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Russell-Mikki-Margaret
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Freedom From Illness:
Optimum Choices

July 2019
Welcome to the monthly Freedom From Illness wholistic newsletter from Russell Louie and Margaret Auld-Louie at Optimum Choices. To receive this newsletter by e-mail or to unsubscribe, see the footer at the very bottom.

Contents

NEW WEBSITE coming- please read if you order online
July Sale
GoFundMe

Pet Food Recalls
FDA Investigates Potential Link between Certain Diets and Canine Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM)
Contact us

New Website-please read
if you order online

Our NEW redesigned website will launch soon. More user-friendly, easier navigation menus, holistic blog, more efficient shopping cart and many more state-of-the-art web site features:

  1. When you order for the first time, you will be asked to [Register/Login] to create an account. Once your personal information is entered, our shopping cart will remember your data for future sales and all you have to do is Login.

  2. If you already know what product(s) you want, there will be a [Shop-Product] button on the home page for all our major products.

  3. The people and pet product lines will be segregated out for faster product information and easier buying.

  4. All our nutritional articles will be published in our holistic blog section for easy reference and keyword searches.

  5. Our home page will have a powerful [Search for Health Conditions or Products] box for locating holistic solutions quickly.

July Sale

Discount Code= 5WEB

For the significance of July's discount code, please read our New Website notice above, especially if you shop online. From now until next month's e-newsletter is published, get a 5% discount off your entire order. Enter "5WEB" (the number "5" and the word "WEB" with no spaces) in the Discount Coupon box in our shopping cart.

Press the green [Recalculate] button in the lower left corner of our shopping cart to see this discount calculated in your total. This discount may not be combined with our autoship, volume, referral bonus, professional or other discounts.

HINT: for maximum savings, order any Starter Pack (three bottles) of BioPreparation and/or BioSuperfood for a 5% discount AND in addition, get the 5% monthly discount above, for a total of 10% off the full retail price of a single bottle. No other discounts can be applied.

If you miss our monthly e-newsletters containing the current month's discount code, go to our home page, scroll down to the four buttons in a horizontal table and select the green [Newsletters] button. Then click the appropriate year and subsequent month buttons to view our current month's e-newsletter and "secret" discount code.
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Current News

Because of our low, mail order, Internet prices and the amazing demand for our "wholistic" consulting and revolutionary products, we limit every inquiry (e-mail and telephone) to 15 minutes in order to help all those in need. After the first 15 minutes we charge our normal consulting fee. Please make use of all the free resources available 24 hours/day, by clicking on the buttons in the left-hand menu of every product page (Ingredients, Usage, FAQ, etc.). Thank you in advance.

GoFundMe
Freedom From Illness Project

If you or a family member (including furry children) have experienced amazing benefits from our holistic products and expertise, please consider paying-it-forward by helping us holistically educate more people and save more pets. Please click on our photo below or go to this link:

GoFundMe.com/FreedomFromIllness

Pet Food Recalls

The pet food recalls continue. The FDA has expanded its investigation of the elevated levels of Vitamin D in dry dog foods, which can be toxic and cause serious health problems.

01/31/2019  Hill's Pet Nutrition voluntarily recalled select canned dog food products due to potentially elevated levels of vitamin D. These recalled products were distributed to retail stores and veterinary clinics nationwide. For more information, go to the FDA web page, Hill's Pet Nutrition Voluntary Recall.

Currently, there are eight brands and twelve different diets that have been recalled. The FDA found an alarming 70 times the intended amount of vitamin D. To learn more about this recall, please read Life's Abundance blog post. None of our Life's Abundance pet food is affected by this recall.

The best "wholistic" suggestion to prevent danger to your pet is -- STOP feeding dry kibble dog food. In our "wholistic" opinion, dry kibble dog food is the least nutritious form of food to feed a carnivore. Furthermore, a majority of all pet food recalls is with dry food. Canned food, freeze-dried food and raw food have a much lower percentage of recalls. For the latest recalls, go to:

Dog Food Recalls or FDA website

To read more on our "wholistic" philosophy on pet food, go to the following links:

Pet Food Recall
Holistic Pet Food

For a very revealing report on pet food, click the link:

What Pet Food Companies
Don't Want You to Know

 

FDA Investigates Potential Link Between Certain Diets and Canine Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM)

The purpose of this newsletter article is to share our holistic insights and give you suggestions on how to raise healthy, thriving pets and not let them become a Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM) statistic. The following is a summary heartof an FDA investigation in progress.

In July 2018, the FDA began an investigation into reports of canine dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) in dogs eating certain pet foods, many "grain-free" labeled, that contained a high proportion of peas, lentils, other legume seeds (pulses), and/or potatoes in various forms (whole, flour, protein, etc.) as main ingredients. Main ingredients are listed within the first 10 ingredients in the ingredient list (before vitamins and minerals). The FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) and the Veterinary Laboratory Investigation and Response Network (Vet-LIRN, a collaboration of government and veterinary diagnostic laboratories), believe the potential association between diet and DCM in dogs could be caused by multiple factors and requires scientific investigation.

For the purposes of this report, cases include an illness reported to the FDA involving a dog or cat that includes a diagnosis of DCM. Many of the reports submitted to the FDA included extensive clinical information, including echocardiogram results, cardiology/veterinary records, and detailed diet histories. The numbers below only include reports in which the dog or cat was diagnosed with DCM by a veterinarian and/or veterinary cardiologist. It is obvious just from the number of cases reported, there was a sudden spike in 2018.

Year 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
(thru 04/19)
DCM Reports 1 1 2 3 320 197

If you want to know which specific breeds are most affected and which brands of food are listed most often, go directly to the FDA report at:

FDA Veterinary News

Here is our holistic perspective. We all remember the massive pet food recall in 2007 involving wheat gluten, laced with melamine, from China. This scared many people into investigating a more "holistic" dry food for their pet. Grains became a holistic "dirty" word and rightfully so. Consider these facts:

  1. Food unfit for human consumption: commercial pet food was created in the 1950-60's to not only provide convenience for pet owners but to make a profit from the waste of the human food industry by using food unfit for human consumption and turn it into pet food.

  2. Grains in pet food can contain more toxins than human food: the grains in pet food are more likely to contain toxic molds, pesticides and man-made contaminants (such as melamine) than grains approved for human consumption.

  3. Grains are not a main ingredient in a wild carnivore's diet: the grains they would eat would be pre-digested in the herbivore prey they killed. Nature designed carnivores with the shortest digestive tract of all animals to primarily digest meat, while she gave herbivores the longest digestive tract, with some herbivorous animals having multiple stomachs to properly digest grains and plants.

Substituting one group of undesirable ingredients with another questionable group

Why do pet food manufacturers add grains to pet food? In order to get the dry kibble to stick together, they must add grains, a starchy vegetable or other carbohydrate as a binder. They also use vegetable ingredients to boost up the nutritional value of their nutrient-deficient meat by-products, meat meal and other indigestible materials such as beaks, feet, feathers and hair that they are allowed to put into pet food. Since carnivores do not have the necessary enzymes, stomach acid and other nutrients to properly digest a large amount of grains and vegetable ingredients, the usable biological nutrient value they actually receive is questionable. The main benefits are to boost the nutrients' value on the label, to meet the minimum AAFCO standards. So pet food manufacturers just substituted the undesirable grains they used, with another group of questionable foods, namely peas, lentils, other legume seeds (pulses), and/or potatoes, without safety or nutritional studies substantiating if these new ingredients were safe in the long-term for your pet. In essence, they rushed to market a "grain-free" alternative and used your pet as the proverbial experimental "guinea pig."

Legumes not prepared in a holistic manner

Here is a holistic fact you will not learn from the FDA. Dr. Weston A. Price studied the diets of traditional cultures all over the world, from remote villages in Switzerland to Eskimos to the South Pacific. His work is now being carried on by the Weston A. Price Foundation. Sally Fallon summarized Dr. Price's research by identifying the 11 underlying characteristics of healthy traditional diets. One of the characteristics of traditional diets is that they took great care in preparing their seed foods. Seed foods include any beansnut, grain (such as wheat) or legume (bean). Unlike modern diets, where we eat seeds whole with no preparation or just grind them up (as in flour), traditional cultures would sprout, ferment and soak their seed foods before eating. The reason for this special care is that these foods contain enzyme inhibitors that block digestion, as well as phytic acid which blocks mineral absorption. Also, they can contain gluten, a protein that is difficult to digest. The reason for all these anti-nutrients is that they act as a natural system of preservatives, to keep the seed from sprouting until it is in the right environment. A seed will sprout given moisture, warmth, slight acidity and time; then these preservatives get deactivated. So it is much easier for humans and carnivores to digest seeds if we provide them with these four factors for sprouting, instead of eating them full of their natural preservatives. Herbivores are able to digest seed foods because they have stomachs with two to four chambers and bacteria, where they can soak and ferment the seeds. Omnivores (humans) and carnivores (dogs and cats) do not have this type of digestive tract and traditional cultures intuitively understood this. Therefore, traditional cultures would soak and ferment seeds before eating them. In the 1950-60's, Russell's mother soaked cereal grains and beans before cooking them. Wild carnivores would only get pre-digested (soaked) grains from the stomach of their herbivorous prey. Do you think pet food companies know this holistic fact and are soaking the grains and legumes before using them in pet food? Could the enzyme inhibitors that block digestion, as well as phytic acid which blocks mineral absorption in grains and legumes be the cause for this sudden spike in Canine Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM)?

In our "wholistic" opinion feeding any dry kibble (even grain-free) food is nutritionally equivalent to feeding meat- and vegetable-flavored cookies to a child every single day as their main food and wondering why they are lethargic, obese and pre-diabetic after 10 years. Do not let your dog become a Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM) statistic. Uncover our holistic requirements for our pets on our web page, Pet Food.

Our good colleague and great animal communicator, Kate Solisti, has more details and holistic solutions on her July blog:  Update on DCM and Dog Food Worries

 

Contact us  
 
Russell, Margaret & MikkiMikki at Great Salt lake

E-mail

General Information: info@OptimumChoices.com

Telephone:
303-271-1649 office
866-305-2306 (toll-free)
Office hours are 11:00 AM - 7:00 PM Mountain Time (U.S.), Monday-Friday. If you would like a return call outside those hours, please specify what days and times are best.

Location (available by appointment ONLY)

416 Plateau Pkwy
Golden, CO 80403-1533
U.S.A.
We are an Internet-only, mail order company and do not stock products for local pick up (except for emergencies). For purchases in the Denver, CO, area, please visit one of the other independent retailers at:
Local BSF-BP Retailers

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