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We’ve covered how toxins affect our digestive tract and microbiome.
But now we’re going to cover how the weed killer Glyphosate affects us, because this is one of the most toxic substances there is and, due to its widespread use, it’s in almost all processed foods and non-organic meats.
And it plays a very large roll in the destruction of our digestive tract, microbiome and overall health, leading to some of the worst physical conditions there are, as well as premature aging.
So let’s dive in.
Glyphosate is many things.
It’s a neurotoxin, something destructive to nerves. Exactly how destructive depends on how much of it the nerves receive over a certain amount of time.
Neurotoxins can block a nerve impulse, causing things like muscle paralysis or a low heart rate, or speed up nerve channels, causing feelings of crawling in ones own skin, hyperactivity, anxiety, or inability to sleep.
Or neurotoxins can mess up the network of nerves, causing some parts to speed up and others to slow down, and we may get autism.
Glyphosate is also also an antibiotic, meaning it kills bacteria, any bacteria, good or bad, even the bacteria in your microbiome that are vital for your health, the proper functioning of your body, and your mood.
The same bacteria that help form our nervous systems when we’re very young.
It also operates on the very important protein Zonulin.
If you remember from this article, Zonulin is the protein that opens the tight junctions between our intestinal cells, the little doorways that allow nutrients to pass from our small intestine into our bloodstream and to the cells in the body where they’re needed.
Glyphosate forces these tight junctions to open and stay open, letting harmful bacteria and viruses into our body before our immune cells have a chance to deal with them.
And it also passes through, itself, into the bloodstream, and circulates around the body. But your organs also have tight junctions. And glyphosate forces these open as well once in the blood stream, causing all sorts of trouble.
It’s also a hormone disrupter: thyroid, testosterone, adrenaline, estrogen. It disrupts or inhibits the body’s ability to produce or use these hormones.
And it harms our mitochondria, the thousands of tiny structures in each one of our cells that are responsible for producing the energy that our body actually uses, something called ATP.
Glyphosate does all of that and more. In fact, there is no aspect of our body it doesn’t affect.
How bad is it?
It didn’t actually start as a weed killer.
Originally, it was created as an industrial drain cleaner to clear out the toughest clogs a chemical plant could throw at it.
The only reason they stopped using it was because it would come out of the drains, into waterways, and kill all plant life around it.
So they patented it as an herbicide instead.
It’s in the same family of chemicals as Agent Orange, the chemical we sprayed on Vietnamese forests, completely devastating them even to this day, not to mention causing cancer and a host of other conditions in those individuals close enough to have contact with it.
In fact, Agent orange and Glyphosate were made by the same company — Monsanto, before it was purchased by Bayer.
It is pure death.
It kills anything it touches.
Any bacteria, any plants, any cells.
It is the best “weed killer” ever invented, except, of course, to those plants that have been genetically modified to withstand it.
That’s the main genetic modification made to plants today. If you see that something is GMO, the genetic modification being referred to is often a modification to that plant’s genes to protect it from Glyphosate, which has been done to most of our prime crops now: Wheat, Oats, Corn, Soy, and Cotton.
So they can be sprayed along with the weeds around them and only the weeds die.
But the crops, like corn, soy, wheat and oats soak it up. And they pass it on to the animals that feed on them and to you.
Corn and soy are the top two animal feed crops there are today, despite not being the natural foods for most animals.
They’re also the top two ingredients in almost all processed foods.
And, unless 100% organic, they are heavily sprayed with glyphosate.
Let’s put this into perspective.
What does just a tiny amount do?
Let’s take a piece of pizza.
If this is normal bread, as pretty much any pizza will be these days, then it’s likely soaked with glyphosate.
This is because the wheat the bread was made from is sprayed with glyphosate not once, but twice. First before planting, and then once more before being harvested in order to dry it out so it's ready for harvest.
The glyphosate is literally soaked into the wheat.
The average pizza contains about 10 parts per million of glyphosate. A pretty tiny amount if you think about it.
But when we add this same amount to a cell culture containing human intestinal tight juncture cells, we see that even this tiny amount starts to degrade this tissue almost immediately upon contact.
Then there’s the paper from 2009, in the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology, showing that low levels of four glyphosate formulations, levels far below what's allowed in agriculture, levels on par with what's in our food… all kill human umbilical, embryonic, and placental cells within 24 hours.
So yes, it’s bad.
But that’s a little bit. What does it do over time?
Remember how it opens up the doorways in the small intestine, tight junctions, the ones that are supposed to let nutrients through?
Well, what else gets through these tight junctions that Glyphosate forced open?
Other toxins, like mercury or aluminum, or micro-plastics. BPAs and PFAS. And of course glyphosate itself.
But say this is the first time. And it’s so small! You might not even get a tummy ache.
If this little happened once, or even once a month, you’d probably be fine. It’s not too much. You’re a full-grown adult. Your body can handle it.
But what if it’s not a tiny bit once a month? What if it’s once a week? Or daily?
Do you ever eat crackers? Chips? Bread? Non-organic meats? Do you drink Coke or water from the tap? Do you eat non-organic salads?
Well, then we’re not talking once a month.
What happens the next time you have some? And the time after that? And the time after that, until we’re a year or two or ten down the road?
What do we have now?
Well, this problem has been increasing because not only does the glyphosate cause a little more destruction each time, it also builds up in the body.
We now have the cells around these tight junctions in the small intestine starting to degrade due to the glyphosate.
It’s not just opening the tight junctions between the cells. It’s also killing the cells themselves. It is a poison after all.
This means the cells aren’t producing as much of their mucous lining to trap harmful bacteria.
So harmful bacteria get through into the bloodstream and cause minor infections in the body, weakening the immune system bit by bit.
And with all of these toxins coming through, we have the immune system on 24 hour watch, leaving it run down. Or, we’ve built up an autoimmunity.
So it’s easier to get sick, and takes longer to recover.
And immune responses in the body bring on inflammation which can leave us feeling depressed, exhausted, and in a sort of constant “achey” state.
We’re getting belly aches now. We have indigestion. We’ve got heartburn.
Our digestion of protein decreases. And as the enzymes that make our body work, and the hormones that tell them what to do, are made of proteins, we start having deficiencies and imbalances.
And the whole time we have this glyphosate working on these tight junctions in our body now, like a needle, poking microscopic holes in the tissue.
So we get inflammation, auto-immune disease, dementia, autism, celiac disease, cancer, hormonal imbalances, exhaustion, chronic fatigue, depression, the list goes on.
Okay, I’ll stop now.
But do you understand more how these toxins affect us?
That's just one.
There are many others, just as harmful, that enter our bodies each day: forever chemicals (PFAS), heavy metals, plastics, and even used medical drugs via our local water systems.
They’re very real. And they’re in our environment affecting us and those we love every day.
There are several ways. The first is to do your very best to only eat certified organic foods and to stay away from processed foods as much as you can.
This will cut down many toxins that would otherwise enter our bodies.
A good water filter is also important, preferably a reverse-osmosis water filter.
When purchasing cleaning agents, or buying personal care products, look for organic ingredients — they do exist — and study up on the toxic ingredients in skin care formulas so you know what to avoid.
And then we need to address our gut, help it to heal, recover and come back up to proper functioning.
And of course we need to detox. But that’s part of another series that’s coming up shortly.
I hope this helps make sense of some things you see in society today. We didn’t have near this many physical conditions among patients a few decades ago, and certainly not amongst our children.
And this is one of the chief causes.
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We’ve all heard of gluten.
We’ve heard that it can be bad for us, not bad for us, mildly bad for us, etc.
But what is it really and what does it actually do?
Gluten is a mixture of proteins found in many grains, processed foods and commercial drinks that contain two specific proteins called gliadin and glutenin.
Now, some people know they are sensitive to these, either severely or only mildly, but there are many more who actually are sensitive and experiencing reactions without knowing what’s causing it.
The amount of toxins coming into our body every day, from the environment and our food and water sources, grows every year. And it is affecting us in many ways.
But one area it affects us quite severely is in our microbiome, where these toxins kill off the beneficial bacteria that help to produce key calming neurotransmitters like GABA and serotonin.
We covered the microbiome in the last article: a colony of trillions of bacteria in our colon, and how it affects every aspect of our health, our hormones, our longevity and the ability to build muscle, lose body fat and stay fit.
Our body's ability to relax, de-stress, recover, and sleep deeply is heavily determined by one area of our body overlooked more often than almost any other — our Microbiome.
This colony of trillions of bacteria living in our large intestine helps produce the calming, relaxing, cortisol-lowering, and sleep-giving neurotransmitters GABA and serotonin.
These bacteria have more to do with our overall health, calmness of mind, nerve function, ability to sleep, ability to burn fat and build muscle, and even our hormones than you might think.
This colony, made up of about 500 different species of bacteria, is called the Microbiome.