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Another Type I Diabetic OFF INSULIN!

The following email letter epresses what can happen for ANY Type I diabetic when they follow The pH Miracle Lifestyle. They get off their insulin injections.

To learn more about preventing and reversing Type I and Type II diabetes read our book, The pH Miracle for Diabetes.

http://ancizesecoles.org/

Hi Dr. Young,

I'm one of your microscopists, I came to the advanced class a couple of years ago.. I live on the Big Island of Hawaii.

I had a client come to me about 9 months or so ago, she brought her 9 year old daughter who had just been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. I felt in over my head, but I worked with her as best I could, giving her free blood sessions and instructions and supporting her as she got her daughter on the pH MIRACLE diet. She also spoke with the mother of the 2 boys you helped become Type I diabetes free who also gave her some good support and instruction.

Within a week of being on a strict pH Miracle alkaline diet she had already cut her insulin in half and then some, so she was very encouraged and very determined. And fortunately her daughter was also very compliant. And to compound things, mom was in very poor financial straights but somehow managed to make it work.

Anyway, she moved to Texas about 5 months ago and she just contacted me this week to tell me her daughter has been off insulin for 4 months now!!! Another pH miracle for Diabetes.

Loving your Magnesium articles.

Aloha
Angela Lesle

Magnesium the Light of Life

Inside chlorophyll is the light of
life and that light is magnesium

The capture of light energy from the sun is magnesium dependent. Magnesium is bound as the central atom of the porphyrin ring of the green plant pigment chlorophyll. Magnesium is the element that causes plants to be able to convert light into energy and chlorophyll is identical to hemoglobin except the magnesium atom at the center has been taken out and iron put in. The whole basis of life and the food chain is seen in the sunlight-chlorophyll-magnesium chain. Since animals and humans obtain their food supply by eating plants magnesium can be said to be the source of life for it is at the heart of chlorophyll and the process of photosynthesis.

A huge step forward for early life was the development of chlorophyll, a molecule that captures light energy from the sun in a process called photosynthesis. Chlorophyll systems convert energy from visible light into small energy-rich molecules easy for cells to use. The harnessing of the energy of visible light led to a vast expansion of early life-forms. Fossilized layers, three and half billion years old, have been found with evidence of blue-green algae that lived on top of tidal rocks.

Chlorophyll a (minus the alkyl side chain for clarity) with its
magnesium core. Chlorophyll is recognized as one of nature’s riches
sources of important nutrients where its rich green pigment is vital for the
body’s rapid assimilation of amino acids and for the synthesis of enzymes.

Magnesium is needed by plants to form chlorophyll which is the substance that makes plants green. Without magnesium sitting inside the heart of chlorophyll, plants would not be able to take nutrition from the sun because the process of photosynthesis would not go on. When magnesium is deficient things begin to die. In reality one cannot take a breath, move a muscle, or think a thought without enough magnesium in our cells. Because magnesium is contained in chlorophyll it is considered an essential plant mineral salt.

Without chlorophyll, plants are unable
to convert sunlight and carbon dioxide.
There is no life without magnesium.

Magnesium is a necessary element for all living organisms both animal and plant. Chlorophyll is structured around a magnesium atom, while in animals, magnesium is a key component of cells, bones, tissues and just about every physiological process you can think of. Magnesium is primarily an intracellular cation; roughly 1% of whole-body magnesium is found extracellularly, and the free intracellular fraction is the portion regulating enzyme pathways inside the cells. Life packs the magnesium jealously into the cells, every drop of it is precious.

Insulin and Magnesium

Magnesium is necessary for both the action
of insulin and the manufacture of insulin.

Magnesium is a basic building block to life and is present in ionic form throughout the full landscape of human physiology. Without insulin though, magnesium doesn’t get transported from our blood into our cells where it is most needed. When Dr. Jerry Nadler of the Gonda Diabetes Center at the City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte, California, and his colleagues placed 16 healthy people on magnesium-deficient diets, their insulin became less effective at getting sugar from their blood into their cells, where it’s burned or stored as fuel. In other words, they became less insulin sensitive or what is called insulin resistant. And that’s the first step on the road to both diabetes and heart disease.

Insulin is a common denominator, a central figure in life as is magnesium. The task of insulin is to store excess nutritional resources.This system is an evolutionary development used to save energy and other nutritional necessities in times (or hours) of abundance in order to survive in times of hunger. Little do we appreciate that insulin is not just responsible for regulating sugar entry into the cells but also magnesium, one of the most important substances for life. It is interesting to note here that the kidneys are working at the opposite end physiologically dumping from the blood excess nutrients that the body does not need or cannot process in the moment.

Controlling the level of blood sugars is only one of the many functions of insulin. Insulin plays a central role in storing magnesium but if our cells become resistant to insulin, or if we do not produce enough insulin, then we have a difficult time storing magnesium in the cells where it belongs. When insulin processing becomes problematic magnesium gets excreted through our urine instead and this is the basis of what is called magnesium wasting disease.

There is a strong relationship between magnesium and insulin action.
Magnesium is important for the effectiveness of insulin. A reduction
of magnesium in the cells strengthens insulin resistance. [1],[2]

Low serum and intracellular magnesium concentrations are associated with insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance, and decreased insulin secretion. [3],[4],[5]Magnesium improves insulin sensitivity thus lowering insulin resistance. Magnesium and insulin need each other. Without magnesium, our pancreas won’t secrete enough insulin–or the insulin it secretes won’t be efficient enough–to control our blood sugar.

Magnesium in our cells helps the muscles to relax but if we can’t store magnesium because the cells are resistant then we lose magnesium which makes the blood vessels constrict, affects our energy levels, and causes an increase in blood pressure. We begin to understand the intimate connection between diabetes and heart disease when we look at the closed loop between declining magnesium levels and declining insulin efficiency.

Though it would be a long stretch of the longest giraffe’s neck to compare insulin with chlorophyll we are walking a trail at the very nuclear core of life. It’s the magnesium trail and we find to our surprise that it takes us into intimate contact with the very structure and foundation of life. The dedication of this chapter is to the beauty of magnesium, to its meaning in life, in health and in medicine.

We were talking about chlorophyll and now insulin and putting magnesium in-between. Walking further along is the DHEA magnesium story and the DNA magnesium story. And then there is the cholesterol magnesium story. Every part of life is in love with magnesium except allopathic medicine which just cannot accept it in all its light, flame and beauty. Thousands of years ago the Chinese named it the beautiful metal and they were seeing something pharmaceutical medicine does not want to see for there is little money to be made from something so common.

Magnesium and DNA

Mechanism of electric conductivity in DNA. Magnesium (silver circles)
with no surrounding water supplies holes (light-blue circles) to the DNA, which
is an insulator. The supplied holes move along the DNA (light-blue line).

Magnesium ions play critical roles in many aspects of cellular metabolism. Magnesium stabilizes structures of proteins, nucleic acids, and cell membranes by binding to the macromolecule’s surface and promote specific structural or catalytic activities of proteins, enzymes, or ribozymes. Magnesium has a critical role in cell division. It has been suggested that magnesium is necessary for the maintenance of an adequate supply of nucleotides for the synthesis of RNA and DNA.

Magnesium plays a critical role in vital DNA repair proteins.
Magnesium ions synergetic effects on the active site
geometry may affect the polymerase closing/opening trends.
Single-stranded RNA are stabilized by magnesium ions.

Distinct structural features of DNA, such as the curvature of dA tracts, are important in the recognition, packaging, and regulation of DNA are magnesium dependent. Physiologically relevant concentrations of magnesium have been found to enhance the curvature of dA tract DNAs. The chemistry of water activated by a magnesium ion is central to the function of the DNA repair proteins, apurinic/apyrimidic endonuclease 1 (Ape1) and polymerase A (Pol A). These proteins are key constituents of the base excision repair (BER) pathway, a process that plays a critical role in preventing the cytotoxic and mutagenic effects of most spontaneous, alkylation, and oxidative DNA damage.[6]

Magnesium ions help guide polymerase selection for the
correct nucleotide extends descriptions of polymerase pathways.[7]

Dr. Paul Ellis informs us that, “Magnesium ions are central to the function of the DNA repair proteins, apurinic/apyrimidic endonuclease 1 (Ape1) and polymerase A (Pol A). These proteins are key constituents of the base excision repair (BER) pathway, a process that plays a critical role in preventing the cytotoxic and mutagenic effects of most spontaneous, alkylation, and oxidative DNA damage.”[8] DNA polymerase is considered to be a holoenzyme since it requires a magnesium ion as a co-factor to function properly. DNA-Polymerase initiates DNA replication by binding to a piece of single-stranded DNA. This process corrects mistakes in newly-synthesized DNA.

DHEA – Magnesium – Cholesterol

Low levels of DHEA are associated with loss of “pathology
preventing” signaling between immune system cells.[9]

Dr. James Michael Howard says, “Cancer and infections are both increasing and one of the basic reasons is reduced availability of DHEA, which stems from magnesium deficiency.” Also known as "mother of all steroid hormones" DHEA is converted in the body into several different hormones, including estrogen and testosterone. DHEA appears to restore immune balance and stimulate monocyte production (the cells that attack tumors), B-cell activity (the cells that fight disease-causing organisms), T-cell mobilization (infection fighting T-cells have DHEA binding sites), and protection of the thymus gland (which produces T-cells).[10] The data suggest that DHEA has a role in the neuro-endocrine regulation of the antibacterial immune resistance.[11]

All steroid hormones are created from cholesterol in a hormonal cascade. Cholesterol, that most maligned compound, is actually crucial for health and is the mother of hormones from the adrenal cortex, including cortisone, hydrocortisone, aldosterone, and DHEA. Cholesterol cannot be synthesized without magnesium and cholesterol is a vital component of many hormones. These hormones are interrelated, each performing a unique biological function with them all depending on magnesium for their function. Aldosterone interestingly needs magnesium to be produced and it also regulates magnesium’s balance.[12]

Dr. Mildred S. Seelig wrote, “Mg2+-ATP is the controlling factor for the rate-limiting enzyme in the cholesterol biosynthesis sequence that is targeted by the statin pharmaceutical drugs, comparison of the effects of Mg2+ on lipoproteins with those of the statin drugs is warranted. Formation of cholesterol in blood, as well as of cholesterol required in hormone synthesis, and membrane maintenance, is achieved in a series of enzymatic reactions that convert HMG-CoA to cholesterol. The rate-limiting reaction of this pathway is the enzymatic conversion of HMG CoA to mevalonate via HMG CoA. The statins and Mg inhibit that enzyme. Mg has effects that parallel those of statins. For example, the enzyme that deactivates HMG-CoA Reductase requires Mg, making Mg a Reductase controller rather than inhibitor. Mg is also necessary for the activity of lecithin cholesterol acyl transferase (LCAT), which lowers LDL-C and triglyceride levels and raises HDL-C levels.”[13]

Desaturase is another Mg-dependent enzyme involved in
lipid metabolism which statins do not directly affect.

DHEA is a steroid hormone produced by the adrenal gland and ovaries and converted to testosterone and estrogen. After being secreted by the adrenal glands, it circulates in the bloodstream as DHEA-sulfate (DHEAS) and is converted as needed into other hormones.Magnesium chloride, when applied transdermally, is reported by Dr. Norman Shealy to increase DHEA.[14] Dr. Shealy has determined that when the body is presented with adequate levels of magnesium at the cellular level, the body will begin to naturally produce DHEA and also DHEA-S.

Transdermal is the ultimate way to replenish cellular magnesium
levels. Every cell in the body bathes and feeds in it and even DHEA
levels are increased naturally, according to Dr. Norman Shealy

This effect is not seen in oral or intravenous magnesium administration and Dr. Shealy has a patent pending in this area. It is thought that transdermal application interacts in some way with the fatty tissues of the skin to create the affect. Studies link low levels of DHEA to chronic inflammation, immune dysfunction, depression, rheumatoid arthritis, Type-II diabetic complications, greater risk for certain cancers, heart disease and osteoporosis.

To increase your bio-available magnesium I offer in several forms:

1) Concentrated Liquid chlorophyll for magnesium ions to help build blood -

http://phmiracleliving.com/p-306-liquid-chloropheal.aspx

2) Magnesium chloride in our pHlavor salts and OsteoPlex I and II for improving bone health:

http://phmiracleliving.com/p-211-phlavor.aspx

http://phmiracleliving.com/p-554-osteoplex-i.aspx

http://phmiracleliving.com/p-555-osteoplex-ii.aspx

3) Magnesium oxide for cleansing the bowels:

http://phmiracleliving.com/p-356-phlush.aspx

4) Magnesium hydroxide and magnesium bicarbonate for buffering and eliminating environmental, dietary and/or metabolic acids:

http://phmiracleliving.com/p-560-activator.aspx

http://phmiracleliving.com/p-221-phour-salts.aspx

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[1] Paolisso G, Scheen A, D’Onofrio F, Lefebvre P: Magnesium and glucose homeostasis. Diabetologia 33:511–514, 1990[Medline]

[2] Nadler JL, Buchanan T, Natarajan R, Antonipillai I, Bergman R, Rude R: Magnesium deficiency produces insulin resistance and increased thromboxane synthesis. Hypertension 21:1024–1029, 1993

[3]Ma J, Folsom AR, Melnick SL, Eckfeldt JH, Sharrett AR, Nabulsi AA, Hutchinson RG, Metcalf PA: Associations of serum and dietary magnesium with cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, insulin, and carotid wall thickness: the ARIC study. J Clin Epidemiol 48:927–940, 1985

[4] Rosolova H, Mayer O Jr, Reaven GM: Insulin-mediated glucose disposal is decreased in normal subjects with relatively low plasma magnesium concentrations. Metabolism 49:418–420, 2000[Medline]

[5] Resnick LM, Gupta RK, Gruenspan H, Alderman MH, Laragh JH: Hypertension and peripheral insulin resistance: possible mediating role of intracellular free magnesium. Am J Hypertens 3:373–379, 1990[Medline]

[6] Magnesium Increases the Curvature of Duplex DNA That Contains dA Tracts. Bozidar Jerkovic and Philip H. Bolton. Chemistry Department, Wesleyan University. Biochemistry, 40 (31), 9406 -9411, 2001. 10.1021/bi010853j S0006-2960(01)00853-4

[7] Critical Role of Magnesium Ions in DNA Polymerase ?’s Closing and Active Site Assembly. Linjing Yang, Karunesh Arora, William A. Beard, Samuel H. Wilson, Tamar Schlick. Department of Chemistry and Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences,
New York University

[8] http://www.sysbio.org/capabilities/nmr/nih/magnesium.stm

[9] Verthelyi D, Petri M, Ylamus M, Klinman DM. Retroviral Immunology Section, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Food and Drug Administration, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA. Lupus. 2001;10(5):352-8.

[10] Le Vert, Suzanne, HGH: The Promise of Eternal Youth (New York: 1997, Avon Books), pages 25, 26, 93, 106, 153, 172. ISBN: 0-380-78885-3

[11] J. Med. Microbiol. 1999; 48: 425)

[12] A deficiency in magnesium causes hyperplasia of the adrenal cortex, elevated aldosterone levels, and increased extracellular fluid volume. Aldosterone increases the urinary excretion of magnesium; hence, a positive feedback mechanism results, which is aggravated since there is no renal mechanism for conserving magnesium.

[13] Journal of the American College of Nutrition, Vol. 23, No. 5, 501S-505S (2004) Comparison of Mechanism and Functional Effects of Magnesium and Statin Pharmaceuticals Andrea Rosanoff, PhD and Mildred S. Seelig, MD Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn (M.S.)

http://ancizesecoles.org/

Support Complementary and Alternative Medicine as Covered Medical Expenses

Washington, D.C. - A bill was introduced at the end of May that would expand the IRS code to include herbs, vitamins, minerals, homeopathic remedies, meal replacement products, and other dietary and nutritional supplements as “eligible medical expenses” - a move that is long overdue.

On May 26th Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) introduced the Retirement Health Investment Act of 2011, (S.1098/H.R. 2010). The House version has already garnered 32 cosponsors and both bills are being reviewed in committee.

If you follow health care policy in the news then you already know that there are two health savings programs that help pay for complementary and alternative medical (CAM) treatments normally not covered by regular insurance. These are Flexible Spending Arrangements (FSAs) and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). Currently CAM treatments are not considered eligible to be covered by HSAs.

The pH Miracle Group of Companies supports the bill as a critical step in the direction of parity for CAM treatments. However, we agree with the Alliance for Natural Health in its call for the bill's language to be amended. It must address that part of the healthcare reform act that threatens the very existence of HSAs.

HSAs are savings accounts exempt from federal income tax at the time of deposit. Each year any unspent funds accumulate and "roll over" to the following year. To make use of HSAs one must be covered under a high-deductible insurance plan - but starting in 2014 the healthcare reform act will allow high-deductible or catastrophic healthcare insurance plans for people only under the age of 30.

This means that beginning in 2014, people over the age of 30 will not be able to purchase an HSA because they will not be eligible for catastrophic plans—making any changes to HSAs irrelevant to them.

CAM patients have traditionally used such high-deductible plans to cover emergency services, and use HSAs for purchasing treatments not covered by traditional healthcare insurance. Without the preservation of both high-deductible healthcare plans and HSAs, CAM users may have to purchase additional - and expensive - health insurance with coverage they don’t need, while still having to spend money on alternative treatments not covered by insurance.

To be clear, the pH Miracle Group of Companies wholeheartedly supports S. 1098/H.R. 2010 and its fundamental goal of adding CAM treatments to the list of medical expenses eligible for coverage under HSAs. However, the healthcare reform act needs to be amended to allow for catastrophic plans for people over 30 years of age.

Please contact your Congress person in response to this bill sponsored by Senator Hatch.

Quality of Life: Change the Paradigm

Quality of Life: Change the paradigm

Published 13-12-2010 - Pernille Knudtzon

This issue, our health detectives conclude their investigation of Blood, the river of life, with a look at how perspectives of disease have shaped modern medicine as we know it. Hippocrates said: Let food be your medicine. Let medicine be your food. Modern medicine has got to where it is today partly through a scientific and philosophical debate that culminated in the early 19th century, between two of the leading microbiologists of their time: Antoine Bechamp and Louis Pasteur. Their argument over bacteriological theories changed the course of medicine. Pasteur’s view was that disease is caused by germs invading from outside, and that these micro-organisms do not change their characteristics and they can be killed with drugs and antibiotics. Bechamp, on the other hand, considered that micro-organisms can develop as various growth forms (pleomorphism), and change according to environmental conditions, how they develop depends on the state of the internal biological terrain. At the core of this terrain is the body’s pH balance as we have seen in the last two articles. Although both men acknowledged certain aspects of each other’s research, Pasteur was a stronger character, more flamboyant and a more vocal opponent to the quiet Bechamp. Pasteur also came from wealth with the right family connections, and went to great lengths to disprove Bechamp’s view. Pasteur’s viewpoint was eventually acknowledged by the scientists while Bechamp’s research disappeared into obscurity. We see the results of this dispute today practiced in every day medicine. When a body is out of balance, we try to restore it first with drugs then through surgery, removing the symptoms, rather than dealing with the root cause of the ailment. Medicine does not need to be seen as an either / or and for a complete picture in health care it is important to be open to other viewpoints. Some scientists who have contributed a different perspective to our understanding of health include Dr. Otto Warburg, who won the Nobel Prize in 1931 for his discovery of the role of oxygen deficiency in the cancer growth process. He discovered that as pH goes out of balance and our bodies become more acidic, our cells get less oxygen. Cancer thrives in acidic tissue and an oxygen deficient environment. German zoologist Gunther Enderlein used a Dark Field Microscope to visualize his hypothesis about how changes in the bio-terrain and pH gave rise to disease. Some of today’s pioneers include Dr. Gabriel Cousens, a leading figure in nutrition, fasting, detoxification, spirituality and health education, and Dr. Robert Young, who teaches “The New Biology", which encompasses theories about the cause and source of disease and how to prevent it through an alkaline diet and a physically active, low-stress lifestyle. Shifting the paradigm A century after the great medical debate, mainstream medicine still follows the road of Louis Pasteur, killing whatever makes us sick with drugs, antibiotics, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery. Even though we now live in a world that has many generations of new antibiotics and drug developments there are still a lot of bacteria and especially viruses that are resistant to our treatments and conditions that are difficult to treat with drugs like cancer, diabetes and immune deficiency syndromes to name a few. Using this approach, we have to have a pill for a headache, then another pill for the damage that the painkiller did to our stomach, and so on. Sometimes a pain killer is all right, but it is important to remember that we are only treating the symptoms. Why not take a look at the terrain to get to the cause of the headache? Not enough water? Muscle tension? Hypertension? Eye problems? A different perspective would look at imbalances in the body due to nutritional, electrical, structural, toxicological, biological or emotional reasons. To get better, this balance needs to be re-established by working with the body not against it. The WHO predicts that 7 out of 10 admissions to hospital in 2020 will be due to lifestyle induced illnesses – can we afford to keep paying for our lifestyle induced illnesses like obesity, diabetes, heart and circulation problems? It is possible that the medicine of the future will not only have its roots in nutrition and food supplements, but will also be strongly tied to energy, or what is known as vibrational medicine. As we understand more about the energy of life, or Chi as it is called in Chinese medicine, one day we may walk into a health care practitioner’s office and as a routine procedure we would not only get a physical check-up, we would also get an energy or vibrational check up. This could be the new frontier for medicine – a change in the health-disease paradigm. Paradigm shift consequences The world we live in is becoming too toxic. As a result we humans are likewise too toxic. This toxicity is being reflected in the rise of illness/disease and the inability of “modern” medicine to do anything about it. Here we can contrast the two theories of infection and disease as we consider a changing paradigm in our understanding of health. Invasion of Germ theory • Infection/Disease arises from micro-organisms originating outside the body • Micro-organisms should be guarded against and destroyed to prevent illnesses • The appearance and function of specific micro-organisms is constant • Every disease is associated with a particular micro-organism • Micro-organisms are primary causal agents • Disease is inevitable and can “strike” anybody • To prevent and cure disease it is necessary to build defences and to destroy pathogenic micro-organisms Environmental Toxicity Theory • The susceptibility to illnesses/disease arises from conditions within the cells and the fluids in the body • Micro-organisms are beneficial and life-sustaining if the body is kept clean from toxins • The appearance and function of micro-organisms changes when the host organism is injured either mechanically, bio-chemically, electrically or emotionally • Every disease is associated with a particular condition • Micro-organisms become associated with disease only when cells, blood and interstitial fluid become toxic • Disease arises from conditions of increased toxicity • Preventing or curing disease consists of cleaning toxicity from the body in a way that does no harm

What Is Freedom?

"What is freedom if it is not to be free in every way, from our most minute cell to our most expansive dreams? He is free who can afford to let the interactions between the cell and spirit take place in a most harmonious way. There is no freedom in intellect. Freedom of that sort lasts for only a duration of a thought, of an act. To be truly free is to be able to establish Peace between all Opposites Within us!" Dr Robert O Robert Young

Fukushima - The Biggest Catastrophe In The History of Mankind!

"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera. Japan's 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant. Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed. "Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed," he said, "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively." TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of. "The problem is how to keep it cool," says Gundersen. "They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?" Even though the plant is now shut down, fission products such as uranium continue to generate heat, and therefore require cooling. "The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor," Gundersen added. "TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water." Independent scientists have been monitoring the locations of radioactive "hot spots" around Japan, and their findings are disconcerting. "We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl," said Gundersen. "The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl." Radiation monitors for children Japan's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters finally admitted earlier this month that reactors 1, 2, and 3 at the Fukushima plant experienced full meltdowns. TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on record. Meanwhile, a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported that about 966 square kilometres near the power station - an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan - is now likely uninhabitable. In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant. The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster. "There is and should be concern about younger people being exposed, and the Japanese government will be giving out radiation monitors to children," Dr MV Ramana, a physicist with the Programme on Science and Global Security at Princeton University who specialises in issues of nuclear safety, told Al Jazeera. Dr Ramana explained that he believes the primary radiation threat continues to be mostly for residents living within 50km of the plant, but added: "There are going to be areas outside of the Japanese government's 20km mandatory evacuation zone where radiation is higher. So that could mean evacuation zones in those areas as well." Gundersen points out that far more radiation has been released than has been reported. "They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is really not talking about this," he said. "The new calculations show that within the first week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much radiation as they thought they released in the first 80 days." According to Gundersen, the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are referred to as "hot particles". "We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters." Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are now common, and Gundersen says his sources are finding radioactive air filters in the greater Seattle area of the US as well. The hot particles on them can eventually lead to cancer. "These get stuck in your lungs or GI tract, and they are a constant irritant," he explained, "One cigarette doesn't get you, but over time they do. These [hot particles] can cause cancer, but you can't measure them with a Geiger counter. Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have breathed in a large amount of these particles. Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April." Blame the US? In reaction to the Fukushima catastrophe, Germany is phasing out all of its nuclear reactors over the next decade. In a referendum vote this Monday, 95 per cent of Italians voted in favour of blocking a nuclear power revival in their country. A recent newspaper poll in Japan shows nearly three-quarters of respondents favour a phase-out of nuclear power in Japan. Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US? Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his political campaigns, thus far. Obama also appointed Exelon CEO John Rowe to his Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future. Dr Shoji Sawada is a theoretical particle physicist and Professor Emeritus at Nagoya University in Japan. He is concerned about the types of nuclear plants in his country, and the fact that most of them are of US design. "Most of the reactors in Japan were designed by US companies who did not care for the effects of earthquakes," Dr Sawada told Al Jazeera. "I think this problem applies to all nuclear power stations across Japan." Using nuclear power to produce electricity in Japan is a product of the nuclear policy of the US, something Dr Sawada feels is also a large component of the problem. "Most of the Japanese scientists at that time, the mid-1950s, considered that the technology of nuclear energy was under development or not established enough, and that it was too early to be put to practical use," he explained. "The Japan Scientists Council recommended the Japanese government not use this technology yet, but the government accepted to use enriched uranium to fuel nuclear power stations, and was thus subjected to US government policy." As a 13-year-old, Dr Sawada experienced the US nuclear attack against Japan from his home, situated just 1400 metres from the hypocentre of the Hiroshima bomb. "I think the Fukushima accident has caused the Japanese people to abandon the myth that nuclear power stations are safe," he said. "Now the opinions of the Japanese people have rapidly changed. Well beyond half the population believes Japan should move towards natural electricity." A problem of infinite proportions Dr Ramana expects the plant reactors and fuel cores to be cooled enough for a shutdown within two years. "But it is going to take a very long time before the fuel can be removed from the reactor," he added. "Dealing with the cracking and compromised structure and dealing with radiation in the area will take several years, there's no question about that." Dr Sawada is not as clear about how long a cold shutdown could take, and said the problem will be "the effects from caesium-137 that remains in the soil and the polluted water around the power station and underground. It will take a year, or more time, to deal with this". Gundersen pointed out that the units are still leaking radiation. "They are still emitting radioactive gases and an enormous amount of radioactive liquid," he said. "It will be at least a year before it stops boiling, and until it stops boiling, it's going to be cranking out radioactive steam and liquids." Gundersen worries about more earthquake aftershocks, as well as how to cool two of the units. "Unit four is the most dangerous, it could topple," he said. "After the earthquake in Sumatra there was an 8.6 [aftershock] about 90 days later, so we are not out of the woods yet. And you're at a point where, if that happens, there is no science for this, no one has ever imagined having hot nuclear fuel lying outside the fuel pool. They've not figured out how to cool units three and four." Gundersen's assessment of solving this crisis is grim. "Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years," he said. "Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor." Dr Sawada says that the creation of nuclear fission generates radioactive materials for which there is simply no knowledge informing us how to dispose of the radioactive waste safely. "Until we know how to safely dispose of the radioactive materials generated by nuclear plants, we should postpone these activities so as not to cause further harm to future generations," he explained. "To do otherwise is simply an immoral act, and that is my belief, both as a scientist and as a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing." Gundersen believes it will take experts at least ten years to design and implement the plan. "So ten to 15 years from now maybe we can say the reactors have been dismantled, and in the meantime you wind up contaminating the water," Gundersen said. "We are already seeing Strontium [at] 250 times the allowable limits in the water table at Fukushima. Contaminated water tables are incredibly difficult to clean. So I think we will have a contaminated aquifer in the area of the Fukushima site for a long, long time to come." Unfortunately, the history of nuclear disasters appears to back Gundersen's assessment. "With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started," he said, "But they never end."