Heavy metals warning for ayurvedic herbs is a distraction from the real threats to your health

The headlines were recently ablaze with warnings about Ayurvedic herbal products. A survey of such herbal remedies sourced from India and Pakistan found that one in five of them were contaminated with dangerous levels of heavy metals like lead, mercury and arsenic. This is an important finding and worthy of discussion but, once again, the mainstream press is blowing this all out of proportion by claiming that all Ayurvedic herbal remedies are contaminated with heavy metals.

The people behind this announcement clearly have an agenda, and that agenda is to discredit all herbal remedies in an effort to call for new FDA oversight of herbal remedies and nutritional supplements. And they do that by scaring people with headlines that distort the true findings. These are just a handful of products sourced from India and Pakistan. There are not the Ayurvedic formulas made in the United States, Germany and other countries with higher quality standards. Just because you're buying Ayurvedic medicines doesn't mean that you're going to be getting heavy metals.

What this announcement fails to mention is that a whole lot of the food products in the United States is also contaminated with heavy metals. There was an article a few months ago about a girl in the United States who, for a science fair project, found heavy metal poisoning in canned foods made right here in the U.S. There was also another story about candy made in Mexico that contains lead as part of its coloring ingredient - it's being sold in the United States and it's perfectly legal, even though it is knowingly contaminated with lead.

Similarly, I also covered a story about Kellogg's putting a toy and batteries (made with mercury) in boxes of Spiderman cereal and refusing to remove those batteries even after health authorities warned Kellogg's about the potential health dangers.

Frankly, there are heavy metals all over the place! It's not just in Ayurvedic medicines, it's also in manufactured, brand-name foods right here on the shelves in every grocery store in America. Where's the official warning on that?

And come to think of it, most prescription drugs are encapsulated in colored capsules made with artificial food coloring chemicals that promote nervous system disorders. Most packaged meat products are made with sodium nitrite, an ingredient that's highly carcinogenic and promotes colon cancer. Diet sodas still contain aspartame, an ingredient that's classified as an excitotoxin because of the way in which it kills nerve cells and damages the nervous system, according to Dr. Russell Blaylock.

If you're going to get concerned about dangerous ingredients in our food and herbs, there are a whole lot of other places to start rather than some obscure imported herbal products.

Of course, when it comes to quality control of herbal supplements, it's important to source your herbs and supplements from trusted companies who have stringent quality control standards. For example, if you are buying spirulina from a company that sources it from Cyanotech in Kona, Hawaii, you know that you're getting spirulina without any heavy metals whatsoever, because it's grown in pristine waters pumped up from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, unaffected by modern industrial run-off or other sources of contamination. Or if you're purchasing Amazon herbs from the Amazon Herb company, one company I strongly support, you know that you're getting herbs that are routinely tested for quality and purity.