I despise hype. I despise hype in the alternative medical field most. Have you ever received something like this?

If you eat right, take vitamins, supplements, and herbs, you’re STILL missing the most important factor to good health. Without it, you’ll die horribly, your spouse will run off with your best friend, and all your kids will become crack heads.

Being in the business, our mail box (outside) and email boxes are stuffed full of this type of hype. The reason behind hype is simple: We’ll get you to spend $30.00 as fast as possible. The tactic is based upon fear: fear that you'll miss out; fear that you don't know what they know; fear that you'll die unless you get this important information.

People ask me all the time about this or that hype. To learn about the hype, we’ll sometimes order the book, pamphlet, or special report just to report back to them.

For example, I just receive Bottom Line’s Special Report Stop Cancer Before It Starts. A handful of readers had received the hype on it, and here is what I wrote them after going over it thoroughly:

It’s over $30.00 (with shipping) and is a thin 60 pages. Everything in there is found at our web site for free. Just glancing through the pages, I’ve spotted some really bad information too. They seem to equate canola oil with olive oil. They are not even close. It’s a waste of good money for some bad information.

Here is what we are going to do: This page will grow as you send us your hype. We will research it and give you the answer here for free. If we have to, we will purchase the crap they are selling so you don’t have to. This, we feel, is a proper service to our readers who are being done a great disservice by money grubbing hucksters.

You may mail them to us by snail mail:

Minnesota Wellness Publications, Inc
36644 Hastings St NE
Stanchfield, MN 55080

Or you can just pass them along to us (or send us a link) by email: Contact Us.

Here is our first Hype Buster:

The Missing Ingredient for Good Health (A nutritional breakthrough)

The hype goes: Why most health foods are a waste of money. At last, here’s the real reason you can take vitamins, minerals, and herbs by the handful and still suffer poor health. Our diets lack a vital food—even most alternative doctors don’t know about.

So you buy this book to find out one thing…what is it?

Digestive Enzymes.

I’ve just saved you $27.90.

Now I’ll save you even more, here are the two articles we’ve written on digestion:

Digestion Part I

Digestion Part II

And for the best digestive enzyme we’ve found (four nutritionists agreed that the ingredients are everything needed by digestion) take a look at NextZyme. Ask anyone who knows me; I don’t have a meal with out taking NextZyme.

Digestion is the largest single process of your body. When your body is making digestive enzymes, it’s not making enzymes for your other systems, like your immune system. As we get older, we have fewer enzymes and it takes longer to produce them. If you are middle aged, assisting your digestion is just plain smart. Always keep in mind, the inside of your digestive tract is still the outside of your body. Just because you put something in your mouth does not mean your body gets the nutrition out of it.

We got a letter from a reader reminding me that fresh fruits and vegetables contain enzymes. The problem is, most cook their veggies. A salad chock full of fresh raw veggies is the perfect start to a meal. So is a bowl of fruit salad.

* * *

Stop Cancer Before it Starts.

Having mentioned this above, I figured this one must be over. But, no. A reader wanted to know all about the pamphlet that sells for so much, and sent me to a web site hyping it.

Since our site has a strong focus on cancer, obviously we’re going to have much of this info somewhere at our site.

We all get mailings that make wild claims and the ONLY way you’ll learn about these is to buy their book (or, as in this case, a pamphlet). Yeah, right.

Without picking up the pamphlet (hiding somewhere in my messy office), because our site first focused on cancer and prevention, I figured I'd try to answer the hype mail our reader got in his inbox using just my computer, our web site, and a few googling attempts.

Just get this food out of your life and you can save yourself from one of the most feared -- and common -- types of cancer.

I’ll just bet this is red meat. We advertised the book The China Syndrome here in the past which came to the conclusion that red meat was hugely responsible for most cancers in the world. However, what most studies don’t report is that red meat has nothing in it intrinsically that should cause cancer. Our food supply has been poisoned. The methods we use to raise our cattle; the use of hormones for growth, antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides have poisoned our food supply.

I’m a Baby Boomer. I was initially raised on real food. At some point in my life, the world of fake foods sprouted up, farming practices changed, chemicals never known before landed in our food, water, and air supply. Modern medicine has always boasted that every year we’ve increased the life span of the average American. That is no longer the case. Our longevity figures are now reversing. Cancer rates are climbing, heart disease is ahead by a nose, and diabetes is bringing up the rear. The only farming in our future will be sustainable farming. As we are farming now, as we are living now, does not bode well for future generations.

And our livestock practices are, in the end, killing us.

You're up to three times more likely to get prostate cancer if you fail to eat this. You can find it in any supermarket, or take it in supplement form if you like.

This was simple: Omega-3s. Omega-3s are anti-inflammatory. Cut your inflammation and you’ll cut your risk of cancer. My favorite form of Omega-3s are Omegasentials, but I love Udo’s DHA Blend (especially for vegetarians since it comes from algae and not fish). We’ve got a great salad dressing recipe (and a mayo recipe) using Udo’s DHA Blend in our recipes.

For real prostate cancer prevention, we can’t just stop here with Omega-3s. We’d be remiss not to mention pomegranate juice, your cruciferous veggies (with that great phytochemical indol-3 carbinol (I personally use the bottle on the right) which in some studies has been shown to be 600 times more powerful at killing cancer cells than Herceptin), and lycopene. Lycopene, by the way, is best absorbed when you eat it with fatty foods. If you make a salsa, serve with guacamole; you’ll get your lycopene and omega-3 essential fatty acids.

A common type of bacteria multiplies your risk of stomach cancer up to eight times.

Again, another easy one: H-pylori. It was discovered that these little buggers were responsible for ulcers and not the stress of the business world we all thought back in the fifties and sixties. The cure is simple: antibiotics. However, there are alternatives such as silver, probiotics, and a healthy diet of fruits and veggies. Get yourself checked if you have a family history of any stomach cancer, get treated, and eat healthy, using digestive enzymes and probiotics.

Cut your risk of ovarian cancer up to 60% in only six months by taking a certain herb.

This one was a bit more difficult. The first thing I thought of was garlic. Garlic was the first herb ever prescribed for tumors. It was prescribed by Hippocrates. I couldn’t be sure of this, so I did a quick google, and bingo:

Gingko May Prevent Ovarian Cancer Cell Growth
Key ginkgo components reduced ovarian cancer cell growth by 80 percent in laboratory experiments [http://www.brighamandwomens.org/publicaffairs/Newsreleases/ginko.aspx]

This was a pretty exciting discovery. If you read the article, you’ll see the gingko is very protective, and even stopped the growth of ovarian cancer cells. As we age, we need help with our cognitive processes and we know that gingko already helps there. What a wonderful discovery to know gingko also protects against cancer (ovarian in this study).

You can reduce your danger of liver cancer as much as 80% with a forgotten vitamin -- one you won't find in most multivitamins.

When I was first reading the above sentence I was thinking Vitamin K. When I got to the end, that it’s not included in most multivitamins, I knew I was right.

This was easy. The liver loves dark green veggies. This is something I’ve written previously at this site. The one vitamin you get in abundance in dark green veggies.

When I hit the web to test my answer, I came up with this:

Researchers in Japan investigating whether vitamin K could prevent bone loss in women with liver disease have uncovered a surprising, secondary benefit - the vitamin also helped to prevent liver cancer in the patients. [http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Vitamin-K-found-to-protect-against-liver-cancer]

This next bit of hype is interesting, for it was located in two places within the advertizing our reader had received. In other words, the seller wants you to think you’re receiving more than you’ll actually get (why not? it’s a slim 60 page pamphlet). So they tout the same substance in two different place (and reference some MD, PhD from a prestigious university who you could easily google and find on the web).

Another overlooked vitamin -- not vitamins C, E, A or beta-carotene -- can reduce the risk of prostate, breast and colon cancers by half.

Well, if I got this one wrong, I should quit writing and go fishing. We’ve talked about this vitamin in a lot of newsletters: Vitamin D.

Vitamin D is an amazing substance. It acts as a hormone, and as we age, it’s our hormones that give out early. I’ve seen recommendations for Vitamin D from as little as 400 IU up to 12,000 IU. Personally, I take about 5,000 IU daily. We can’t say enough about this, and every day science seems to find more about this wonderful vitamin. And we always like to point out it’s free when you go play in the sun.

Later in the advertisement, the hype goes like this:

In fact, one of the most powerful tips can reduce the most feared types of cancer -- prostate, breast and colon -- by about half, at no cost to you. Or for a few pennies a day you can obtain this powerful substance in a pill.

This isn't pie-in-the-sky guesswork based on one or two lucky patients who got well. It's based on the work of Michael F. Holick, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics at Boston University School of Medicine and author of more than 300 scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals.

They’re making this way too easy. Google Michael F Holick MD, PhD and the first two hits reference Vitamin D.

A simple, cheap examination can spot mouth cancers early and reduce deaths by 79%.

Well, this was a no brainer. See your dentist. Sheesh.

Delicious fruit juice slows the growth of prostate cancer to a crawl.

Duh. Pomegranate.

Now I could go on an answer this hype line by line, but what it boils down to is this:

We are being bombarded with crap daily. Therefore, to avoid cancer in this day and age we must thoroughly detox our systems regularly. Read Cleaning House—The Correct Way to Detox.

We must eat healthier. We need to increase our raw veggies and fruits over the processed foods. When you stir fry, never overcook the veggies. In my home the oven never heats over 350. Low temp cooking doesn’t kill the food.

Eating foods rich in vitamins and minerals with fewer toxins is great start. And yet, even with the good foods, we must all learn to supplement; vitamin D, E, A, C, selenium, iodine, and the list goes on. I’m told by many people that they just can’t afford organic food. I’ve heard this from wealthy people to. It’s not a matter of affording; it’s a matter of priorities.

We must eat more anti-cancer, immune boosting foods: berries, onions, garlic, turmeric, cruciferous veggies, mushrooms, seaweeds, and the like.

Avoid fake food, too many sweets, and too much alcohol.

Ask your doctor if getting off your ass is right for you!

Live, love, and be grateful to the creator for the gift of life.

This isn’t rocket surgery.