The Slacktivists’ Dream: Futile, Frigid Fundraisers
Written by Katherine Carroll
Category: 2014 Articles
Published: 04 September 2014
Recently I was presented, as an affiliate of the National Health Federation (NHF), the World’s oldest, most powerful health-freedom organization, with the ALS ice bucket challenge in a public YouTube invitation. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disorder manifesting as rapid degeneration of motor neurons. Weakness may begin in the legs, hands, arms, or pharynx. ALS’ dash to death is persistent, progressing without remissions, relapses, or even stable plateaus.
Fruitless, frigid fundraisers are futile
Wikipedia says that “The Ice Bucket Challenge,” sometimes called the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, is an activity involving dumping a bucket of ice water on one’s head to promote awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and encourage donations to medical research. Either comply within 24 hours or forfeit by donation. Raising $80 million since its inception July 29, 2014, the ice-bucket challenge is defining a new YouTube era. But it is frigid in its effect on a fatal disease where the medical model fails miserably and where the ALS foundation admits only 27% of donations will go toward research (using this failed medical model). There is a growing backlash against the ice-bucket campaign stemming from mistrust of charities in general. Many angry videos being posted cite the bloated salary of the CEO, research using animals and embryonic stem cells, cyber thieves duping donors, and even the waste of good water when there are water shortages in several countries. But seriously, how about supporting charities like NHF (www.thenhf.com) that don’t harm animals, allocate the donated money to the cause, and actually produce a viable answer? These caveats effectively disqualify the medical community behind ALS research.
Ice-Bucket Extortion
Like many of you, I already practice hydrotherapy and endure cold shots of water daily. I shrank from the prospect of being no-so-subtly forced to get iced or get fleeced to further futile medical research on ALS. Raising awareness of a disease like ALS without providing valid solutions is inane and insane. The failed medical model renders ALS incurable and fatal. Why throw good money after bad? But natural-therapy research proves many nutritional supplements and lifestyle changes prevent ALS or retard the progression. The nearly 60-year-old National Health Federation has been protecting your right to use alternative practitioners, nutritional supplements, and to nourish yourself free of contaminants, additives, and chemicals for years. NHF’s work at Codex in particular ensures prevention of not only ALS but other neurodegenerative diseases and illness in general.
I’ve been a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner for over a decade. I’m interested in prevention and funding, and finding natural solutions for disease processes and then protecting health freedom so we have access to employ these successful solutions. ALS is just one in a constellation of similar diseases. With Alzheimer’s set to skyrocket by 2050 and Parkinson’s on the increase, ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease isn’t the only neurodegenerative disease NHF is concerned with.
Take the NHF challenge: From Slacktivism to Activism
If the term “slacktivist” is new to you, it suggests that people who support a cause by performing simple measures are not truly engaged or devoted to making a change. These “feel-good” measures, often requiring minimal effort to show support of an issue or social cause, have little or no effect. Slacktivists might sign petitions, join an organization without contributing to the organization’s efforts, participate in social media, or even dump glacial water over their head or write checks to organizations that do not provide cures …. Sensationalism solves nothing. NHF has been actively fighting at Codex as an activist, not a slacktivist, to protect the brain and central nervous system against neurotoxins like MSG, aspartame, aluminum, fluoride, and others for nearly 60 years beginning with the poison fluoride in the 1950s.
By donating to NHF you will:
- Join the ranks of working activists vs. impotent, feel-good slacktivists.
- Have NHF representation at the global seat of food law at the highest governing body setting standards and guidelines for what you eat, drink, and what supplements you are allowed to use and in what strengths you will use them.
- Actively work to preserve the right to use supplements to prevent debilitating and fatal diseases like ALS.
- Actively engage in the preservation of therapeutic levels of these supplements.
- Provide yourself with true health insurance in the form of freedom of choice in choosing your practitioner and your method of treatment.
- Have the assurance of donating to a legitimate charity in existence since 1955, consistently fighting for health and health freedom where frugality is the rule not the exception, where staff salaries are under-market value and where legitimate business expenses often come out of our own bank accounts.
- Leverage the power of NHF to fight against debilitating, damaging, and fatal neurotoxins behind diseases like ALS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, etc. NHF battles against the inclusion of MSG, aspartame, advantame, lead, fluoride, and the like in our food supply at the Codex level, which sets Global, not just national, standards.
NHF has proven its ability to protect and provide answers for tough situations like ALS
NHF leads the World to food safety by activism, education, and not only teaching the preventive lifestyle but protecting your right to secure and use supplements with therapeutic levels to accomplish prevention. NHF invites you to participate in fruitful fundraisers versus frigid fundraisers like the ice-bucket challenge where often emotionally detached individuals go through the collective motion with a herd mentality that achieves nothing of note. NHF gets things done!
Raising awareness is a large part of the Ice Bucket Challenge. In reality, raising awareness often simply means raising yourself off the couch and reading research studies and then sharing them. Sites like www.greenmedinfo.com, which gets more hits daily than the World Health Organization, have made it easy for you. Sayer Ji, founder, is actually offering a free PDF on all the ALS research on the GMI site. Your doctor is not going to do your research for you. The responsibility is yours to understand the natural therapies available, with proven track records, and to implement them. But it is equally your responsibility to protect those therapies like nutritional supplements, protecting your right to use them and protecting the levels in them that the FDA and Codex are both currently trying hard to “dumb down” so they are ineffective and expensive. It is also your responsibility to demand clean food free of the neurotoxins that promote neurodegenerative diseases like ALS, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s.
How do you accomplish that? By supporting the Voice of Health Freedom globally: NHF. We speak for you. You can prevent neurodegenerative diseases in yourself and in your loved ones. You can fight with your purchasing power by avoiding contaminants and additives, but you can also hit ALS hard right at the source where food law is set for the World, at Codex Alimentarius through the vehicle of NHF speaking as your advocate for your right to eat and drink pure food and beverages, to take nutritional supplements that are affordable and not having to double up due to reduced strengths. If you choose not to support NHF then you may very well face the loss of your ability to protect yourself against ALS. Losing supplements’ strength and access is to lose power to prevent or treat disease. NHF has actively been protecting your right to use these supplements and to keep them at the proper therapeutic levels because without them, there is little hope for surviving ALS.
There are no other health freedom organizations speaking on your behalf where food and supplement laws are established. Do you realize that?With NHF money translates into action and it is visible action and documentable action. NHF has the power to influence the entire World and we do!
Do you go to a chiropractor? National Health Federation made that possible back in the 50s.
Is an acupuncturist part of your healthcare team? NHF made that possible too.
Do you drink water free of poisonous fluoridation? You have the NHF to thank for that.
Do you use supplements? We made that possible too…
Nutritional supplements and lifestyle interventions impacting ALS:
As research has shown, these are contributing factors to ALS: Hormonal imbalance, elevated homocysteine levels (methylation defects), smoking, statin-drug use, exposure to glutamate, celiac disease, electromagnetic fields, neurotoxins like MSG, aspartame, lead, pesticide exposure, smoking, oxidative stress due to deficiencies in diet leading to mitochondrial damage, and the need for nutritional supplementation which exert protective effects against mitochondrial damage and oxidative stress, acting as antioxidants and energy sources.
This lengthy list confers protection, prevention, and retardation of the progression of ALS:
Folic acid, N-acetylcysteine, alpha lipoic acid, Vitamin C, E, B12, selenium, magnesium, calcium, and Vitamin D, glutathione, copper/zinc, Vitamin E, catalase, lyophilized red wine, omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids, acetyl-L-carnitine, pregnenolone, and DHEA, copper chelators, SOD, CoQ10, pyruvate, creatine, melatonin, Wen-Pi-Tang extract ,Epigallocatechin-3-gallate EGCG, gingko biloba, 5-HTP, SAMe,L-arginine, lipoic acid, cannabis, genistein, glycosaminoglycan, whey protein, and exercise.
YOU hold all the power. How? By informed purchasing decisions, by reading research and actively incorporating it into your lifestyle and diet, by supporting research into natural therapies, and by supporting health and health freedom by leveraging the mighty Global power of NHF as an activist not a slacktivist. You have a very false sense of security if you’re looking anywhere outside of the health and health-freedom model to protect your health. The medical model has failed to find a cure for ALS, cancer, and more.
NHF has been the true healthcare provider providing real answers longer than anyone else. The practitioners you employ, the nutritional supplements you use, the contaminants and additives you do not have to eat or drink….NHF actively works for you and your family to protect you from dreaded diseases that can strike even the great, seemingly unshakable Lou Gehrig, “He was a symbol of indestructibility – a Gibraltar in cleats.”– Columnist, Jim Murray
NHF challenges you to support the upcoming Codex Alimentarius Nutrition Committee meeting in Indonesia where we fight to preserve the therapeutic level in supplements, many of which are noted above in ALS treatment. Visit www.thenhf.com or click on http://www.thenhf.com/shop/donations/donate/ directly to make your fruitful donation. We won’t ask you to take an ice bath or coerce you with subtle extortion if you choose not to donate.
But if you choose not to help protect your right to use supplements and use them in therapeutic doses, then you really don’t stand a chance if you get ALS. NHF challenges you to read the research available on www.greenmedinfo.com, share it with family and friends, and put it into practice. Taking actions like these leave you in a strong position to stay healthy and to overcome ALS if you have it. NHF has measurably demonstrated for nearly 60 years now that your health and wellbeing are worth fighting for. Take the NHF challenge today and let’s fight this together.