Chronic Inflammatory Bowel Disease Is No Joke

Two defined IBDs are Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. As we know, internal inflammation is the source of many diseases.

Symptoms of IBD include:

• Loss of appetite
• Rectal bleeding
• Bloating
• Constipation
• Intestinal cramps
• Diarrhea
• Fever
• Fatigue
• Erratic menses
• Night sweats

More than simple occasional indigestion or stomach ache, IBD doesn’t go away in a short time by itself.Researchers have become interested and concerned about the steady increase in the incidence of this type of disease. There seems to be no one definitive cause but chronic Inflammatory Bowel Disease is the product of several factors, including:

• Diet
• Environmental toxins
• Genetics
• Immune system dysfunction
• Intestinal bacteria imbalance

How Diet Affects IBD

It makes sense that what we eat affects our intestines.In the industrial world, the convenience of packaged foods has become such that we rely on them for the bulk of our diets. What’s in these foods is a primary concern. Food additives include preservatives; emulsifiers; artificial colors, flavorings, and sweeteners; refined sugar; and synthetic vitamins and minerals. At a more basic level are the actual food ingredients, like wheat and dairy. Many of these contain genetically modified organisms (GMO) and are raised using toxic pesticides. GMO interfere with the balance of bacteria in the digestive system. A GMO of particular note is the raising of crops using Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis). Bt is a bacterium naturally found in soil that is toxic to insects. Agricultural chemical companies have crossed this bacterium with food crop seeds so that the plants grown contain this bacterium in their very DNA. The idea is that if the plant resists harmful insects, there’s no need to spray additional insecticide, which we know can be harmful. What the bacteria does when humans digest them is even worse.

Bt: A Cause Of IBD?

Bt produces spores that are comprised of crystalline (“Cry”) proteins. When an insect eats the bacterium, these proteins attach and erode the linings of the digestive system, forming holes. When undigested food and waste products spread throughout the body, the insect dies.When humans eat GMO that contains Bt, the same thing happens. Not only that, mammals recognize Bt bacteria as harmful and produce antibodies to kill it . So do insects. History has shown that spraying Bt insecticides on plants forces the feeders to build up a resistance to it. 

One Brazilian study noted that: “Bt spore crystals presented toxicity for lymphocytes when in higher doses, which varied according to the type of spore crystal studied, besides promoting cytotoxic and genotoxic effects for the erythroid lineage of bone marrow, mainly at highest doses. Although the profile of such adverse side effects can be related to their high level of exposure, which is not commonly found in the environment, results indicated that these Bt spore crystals were not harmless to mice. This suggests that a more specific approach should be taken to increase knowledge about their toxicological properties and to establish the toxicological risks to non target organisms.” Because Bt are living organisms, they will remain in your body for as long as it remains a hospitable environment.

“Ambulatory care visits from those who reported inflammatory bowel symptoms went from 275 per 100,000 people to 375 per 100,000 people between the years of 1994 and 1998…The number of Americans suffering from ulcerative colitis (inflammatory bowel disease) hovered between 185 per 100,000 Americans to approximately 210 per 100,000 people between the years of 1979 and 2001.  In 2002, those numbers shot to 225 per 100,000 people and have been on the rise ever since.”

It may come as no surprise that the patent for Bt crops is held by Monsanto. Which leads us to the next topic of toxins in food.

Other Monsanto Food Crimes

Even if a plant is not genetically modified, commercially grown crops are sprayed with insecticides and herbicides, the most common of which is Roundup—its active ingredient is glyphosate. This toxic chemical has been associated with leaky gut syndrome along with a slew of other health concerns, including cancer.

Processed food additives contribute to IBD.

Emulsifiers are added to packaged foods to enhance texture and increase shelf life. Commonly-used emulsifiers polysorbate-80 and carboxymethylcellulose have been found to cause intestinal inflammation and obesity in mice. They have been found to cause colorectal cancer and metabolic syndrome as well .

Healing Your Gut

The alternatives to promote a healthy gut, reducing the risk of chronic Inflammatory Bowel Disease and other digestive disorders:

• Eat organic
• Avoid or eliminate processed foods
• Increase probiotic intake
• Drink plenty of filtered water

Plus, don’t forget to manage your stress levels and get enough sleep and exercise.

SOURCE…www.dailyhealthpost.com

Mention Monsanto these days and you are sure to get a reaction from almost anyone. The American multinational agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation is making headlines worldwide—and usually not the good kind.This time, the behemoth biotech, widely known for its controversial genetically modified crop seeds (GMOs) and highly poisonous pesticides, is accused of contaminating an entire small town in Alabama.Anniston, Alabama, home to 22,666 people, is considered a crime scene by health officials, who contend Monsanto is solely responsible for what is being called the worst PCB contamination the world has ever seen.

Over A Century Of Destruction

Monsanto was founded in 1901 by John F. Queeny and his wife, Olga Monsanto Queeny, who launched the company with their first product, the artificial sweetener saccharine, now known as a one of the Top 4 most dangerous artificial sweeteners ever made (1).

From there, Monsanto has left a trail of destruction that includes poisoning countless towns, lands, waterways and entire ecosystems. The company also supplied the materials for some of the deadliest chemical weapons ever made, including white phosphorous (2) and Agent Orange (3), which have killed thousands of people worldwide.

The unbelievable and devastating repercussions of what many call Monsanto’s unscrupulous practices in the manufacturing and sale of their products includes everything from purposely withholding negative safety studies from the FDA and the public, to knowingly manufacturing and selling poisonous herbicides and pesticides that have resulted in serious health issues for both humans and wildlife, and even death.

In 1986, Monsanto was found guilty of “negligently exposing a worker to benzene at its Chocolate Bayou Plant in Texas.” It paid $100 million to the family of Wilbur Jack Skeen, who died of leukemia after repeated exposures (4).The list of Monsanto’s crimes is endless and ongoing, including the contamination of the entire town of Anniston, Alabama that actually began in the 1940s.

Anniston Alabama: Monsanto’s Toxic Town

At first glance, Anniston Alabama is an idyllic small town with pristine waters and genuine southern hospitality. But what lies beneath the ground and the raging waters of its white-water river, is something out of a sci-fi horror flick.

In 1993, a local fisherman who caught a severely deformed largemouth bass from the Choccolocco Creek set off a firestorm of media that eventually led to an inconvenient truth for the billion dollar biotech corporation. As it turns out, Monsanto had been knowingly poisoning the people and wildlife of Anniston, Alabama for more than 30 years.

By dumping millions of pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the town’s landfill and creek, Monsanto exposed the community to the deadly chemicals that have since been banned because of their known link to cancer in both animals and humans, including non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a deadly form of the disease(5,6).

The toxic contamination in the small town was so incredible that Monsanto actually bought and then demolished 100 homes that were overwhelmingly polluted by PCBs. After 16-year-old Anniston resident Terry Baker died from a brain tumor and lung cancer caused by exposure to the PCBs, it spurred 20,000 residents to file a class-action lawsuit against Monsanto.

The company was ultimately ordered to pay residents damages of $700 million. But now, more than 13 years later, residents of the small town are finding out that Monsanto’s toxic dumping is still wreaking havoc on their lives (7).

Devastating Liver Damage

The devastatingly toxic PCBs dumped in Anniston, Alabama, continue to affect the health of its residents, according to a new two-year study published by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

After finding out about the PCB poisoning, Anniston researchers reviewed the health of 766 of its residents between 2005 and 2007. In 2013, they followed up with 738 of the residents, and later in 2014, with 352 of the same residents. Researchers were astounded to find that the Anniston residents have a 60 percent rate of fatty liver disease compared to the average 24.3 percent rate found in the rest of the general US population.They further found that while PCB levels dropped slightly from 2007 to 2014, they are still much higher than the general population. More troubling, however, is that despite this slight drop in levels, researchers also found a connection between higher PCB levels and diabetes. They also linked PCBs to high blood pressure and concluded that liver failure or cancer may result from the type of chronic liver inflammation residents of Anniston continue to experience (8).

Deny, Deny, Deny

Even after illegally dumping millions of pounds of PCBs into the once pristine Choccolocco Creek and numerous open-pit landfills that literally oozed with the toxic sludge, Monsanto continued to outright deny the damning evidence of the deadly health repercussions caused by their actions. Investigators found thousands of Monsanto documents, some clearly marked “CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy,” showing intent on the part of the corporate giant, that concealed the dumping for decades.While of little consequence to the some 20,000 affected residents in Anniston, Monsanto’s lawyers did admit in 2001 that PCB exposure can sometimes cause chloracne, a serious skin condition, which they clearly added was the only significant problem the chemicals are even capable of causing, something that is clearly contrary to every study done on PCBs.

Devastated Town

In the interim, Anniston is now a virtual ghost town. With a good chunk of the homes and businesses in the small town destroyed after Monsanto purchased them to mitigate their damages, the remaining residents, most of which are low-income families, are left to deal with the contaminated land and a slew of growing health problems.One such resident is Brenda Crook, who lived just a block away from the former Monsanto plant responsible for the decades of illegal dumping.Crook lived in Anniston most of her life, and until the dumping, was a healthy individual by any standards.“I never drank and I never smoked,” she said in a story published in TheAnniston Star in December 2016. “But I got cancer.” (9)Doctors confirmed high levels of PCBs in her blood. As a result of her cancer, Crook had to undergo expensive treatments, including radiation and three surgeries to date.“Now I also have gout, high blood pressure and diabetes,” she adds, which doctors also attribute to the PCBs. And because Crook, like most of the Anniston residents, is in a low-income area and is too sick to work, she also struggles to pay the mounting monthly costs of her health insurance’s co-pay, despite the settlement by Monsanto.

Poor, Sick, And Helpless

And with little money to move, most of the remaining residents in Anniston will continue to live in the small town that is so saturated with toxic chemicals that they have literally soaked into the ground they walk on, and then ooze into the very air they breathe every day. The problem is still so bad today that residents have to wear masks just to cut their grass.While 60 Minutes reports that residents will receive $600 million of the $700-million settlement, and the remaining $100 million will help pay for the clean-up, according to officials at the State University of New York in Albany, Anniston, Alabama is still the most contaminated site in the entire US (10). And they have Monsanto to thank for it.The only bright light in this otherwise dark story is that Monsanto agreed to fund a medical clinic and PCB research center to help the ailing residents of Anniston deal with their chronic health problems—ironically, the same ones the company insists don’t exist.

Vitamin D

It’s winter, the days in the run up to Christmas are short and we get less daylight and sunlight which could mean your vitamin D levels are low – your body converts sunlight into Vitamin D. Symptoms of deficiency can be vague but generally include general aches and pains and an overall feeling of tiredness. Good food sources are salmon, sardines, mackerel, red meat and eggs but Public Health England released recommendations earlier this year that all adults in the UK could benefit from a 10mcg supplement between October and March. Try Healthspan Super Strength Vitamin D3.

Enzymes

All the racing around and late nights in the build up to Christmas can rob the body of essential nutrients and leave people flagging.People need to aim for as balanced a diet as you can but certain substances can give you an extra little energising push like Co-enzymeQ10, a naturally occurring enzyme found in every cell of the body and dubbed the ‘biochemical spark plug’ due to its essential role in energy production.It also helps the liver to break down toxins and is a potent antioxidant – which can help build immunity.Co-enzymeQ10 is produced naturally in the body  – although levels decline with age – and food sources include seafood, meats and peanuts. You might benefit from a top up in supplement form like Healthspan’s Co-enzyme Q10 or Ubiquinol ‘body ready’ Q10.