Why Are Vaccine Rights Being Removed While Safety Issues Are Increasingly Brought to the Fore?

By Dr. Mercola

As noted by Barbara Loe Fisher,¹ founder of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), July Fourth celebrates the American Declaration of Independence, which asserts that "all men are created equal," and are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

Unwilling to submit to the tyranny of the aristocracy any longer, the Declaration is a pledge, promising that the United States would uphold the "unalienable natural right to life and liberty that belongs to every person."

Yet today, 240 years later, we again find ourselves in a situation where we're increasingly oppressed by an elite "who want the legal right to judge, shame, segregate, discriminate against and punish fellow citizens who do not share their beliefs," Fisher writes, adding:

"Nowhere is this truth more self evident than in the oppressive implementation of one-size-fits-all mandatory vaccination laws that fail to respect biodiversity or human rights and crush citizen opposition, in violation of the informed consent ethic and freedom of thought, speech, conscience and religious belief ...

The appropriation of unaccountable authority by medical trade and the militarization of public health in the 21st century should be of concern to every person who values life and liberty."

Vaccines Are 'Unavoidably Unsafe'

Both the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court have concluded that government licensed vaccines are "unavoidably unsafe,"² and this is what precipitated the decision to grant drug companies immunity against vaccine injuries and deaths.

If vaccine makers could actually be sued for damages, most would probably go out of business.

This "free pass" means that if the vaccine fails to protect you or your child, or worse, ends up injuring or killing, you cannot sue the vaccine manufacturer or the doctor who administered the vaccine. 

As a result of having zero liability for harm arising from the use of their products, vaccine makers have started churning out an ever-growing number of poorly tested vaccines with dubious benefits.

Bill Threatens to Strip Virginia of Religious and Medical Exemptions

At the same time, there's a concerted, nationwide effort to eliminate choice by removing religious and conscientious [sic] vaccine exemptions, which were instituted more than 50 years ago.

"[In] 2015, Vermont lost the conscience exemption and California lost the personal belief exemption protecting both exercise of conscience and religious beliefs. This year, the vaccine machine invaded Virginia," Fisher writes.³

"A proposed law was introduced in the House of Delegates in January 2016 to strip away not just the religious vaccine exemption, but also the medical exemption for all children, whether they are being homeschooled or are enrolled in public or private schools.

An individual physician would no longer exercise professional judgment when granting a child a medical exemption but would become a government agent enforcing the narrow one-size-fits all federal vaccine contraindication guidelines ... which means that 99.99 percent of children would not qualify for the medical vaccine exemption in Virginia."

Fortunately, parents in Virginia rose up and were able to suppress the bill. But it may be only a temporary victory. Similar legislation is expected to be reintroduced next year.

Interestingly, not only does Virginia have one of the lowest vaccine exemption rates in the U.S., Virginia is also "hallowed ground where freedom of thought, conscience and religion [were] first defined as a natural right and [were] codified into American law," Fisher notes.

Virginia's history as a leading defender of religious and personal rights is likely one of the reasons they're now trying to undermine personal and religious freedom in that state with the most restrictive anti-choice law of any state to date.

Lawsuit Filed to Overturn California Vaccine Requirements

Despite overwhelming opposition, California lost the personal belief exemption last year. The new law took effect on July 1.

That same day, a group of parents and the nonprofit Education 4 All filed a lawsuit to overturn the new law, which requires all children to be fully vaccinated in order to attend public or private school and/or daycare.

Parents who refuse to vaccinate their child according to the mandated schedule have only two options: they can try to get a medical exemption, which is extremely difficult and rarely obtained, or home-school their child.

Any child who previously attended school under a personal belief exemption must be fully vaccinated by kindergarten and seventh grade to be allowed to stay in school.

According to CBS News,⁴ the lawsuit says "the law violates the children's right to an education as guaranteed under California's constitution, and asks for a judge to suspend the law while the suit plays out."

The plaintiff's attorney, Robert T. Moxley, said the law "has made second class citizens out of children who for very compelling reasons are not vaccinated," adding they hope to be granted an injunction "while the judicial process takes place to see if this law is constitutional, which it most certainly does not seem to be."

Forced Vaccinations Are Unethical and Dangerous

In a recent article for congressional blog The Hill, Gretchen DuBeau, executive director for Alliance for Natural Health USA (ANH-USA), writes:⁵

"When health officials assure us that almost all children should receive the full schedule of vaccinations, you would think that rigorous safety testing has repeatedly proven vaccines, their ingredients and the CDC schedule to be completely safe.

The sobering truth is, however, that this safety testing has been conspicuously lacking and in many cases simply has not been done. Until these extremely serious safety concerns are adequately addressed, it is unethical - and very possibly dangerous - to force children to be vaccinated.

Take aluminum, for example, which has been added to vaccines since the 1930s to help jolt the body's immune system into action.

Aluminum is a well-documented neurotoxin linked with Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, asthma, hyperactivity and Down's syndrome. Despite these dangers, adequate clinical research proving aluminum adjuvants to be safe has never been done."

Indeed, it is the lack of evidence of safety that concerns most parents who decide to delay or forgo one or more vaccinations for their children. They're not doing it out of some misplaced desire to rebel against authority.

But rather than conducting the necessary research to settle these uncertainties, the vaccine industry has chosen to simply push for forced vaccinations instead. And why not? Forced vaccination guarantees maximum profits since there are no repercussions should their vaccines turn out to do more harm than good.

Assumptions and Comparing Apples to Oranges Are Not Good Science

DuBeau goes on to talk about how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) set the limit on the amount of aluminum allowed in vaccines, saying this limit is not based on safety studies but rather on the amount required to boost vaccine effectiveness. The agency is simply assuming the current levels are safe, based on inappropriate data.

The safety level for orally ingested aluminum was set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) based on rat studies. However, while the EPA's minimum risk level is used to justify aluminum adjuvants in vaccines, you really cannot compare orally ingested aluminum and intra-muscularly injected aluminum. These two routes of administration do not produce the same health effects. As noted by DuBeau:

"[I]ngesting aluminum orally, where only about 0.25 percent is absorbed and then filtered by the kidneys, is very different than injecting it directly into muscle, where it may be absorbed at nearly 100 percent efficiency over time and can accumulate in organs, including the brain.

This complete lack of evidence proving the safety of aluminum adjuvants in vaccines is unacceptable and should concern any parent who trusts health authorities with the safety of their children."

Many Scientists Have Raised Concerns About Potential Vaccine Dangers

DuBeau takes a strong stand against California's mandatory vaccination law (SB 277), calling it "ill-advised," as it mandates dosing all school-aged children with a dangerous metal known to have neurological effects. She also points out that the scientific community is nowhere near as unanimous as proponents of SB 277 and other forced vaccination laws would like you to believe.

"Many doctors and researchers have raised serious concerns about vaccine ingredients like aluminum," she writes. "Animal studies, for instance, have demonstrated a link between repeated inoculation with aluminum-containing vaccines and severe neurobehavioral outcomes ... and altered expression of certain genes in the brain.

According to DuBeau, children who get all of the vaccines on the CDC's schedule may receive as much as 4,225 micrograms of aluminum in their first year of life. "To put this in perspective," she says, "the animals mentioned above were given an aluminum dose in a range that is nearly comparable to what children on the CDC schedule receive. This should give us all pause."

Also consider this: the amount of aluminum injected into a newborn baby via the hepatitis B vaccine equates to an adult getting 10 doses of the vaccine in one day, when you consider the difference in weight between the two.

In order for an adult to get the same amount of aluminum per kilo of weight that a child receives at the age of 2 months, the adult would have to get 34 adult doses of the hepatitis B vaccine in one day. Does it really seem reasonable or wise to inject that hefty a dose of aluminum into a baby?

Doctor Highlights Risks and Excessive Cost of HPV Vaccine

One medical doctor raising concerns about vaccine hazards is Gary G. Kohls, who is now retired. In a recent article,⁶ he responds to a commentary in the News Tribune, "written and endorsed by area board-certified pediatricians, oncologists and obstetricians/gynecologists," who promote "the universal use of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine for pre-teen and teen-age girls."

According to Kohls, "the commentary appeared to be a part of a worldwide, billion-dollar promotion campaign," to encourage women around the world to get vaccinated, and financing this campaign is "one of the most profitable, price-gouging pharmaceutical companies in the world, Merck."

"In 2006, after only three to five years of clinical trials, the FDA approved for marketing the most expensive vaccine in the history of the world, Gardasil, which has been proclaimed as preventative for cancer of the cervix, a claim that was never proved and which has, to date, not prevented a single case of cervical cancer ... mainly because cancer of the cervix takes 20 to 50 years to develop," he writes.

The only thing these short-term industry-funded studies showed was that the vaccine "produced transient anti-HPV immune complexes in most of the young female vaccine recipients." They also found "modest reductions in the development of abnormal Pap smears." However, it's well known that 90 percent of all HPV infections clear up on their own within two years anyway, so that's hardly a medical breakthrough.

Kohls notes that the antigens in Gardasil and GlaxoSmithKline's version of the HPV vaccine, Cervarix, are "genetically engineered proteins that, thanks to the neurotoxic aluminum adjuvant in each dose, can cause serious autoimmune disorders and unknown levels of potentially serious mitochondrial damage."

'Number Needed to Treat' Statistic Reveals Risks and Cost of HPV Vaccine Far Outweigh Alleged Benefit

The HPV vaccines are also exorbitantly priced, costing approximately $140 for three doses, plus office visit charges. According to Kohls, the News Tribune commentary bore all the hallmarks of an industry campaign, including all the standard talking points. Missing entirely was any mention of the potential downsides and risks of the HPV vaccines, and without this information, how can a parent or young woman make a fully informed decision?

Kohls goes on to discuss the statistical measure known as "Number Needed to Treat" (NNT), which is a simple way to relate the effectiveness of any given treatment. A drug's NNT tells you how many people have to receive the drug in order for one person to benefit from it.

"For instance, the NNT for a course of penicillin for penicillin-sensitive streptococcal pharyngitis is one, meaning that one cure occurs for every one course of treatment. If a treatment results in only half of patients benefitting, the NNT is two (the inverse of the fraction 1/2). The smaller the NNT, the more beneficial the treatment," he explains.

"An article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) ...  stated that for Gardasil, the Number Needed to Vaccinate (same principle as the NNT) to prevent four or five cases of cervical cancer for a typical 12-year-old girl would be 9,080, meaning that 9,075 girls would be risking the serious adverse health consequences of Gardasil ... while still not receiving the alleged benefit, the prevention of cervical cancer." [Emphasis mine]

Neither doctors nor patients are informed about NNT statistics, yet this can be a very important treatment consideration. In Kohl's view, the cost of the HPV vaccine, both in terms of dollars and cents and their potential adverse health effects "come nowhere near outweighing the alleged benefit."

It's very unusual for a doctor to come out with such strong views. Most would do so under the threat of potentially losing their medical license. However, Kohl is retired, so he doesn't have to fret about that possibility, which may be why he's able to be so outspoken in the first place.

Complaint Filed Over European HPV Vaccine Assessment

Kohls is not the only one expressing concerns over the way the HPV vaccine is being pushed while risks are overlooked. On May 26, the Nordic Cochrane Center, which is part of Cochrane, an international network considered the gold standard within the evidence-based medical model for assessing the effectiveness of common medical interventions, filed a complaint with the European Medicines Agency (EMA), questioning the EMA's 2015 Assessment Report on the safety of HPV vaccines. In the 19-page letter to the EMA, Cochrane Nordic Center writes:⁷

"We are concerned about the EMA's handling of this issue as reflected in its official report and ask the EMA to assess:

1. Whether the EMA has been open and accountable to the citizens and has respected their rights to know about the uncertainties related to the safety of the HPV vaccines.

2. Whether the EMA has lived up to the professional and scientific standards that must be expected of the agency to guarantee that the administration enjoys legitimacy when evaluating the science and the data related to the safety of the HPV vaccines.

3. Whether the EMA has treated fairly - in a manner that guarantees that the administration enjoys legitimacy - a Danish whistleblower, Dr. Louise Brinth, when she raised concerns about possible serious harms of the HPV vaccines.

4. Whether the EMA has treated fairly ... the observations and concerns the Danish Health and Medicines Authorities and the Uppsala Monitoring Centre had raised about possible serious harms of the HPV vaccines.

5. Whether the EMA's procedures for evaluating the safety of medical interventions guarantee that the administration enjoys legitimacy. The EMA asked the manufacturers of the vaccines to assess potential harms of their own products in which they have huge financial interests.

6. Whether the extreme secrecy, with life-long confidentiality agreements, which the EMA imposed on its working group members and scientific experts, is needed; is legitimate; is in the public interest; and guarantees that the administration enjoys legitimacy.

7. Whether the redactions the EMA imposed on documents it delivered to the citizens according to Freedom of Information requests were needed; were legitimate; are in the public interest; and guarantees that the administration enjoys legitimacy.

8. Whether the EMA has behaved in a manner that guarantees that the administration enjoys legitimacy in relation to declaring conflicts of interest. We noticed a Guido Rasi's name associated with patents for inventions and wonder whether this is the same person who is the EMA's director.

If so, we believe Rasi has failed to declare his conflicts of interest. We also believe that the rapporteur for the EMA's report, Julie Williams, has failed to declare her conflicts of interest.

9. Whether the EMA behaves in a manner that guarantees that the administration enjoys legitimacy when the agency use experts with financial ties to the manufacturers, in particular considering that it is always possible to find experts without such conflicts.

10. In the interest of transparency, we urge the EMA to ensure that the names of all the experts consulted are disclosed together with their conflict of interest declarations ... "

Functional Disorders Linked to HPV Vaccine

According to Cochrane Nordic Center, the EMA ignored significant data showing there may be severe adverse events associated with the HPV vaccine, "the prominent symptoms, which are suspected of being caused by the vaccine," bearing strong similarities to functional disorders such as:

• Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)


• Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS)


• Chronic regional pain syndrome (CRPS)

According to the complaint, "the hypothetical mechanism is an autoimmune reaction triggered by either the active component of the vaccine or the adjuvant in the vaccine."

Cochrane also claims the EMA's internal 256-page report, which served as the basis for the draft of its 40-page official report, contradicts the final report. "We find that the EMA's comments are unprofessional, misleading, inappropriate and pejorative, and that the EMA's approach involves cherry-picking, which is unscientific," Cochrane writes.

Cochrane also notes that the Uppsala centre compared adverse events reported following HPV vaccination and vaccination with all other vaccines given to women. Based on their findings, it would appear the HPV vaccine carries a FAR higher risk of severe side effects than any other vaccine, yet the EMA claims no conclusions could be drawn from this data:

• POTS was reported 82 times for HPV vaccines versus once for other vaccines


• CRPS was reported 69 times for HPV vaccines versus 16 for other vaccines


• Autonomic nervous system imbalance was reported 77 times versus 16 for others


• Fibromyalgia was reported 62 times for HPV versus 39 for other vaccines

FluMist Found to Be Worthless Against Influenza

In related news, The Washington Post⁸ recently wrote about the "mystery" of why FluMist suddenly stopped working. Until recently, the spray form of the flu vaccine was preferred over the injectable flu vaccine for children between the ages of 2 and 8. FluMIst is a live attenuated vaccine, meaning it contains a live but weakened version of the flu virus.

In June, a CDC advisory panel decided the nasal spray "was so ineffective that it should not be used by anyone during the 2016 to 2017 season," The Washington Post reports. Data from last winter's flu season revealed FluMist was only 3 percent effective among children aged 2 to 17. This is yet another instance where almost everyone who received the vaccine risked their health for what amounts to no potential benefit whatsoever.

According to Dr. David Kimberlin, a professor of pediatrics at The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), the reason for FluMist's failure is still not understood. Researchers at MedImmune, the makers of FluMist, are trying to determine the cause. As noted by The Washington Post:

"In any given flu season, vaccine effectiveness varies. One factor is how well the vaccines match the virus that is actually prevalent. Other factors include the age and general health of the recipient.

In the overall population, the CDC says studies show vaccines can reduce the risk of flu by about 50 to 60 percent when the vaccines are well matched. Now, researchers are trying to find a common factor behind FluMist's recent incidents of poor performance."

One of the questions researchers will attempt to answer include whether the flu vaccine may lose effectiveness when given to a child who has been previously vaccinated against influenza several times.

What does all of this tell you? In my view, it speaks loud and clear to the fact that vaccine makers really don't know as much about their product as they purport to know. Yet despite this lack of knowledge, they insist vaccines are beneficial and worth just about any risk to the individual in order to protect society at large.

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Low-Dose Naltrexone and Dietary Changes for the Treatment of Autoimmune Diseases

By Dr. Mercola

Most people are aware that drugs are not an ideal solution to their health problems, but there are some exceptions to this rule.

Dr. Thomas Cowan, a family physician and founding board member of the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF), is a strong proponent of using low-dose naltrexone (LDN) for autoimmune diseases.

What Is Naltrexone?

Naltrexone is an opiate antagonist, originally developed in the early 1960s for the treatment of opioid addiction (such as heroin), which was prevalent at that time. It blocks the effects of the narcotic by attaching to opioid receptors in your body.

"Naltrexone is a pure opiate antagonist; meaning it has no agonist. Agonist means it has a positive effect. It has no agonist effect. It has no analgesic effect. There's no euphoria. There's no high. It simply blocks the opiates," Cowan explains. 

For heroin overdoses, a dose of about 30 to 50 milligrams (mg) of naltrexone was, and still is, used to prevent the fatal respiratory depression from a narcotic overdose.

However, the drug not only blocks exogenous narcotic opiates. Many drug users refused to take naltrexone because it made them feel terrible, and this led to the discovery of endorphins.

Endorphins are endogenous opiates, meaning they're not introduced from the outside. They're naturally produced by your body. This was why people suffered dysphoria (the opposite of euphoria) when taking naltrexone, as the drug blocked the natural opioids (endorphins) as well.

The Discovery of Low-Dose Naltrexone and Its Benefits

Dr. Bernard Bihari¹ began taking an interest in naltrexone in the late 1980s, as many of his addicted patients also had immunological problems. Many of them had AIDS, which is a cell-mediated immune collapse.

He observed that virtually the only patients dying from HIV infection were those using opiates. He wondered whether endogenous opiates might have something to do with immunological function, which has since been shown to be the case in thousands of studies.

"He decided that maybe these people with immunological problems have endorphin deficiencies," Cowan says. "That led him to try to figure out a way to stimulate endorphin production.

He [discovered that] if you use a very low dose of naltrexone, you block the opiate receptors for maybe an hour or so, and then your body responds by upregulating its synthesis of opiates.

You end up with a hundred or a thousand times more endorphins and a better-functioning immune system."

Essentially, when using a very LOW dose, about one-tenth of the dose you'd use for opioid addiction, or less, naltrexone works like a form of hormesis, which is when a compound that is toxic at high doses ends up having the converse effect in small or minute doses.

"LDN is probably the only pharmaceutical medicine I routinely use," Cowan says. "I have seen more people get better with that medicine than any other medicine I've ever used.

When you look at natural medicine, for instance: ginseng stimulates adrenal cortical function. It doesn't actually do anything itself; it just stimulates your adrenal gland to make something. That's typically how natural medicines work. That's the whole philosophy of homeopathy.

Similarly, even though it's not actually a 'natural medicine,' LDN stimulates endorphin production. It doesn't actually do anything positive itself. The patient has to respond.

If they don't respond, you don't get an effect. If they do respond and they make more endorphins, like they would have had with a natural medicine, then you get a positive effect from a normal amount of endorphin production."

LDN Dosing Recommendations

The normal range for LDN is between 1.5 and 4.5 mg per day, taken about an hour before bedtime (not in the morning). There are a couple of reasons for this timing.

First, since you're blocking endorphins, doing it in the middle of the night prevents you from noticing that you feel lousy. Second, the endorphin response is greater at nighttime. As for side effects, LDN has an enviable safety profile. The most common side effect is unusual and sometimes more vivid dreams.

Cowan typically starts patients out at 1.5 mg for two weeks. Sensitive people, such as those with thyroid problems, may start as low as 1 mg per day, but as a general rule, doses lower than 1.5 mg/day tend to be ineffective for most adults.

If there's a positive effect, the patient will stay on that dose. If there's no effect, the dose is increased to 3 mg per day. If there's a negative effect, the dose is decreased.

If there's a positive effect at 3 mg, stay on that dose. If there's still no effect, raise it to 4.5 mg, and if there's a negative effect, decrease the dose. That said, the key to LDN is the low dose. So many times you may actually need to lower the dose if you don't notice a beneficial effect.

"If you gave somebody 2.5 mg and it didn't work, lower the dose. You gave him 1.5 mg and it didn't work, give it every other day," Cowan says. "Because the principle is it's the rebound that's the positive effect, not the drug. With normal drugs, if it doesn't work you give more, but here, it's the opposite."

Opiates Are Potent Immunosuppressive Drugs

A famous study called the European Prostitute Study showed the primary risk factor for HIV and AIDS was not sexual exposure, not IV exposure, but opiate exposure.

According to Cowan, you see a similar pattern in cancer patients. As soon as they start taking opiates for chronic pain, their health rapidly declines as their immune system falters.

"Opiates are highly immunosuppressive medicines," he explains. "What I mean by opiates is exogenous opiates; opiates from the outside. Bihari saw that. He saw that the people that were getting AIDS were opiate addicts. And not just that, but that was a certain subset.

Since endorphins are essentially the flipside of exogenous opiates, meaning endogenous opiates, what you're doing is substituting the good guys for the bad guys.

... In the late '90s, I had a very good friend who was diagnosed with terminal lymphoma. He actually knew Bihari. Bihari put him on 4.5 mg of LDN. He did IV vitamin C, and he went into remission. I went to Hawaii on vacation with them about three years ago. That's something like 15 years later. That was a situation that got my attention big time."

Cowan's Autoimmune Diet

Aside from opiate drugs like heroin and prescription painkillers, your diet can be a source of exogenous opiates. Many natural health physicians recommend removing wheat and dairy from the diet, as these foods tend to trigger complications in a large number of people.

What many don't realize is that part of the problem stems from the fact that gluteomorphins (from gluten) and caseomorphins (from casein) act as exogenous opioids.

"Basically, when you're doing this diet ... you're getting rid of exogenous opiates. It's really about getting rid of exogenous opiates (the ones that downregulate and cause dysfunction of your immune system) and then upregulating the endogenous or healthy endorphins," Cowan says.

Virtually anyone suffering with an autoimmune problem, be it multiple sclerosis (MS), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), or Hashimoto's (autoimmune thyroid disease), just to name a few, would be wise to try a gluten- and dairy-free diet to help optimize immune function. (Grass-fed ghee can be used, as it's very low in casein.) 

In Cowan's experience, and he's prescribed LDN for at least 1,000 patients, the autoimmune diet or LDN alone are typically not nearly as effective as the two combined. Besides avoiding or eliminating gluten and dairy, his dietary recommendations are very similar to the Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) Diet.

"It's basically getting rid of the exogenous opiates and repairing the gut flora [with] fermented foods," Cowan says. "The Cowan Autoimmune Diet is animal foods that are low to modest in protein; seeds, but no grains for a while, and a diversity of vegetables and fermented foods."

Consider Eating a Wider Variety of Vegetables

Fresh vegetables, which are high in fiber, also help heal your gut by nourishing healthy microbes. Some bacteria also create short-chain fatty acids from the fiber, which are important for your health. One key is variety and diversity. Most Americans eat perhaps a dozen different kinds of vegetables in any given year, whereas our ancestors ate hundreds of different varieties.

Part of the problem is that most people only have access to seasonal vegetables sold in the grocery store. To amend this situation, Cowan grows his own. He has a large garden with about 60 different vegetable varieties, some of which are perennial, such as tree collards (collard greens that grow on trees).

"They're sort of deep green, deep purple vegetables. They live for about 12 to 15 years and withstand even down to about 10 degrees Fahrenheit. They'll withstand frost.

There's the perennial chard, which is the genetic precursor of beets and Swiss chard. There's Ashitaba. There's Gynura, which is Okinawa spinach. That's the spinach that is supposedly reputed to be why the Okinawans live so long. It has a chemical in it that has an effect similar to metformin. It's an anti-diabetic, essentially nutrient-rich food."

I believe anyone fully committed to health will inevitably and invariably come to the conclusion that they have to grow their own food, and pay attention to the soil quality. Aside from being hard to find commercially, perennial vegetables have the distinct advantage of growing and producing year-round.

"I recently read a statistic from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA): People who eat three to four different parts of the plant per day - we're talking about the root part, the leaf part, and the flower or fruit part; those are fundamental parts - have 40 percent less chronic disease than people who don't do that. I believe that.

We don't need vegetables for calories, fats and proteins. That's the role of the other foods in the diet. We eat them for phytonutrients, fiber to feed the microbiome, vitamins, minerals, things known and unknown.

Therefore, to eat a huge bowl of Romaine lettuce is sort of a waste of vegetable power. You want to have a salad with as many colors as you can get, as many parts of the plant as you can get, as much diversity as you can get. That's the role of vegetables in the traditional diet," Cowan says.  

"I would absolutely encourage everybody to grow their own vegetables. [My book even contains] the science of when vegetables are the most nutritious.

For example, zucchini should be eaten within a couple of hours after picking it, because the sugars degrade and the nutrients degrade, whereas lettuce actually likes it to be injured a little bit and then sit around for about 12 hours, so it actually makes more reactive chemicals to essentially heal itself. It's better eaten after about 12 hours."

More Information

In Cowan's experience, LDN can be an incredibly valuable healing aid. Many suffering with autoimmune diseases like MS, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, pemphigus, or Graves' disease, for example, have been able to significantly improve or go into remission by incorporating LDN and changing their diet to avoid exogenous opioids found in wheat and dairy, and improving their gut health and nutrition with fermented and fresh vegetables.

Good resources where you can learn more about LDN and find doctors who use it include LowDoseNaltrexone.org and LDNScience.org. Linda Elsegood's book, "The LDN Book: How a Little-Known Generic Drug Low Dose Naltrexone Could Revolutionize Treatment for Autoimmune Diseases, Cancer, Autism, Depression, and More" is another great resource.

To learn more about growing and eating vegetables, pick up a copy of Cowan's new book, "How (& Why) to Eat More Vegetables." You can also find more information on his website, drcowansgarden.com.