimer's; the economics of obesity; how the health-care system responds; why it's difficult to change behavior; and strategies for a healthier workforce.

Speakers include James O. Hill, executive director of the Colorado Center for Health and Wellness; D. John Peters, a leading nutrition and obesity researcher; and other scholars from the  University of Colorado. To apply, click here.

Smile Kentucky! celebrates 10 years and more than 100,000 children helped

Smile Kentucky! celebrates its 10-year anniversary tomorrow, representing $1 million in free dentistry and benefiting more than 100,000 students.

"It's a wonderful program," said Arleta Watkins of Bullitt County Schools. "I've had children who've never had a dental exam before. They get that service for free."

The program serves children in Louisville and nearby counties. Since it began, more than 127,000 students in 143 schools and 11 counties have received classroom dental education, 35,000 kids have gotten free dental screenings at school and nearly 3,000 children have received free treatment.

Smile Kentucky! works with 30 elementary schools in Jefferson and surrounding counties each fall. Students receive dental education, and children in grades 3 to 6 get a free dental screening. Children without dental insurance or medical care get free treatments by going to the University of Louisville's School of Dentistry or private dental offices in February.

"Dental pain and infection is one of the leading causes of missed days at school and affects a child's ability to concentrate," said John Sauk, dean of U of L's School of Dentistry.

U of L is one of 30 agencies on the steering committee. Other founding partners include the Louisville Water Co.,  the Louisville Dental Society, Colgate, Sullivan Schein Dental, Northwest Area Health Education Center and the Bullitt County Health Department.

For more information about Smile Kentucky!, click here.

Shocking realities of prescription pill abuse drive another summit to get everyone in harness to fight it

By Tara Kaprowy
Kentucky Health News

Prescription drug abuse has become so prevalent in parts of Kentucky, people are buying Mason jars of clean urine at flea markets and under the table at tobacco stores so they can pass drug tests.

Kentuckians are pulling out their own teeth so they can go to the dentist to get a three-day prescription for hydrocodone, the most popular painkiller.

When they make arrests, law enforcement officers are finding stacks of food stamps that have been traded for pills.

Almost two-thirds of Kentuckians have used prescription drugs for non-prescription reasons, 30 percentage points higher than the rest of the country.

FBI intelligence analyst Anthony Carter detailed the problem.
(Photo by James Crisp for The Courier-Journal)

Those were just some of the sad, startling facts that surfaced Wednesday in Lexington during the Kentucky Prescription Drug Summit, the second comprehensive, statewide gathering on the subject in two weeks. The summit was sponsored by the two U.S. attorneys for Kentucky hosted by the University of Kentucky and brought together law enforcement, physicians and the pharmaceutical community to learn more about the problem and cooperate in fighting it.

"We're galvanizing our forces, all of our forces, in this fight," Gov. Steve Beshear told the packed crowd. "This is a corrosive evil and we have to stop it." He noted that drug overdoses kill more Kentuckians than traffic accidents, and other speakers said the overdose numbers are under-reported.

"I think a lot of our people have had enough," said Kerry Harvey, the chief federal prosecutor for Eastern Kentucky. That's where the problem is worst, but speakers made clear it is statewide.

The state has electronically tracked prescriptions since 2000, but Attorney General Jack Conway said only about 25 percent of doctors use the Kentucky All-Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting system, and KASPER's data are "just sitting there and law enforcement are not able to access it" to proactively search for people getting an unusual amount of drugs.

Beshear recently appointed a panel of health-care providers to establish guidelines to identify over-prescribers through KASPER, and his budget proposal would put more money into the system and set up the state's first substance-abuse treatment program for Medicaid recipients.

House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, is expected to file a bill that would require drug prescribers to use KASPER. That bill or another would also require pain clinics to be owned by doctors.

While Kentucky has many suspicious pain clinics, many of the pills have come from out of state, primarily Florida. Wifredo Ferrer, U.S attorney for Southern Florida, said the state is cracking down on pill mills, in which doctors were seeing as many as 500 patients and making between $2,000 and $6,000 in cash each day.

The speeches from officials were leavened with personal stories of drug abuse, death and near-death.

Marine Lance Cpl. Daniel Gross, 26, said he was 21 when his addiction started. He was introduced to pain pills shortly after a roadside bomb exploded beside his Humvee in Iraq in 2006. With his right foot shattered, his other one broken and his brain injured from the blast, he was prescribed Percocet and oxycodone. With prescriptions "overflowing" at Camp Lejeune, N.C., taking pills became commonplace. "If I ran out, I got them from someone else," Gross said.

Quickly he became an addict, a burden he carried with him after he was discharged two years later. "I pawned, stole, lied, cheated," he said. "Nothing else seemed to matter." After two stints in rehab, Gross was able to overcome his addiction. Now clean for 14 months, he won a standing ovation from the crowd.

Police and local prosecutors expressed their frustration over the problem, with State Police Major Anthony Terry likening the situation to "a dog chasing its tail." Floyd County Commonwealth's Attorney Brent Turner said, "We are not treading water. . . . We are drowning in a sea of pills, and if something is not done the whole region is going to be destroyed."

UK President Eli Capilouto told the crowd that the land-grant university needs to be a partner in solving such problems, and the extent of it had become clearer to him the day before, when he met with local extension agents: "This issue came to the forefront."

"This has to be a group effort" among public servants and health-care providers, said Dr. Lon Hays, chair of the UK Psychiatry Department. Too often, he said, providers use "the big gun" of a strong painkiller. "We need to exhaust other methods of pain control before we go to that method of pain control."

For more coverage, from The Courier-Journal or the Lexington Herald-Leader, click here or here.

Kentucky Health News is a service of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky, with support from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.