Stressors

Stress is normal and natural. It is the bodies physical and mental response to an event that makes you feel primordially threatened. We are designed to feel stress to benefit us. It helps us stay focused, motivated, and alert and can help save your life in emergency situations. Stress is kind of like our body and mind motivating itself to work hard and stay focused. Too much stress can be harmful, though. Your body can begin responding to an overload of stress in way that impacts health in a negative way.

Stressors are chemical or biological agents, environmental conditions, external stimuli, or events that induce stress on an organism. An infinitely wide range of things can be considered stressors depending on the organism and it's circumstances. When an organism becomes stressed, many things begin to happen within the body, including chemical, mental, physical responses.

Within the physical body, stressors can produce mechanical stresses on pretty much anything and everything, including the skin, bones, ligaments, tendons, muscles, and nerves. Tissue failure can occur in extreme cases and chronic pain in less severe cases. Metabolism often slows, leading to decreased tissue repair. The less time the body has to recover between stressors, the more likely the body is to have physical symptoms.

Mental health and function is also affected. Stressors can cause stimulation of the hypothalamus, which causes the pituitary gland and adrenal cortex to secrete various stress hormones, which then travel through the blood stream to the organs that are designed to respond to these specific hormones. The glands, heart, and intestines receive these hormones and use the information to process the well-known flight-or-fight response.

Drugs can also be considered stressors, and fall into the category of chemical stressors. Various drugs cause stress to different parts of the body, but in general, drugs stress the heart, brain, and nervous system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stressor

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/stress_signs.htm

The Natural Ingredient, Castoreum

Both the male and female North American beaver anally secrete castoreum, a yellowish substance that happens to claim the warm, inviting scent of vanilla. The substance, which has the consistency of molasses, is utilized to mark their territories. The substance is extracted from the beaver's castor sac scent glands, which are located near the anus. After extraction, it is processed with rubbing alcohol and obtains a very strong musky aroma, caused by the high fiber diet of the beavers. The close proximity of the glands to the anus means contamination consisting of anal secretions and urine is common. 

The Food and Drug Administration classifies castoreum as an GRAS additive, meaning it is "generally recognized as safe." Castoreum has been being added to our food disguised as "natural flavoring" for decades now. While it is natural, and the International journal of Toxicology announced that the consumption of castoreum posed no single health threat to the human body, I don't think most people imagine it means having anal secretions in their cereal. It is mainly used as a substitute vanilla in foods and beverages, but it is also used in raspberry and strawberry flavoring, and flavoring for schnapps. Real vanilla is used more commonly, though, at about 2.6 million pounds annually in the U.S. Annual industry consumption for castoreum is just above 300 pounds. Castoreum can also be used for flavoring and odor of cigarettes. The individual annual consumption of the extract is approximately .000081 mg/kg/day. 

Beaver populations were at risk during the 19th century due to the demand for castoreum sac's, and getting a beaver to emit castoreum is not easy. A beaver's anal glands must be milked in order to extract the fluid. 

The following are the types of foods you can find castoreum in:

Reported Uses PPM (parts per million) (FEMA* 1994):

Food Category	Usual	Max
Alcoholic Beverages	79.59	93.69
Baked Goods	62.28	68.47
Gelatins, Puddings	43.58	47.34
Soft Candy	37.28	44.10
Frozen Dairy	24.39	26.26
Nonalcoholic Beverages	24.21	29.77
Hard Candy	24.17	24.17
Chewing Gum	18.60	42.09

Fukushima - contaminated for 16 million years

The Fukushima nuclear disaster began on March 11, 2011, and the end seems to be nowhere in sight.  It was caused by the impact of a tsunami that resulted in 18,000 dead and a meltdown of three six nuclear reactors at Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.. This poses an extreme threat to our water supply, food supply, and our ecosystems, a threat much larger than any media outlet will admit. At the time of the meltdown, tens of thousands were forced to evacuate. Only recently did TEPCO (Tokyo Electronic Power company), who has been monitoring the plant, admit that the reactors were still in fact leaking harmful radiation into the Pacific Ocean.


TEPCO Company admitted that soil samples at the Fukushima plant are showing up with other high level readings of cesium-137, tritium, and strontium-90. Tokyo confirmed that levels of cancer-causing cesium-134 are showing up in groundwater at rates 90-11- times higher than before the meltdown. The high levels of cesium-134 show that the destruction has only just begun, as the Pacific Ocean will more increasingly begin to act as a sponge to the nuclear radiation.


What some people forget is that our water system is one of the most interconnected systems on the planet, next to air. When part of our water system is contaminated, the contamination often does not stay confined to man-made invisible boundaries, such as the Pacific Coast. Everything is connected on this astounding planet, and contaminations, especially of the radioactive nature, find their way to destinations far beyond their origin. The water supply not only supplies drinking water for humans and animals, it irrigates crops. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) admitted in a public health statement that when the supply is contaminated, it influences everything.

This iodine-129 that's being leaked into the oceans enters the air from sea sprays and iodine gases. Now another one of our vital systems is contaminated with a substance with a 16 million year half life. The iodine in the air can combine with any number of particles in the air, including water, and can enter the soil, surface water, or vegetation when they fall as rain over land  Iodine is able to remain unbroken in the environment is because it combines with organic material in the soil. Any plant growing in this soil will grow with it inside them, including corn. Since 99% of all the farmed animals raised and slaughtered in the United States come from CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), which feed cows corn (even though they are not genetically designed to eat corn), that means that almost all of our meat supply will have this iodine contamination of the soil if the contamination reaches our food supply on land.

The entire West Coast food supply is currently contaminated, and will be for endless generations. This contamination is likely to spread expansively, if something is not done. We are entering a new way of life that includes higher rates of illness, disease, and mortality. 


Earlier predictions of the outcome of the length of this disaster were lenient compared to what we are beginning to realize. Because of a long-lived radionuclide called iodine-129, which has an incredible half-life of 16 million years, the nightmare of Fukushima is only beginning for the ecosystems of planet Earth. The U.S. National Library of Medicine reported in June 2011 that iodine-129 had significantly elevated concentrations in surface water offshore Fukushima. Since then, not much has been heard in mainstream media about the ongoing spread of radiation.


So why aren't we hearing about this in the media?

People always talk about what is happening right now, and often fail to discuss the future and the end result of events that pertain to our environmental contamination. The human race is not above nature, but we are nature. What is composed of and what comes from, must be. Every being on this planet is not only apart of planet Earth, but apart of this incredible universe. Humans are the only species that display self-destructive behavior, and if we do not find a way to work with our ecosystems, resources, and wildlife, it will surely lead to the destruction of the human race, and I can guarantee you that life will go on without us. 


Farm Forward calculation based on U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2002 Census of Agriculture, June 2004; and ibid

http://www.naturalnews.com/041200_Fukushima_radiation_poisoning_contaminated_food.html#ixzz2y8AQNzMd