Flu Shot Estimated Only 20% Effective Again, and New Study Shows Effectiveness Diminishes Quickly

This fall’s flu vaccine is estimated to be 20 percent effective for the dominant circulating strain of influenza A, which is the same efficacy as shots given the past two years.

A new study of 6,610 human flu sequences predicts that this fall’s flu vaccine will likely have the same reduced efficacy against the dominant circulating strain of influenza A as the vaccine given in 2016 and 2017 due to viral mutations related to vaccine production in eggs.” – Science Daily

Rice University researchers predicted the efficacy using a method called pEpitope, which is a fast and inexpensive way of estimating the effectiveness of a flu vaccine. The latest pEpitope study indicates that the pEpitope method is more accurate than the standard ferret tests.

The vaccine has been changed for 2018-19, but unfortunately it still contains two critical mutations that arise from the egg-based vaccine production process.  Our study found that these same mutations halved the efficacy of flu vaccines in the past two seasons, and we expect they will lower the efficacy of the next vaccine in a similar manner.” – John W. Cox, Rice University, Professor in Biochemical and Genetic Engineering

Another study shows flu vaccine effectiveness wanes over time. The risk of getting the flu climbs about 16% every 28 days after getting vaccinated.

That means many people could be less protected during the height of flu season if they get vaccinated at the beginning of September.” – Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy

We’re wondering if they will start recommending multiple flu shots per flu season soon.

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More doctors say men should think twice about prostate cancer screening

Reuters reports that an international panel of experts has concluded, “Most men shouldn’t get routine prostate cancer screening because the potential benefits are small and there are clear harms.”

The prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test is the test used screen for prostate cancer. Experts researched studies with a total of more than 700,000 men and found that if screening reduces prostate cancer deaths at all, it’s negligible. The data indicates that PSA screening risks outweigh the benefits but despite that, the report states that those with a family history of prostate cancer likely still benefit from screening.

Although the results of this study suggest screening is not worthwhile, several guidelines advocate offering screening in some cases.” – Prostate cancer screening with PSA test

Reuters quotes co-author Dr. Philipp Dahm of the University of Minnesota as saying

Most, but not all, well-informed men that fully understand the trade-offs would choose not to undergo screening.”

Only those men who place more value in even a small reduction of prostate cancer mortality – these may be men at higher risk because of a family history or because of African descent, or those simply very concerned about ruling out a cancer diagnosis – may opt for screening. Shared decision-making is needed to help them arrive at a decision consistent with their own values and preferences.”

Chances are, everyone has cancer. Most men with prostate cancer have low-risk tumors that haven’t spread outside the prostate. Cancer screening for prostrates has gotten so good that men are being discovered with extremely low-risk cancers and then being aggressively treated for it with risks that far outweigh the cancer itself.

For the last few years, the media has gone back and forth on whether or not regular prostate screening benefits outweigh the risks. Our position is don’t drink, don’t smoke, keep your gut healthy, and stay away from doctors unless it’s an emergency.

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How To Eliminate Morgellons

When Morgellons disease was first recognized most doctors believed it to be a delusional disorder, that it didn’t exist, that is was most likely a combination of delusional parasitosis and obsessive picking of the skin. Doctors told their patients that Morgellons was all in their head, except for the skin lesions caused by self-abuse. Fortunately, scientists did some research. Recent studies have shown that the filaments accompanying Morgellons are composed of keratin and collagen and that is caused by the proliferation of keratinocytes and fibroblasts in epithelial tissue. Some researchers believe that the cause of this disease is an infection from a tick bite.

The study proved that filaments are not cellulose as found in cotton, linen, or other plant-based textile fibers, or chitin which would indicate fungal cells or insect exoskeletons.

They are biofilaments of human cellular origin produced by epithelial cells and stem from deeper layers of the epidermis, the upper layers of the dermis, and the root sheath of hair follicles.” – NCBI

Though studies are showing that the disease is real, conventional medicine is, of course, slow to acknowledge the disease. Googling “what causes Morgellons disease” gets you this non-answer:

Morgellons disease is a delusional disorder that leads to the belief that one has parasites or foreign material moving in, or coming out of, the skin. Morgellons disease is a little-known disorder that is often associated with nonspecific skin, nerve, and psychiatric symptoms. Some refer to it as a fiber disease.” – MedicineNet.com

But, the next article is titled, Studies show that infections–not delusion–cause Morgellons disease.

Morgellons involves many symptoms common to auto-immune sufferers including:

  • chronic, severe fatigue
  • joint pain
  • neurological problems
  • memory and cognitive disruptions (including brain fog)
  • mood changes
  • crawling sensations on and under the skin
  • the sensation of itching or biting
  • skin eruptions or lesions with little black specks on or under the skin
  • filaments or threads under the skin and erupting from the skin

Morgellons and Lyme disease have a lot in common. Both were thought to be mostly psychosomatic. Both are thought to be transmitted from a tick bite. Both are autoimmune diseases that cause the first four symptoms listed above. Both may be caused by Borrelia spirochetes (corkscrew-shaped bacteria associated with tick-borne diseases). And both can be healed through the same means.

Like many of our readers, I first heard about Morgellons Disease back in 2015 when singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell was hospitalized for the disease. In 2010, she told the Los Angeles Times, “Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm: they cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable or mineral.”

We published an article about the disease in 2015 and then I received more than a dozen calls and emails asking for help within a couple of months. Within the last few years, I’ve helped teach more than twenty people how to regain their health and rid their body of all Morgellons symptoms. The good news is that every single person was able to eliminate the disease.

I suspected a Morgellons was a fungus. It looks like I was wrong about that. But, whether it’s Lyme, Morgellons, diabetes, cancer, or depression, the only treatment that works is holistic with primary emphasis on gut health. The reason for this is that an unhealthy gut overwhelms the immune system, whereas a healthy immune system (one that is not overwhelmed) can rid the body of almost any disease.

Below is a list of recommended supplements, but the right diet is absolutely imperative. Don’t skimp on the diet!

Morgellons Diet and Supplement Protocol

Here are three articles I put together on diet. This is indicative of how my family eats every single day.

We start off with cranberry lemonade and a huge salad every morning. For lunch, we sometimes do a smoothie or we snack on some nuts and/or fruit or we just finish our massive 11-cup salads. For dinner, we always cook from scratch, which takes preparation and time, but it gets easier. Rice and beans, quinoa, lentils, millet, oatmeal, and amaranth are common staples for our cooked meals. We add lots of raw vegetables and herbs to our dinners as well, for instance, the rice and beans go great with chopped tomatoes and avocado, diced onions and garlic, and shredded turmeric and ginger. Eat raw herbs and cooked herbs together for maximum health benefits.

This is truly a lifestyle, not a diet, and it’s one we live every day. You may not need to go to this extreme to rid your body of disease, but I find that most who are dealing with chronic illness need to take it this far, at least for a few months.

The salads are the most important part of this protocol! In fact, they are the most important part of all of my protocols. More than supplements, more than anything save getting enough water, the right kind of salads are imperative. Eat lots of salads with tons of different vegetables and herbs. Make sure they have at least 15 different vegetables and herbs. If you could see what packing your gut with salad does to your ecosystem under a microscope, you’d understand why I’m so passionate about salads. There is nothing more beneficially life-changing than developing a salad habit when the salads are big and diverse and homemade. They do more than any supplement or any other food to clean the intestinal walls of filth and develop a beneficial gut ecosystem. And that is the key to good health. A beneficial gut microbiome is a fortress against undigested proteins and unwanted pathogens. When the gut is not well these intestinal walls allow undigested proteins and pathogens to seep into the bloodstream wrecking havoc on the immune system. Salads feed the right gut microbes and the right microbes build a healthy microbiome.

The cranberry lemonade helps keep the kidneys and liver working optimally. These organs typically get sluggish quickly when lots of pathogens are killed. If salads are #1, this cranberry lemonade is #2, and supplements are a distant #3.

For those with very serious gut issues, legumes and grains will be a no-no for the first few weeks, but when enough salad has been consumed, the gut should be able to reap many benefits from cooked foods like the dinner meals aforementioned.

Sweet fruit should be severely limited, and for the very ill, avoided until the gut is working better. Grapefruit, cranberry, avocado, lime, and lemon do not fall under this category.

Drinking fruit juice, even fresh homemade fruit juice, is not much better for you than refined sugar, so don’t make the common mistake of thinking a fresh-juice fast is going to get you well. It has its benefits, but it doesn’t usually rid the body of chronic disease.

Now that diet is covered, here’s the supplement part:

Supplement Stack #1 – On an empty stomach, twice a day, early morning and late night

  • Abzorb (this is a probiotic and a systemic enzyme)
  • 2 cups of cranberry lemonade
  • Optional: Add a serving of the MycoPhyto Complex
  • Optional: Additional systemic enzymes (systemic enzymes break down proteins that should not be in the body)

Supplement Stack #2 – With meals, three times a day:

Also, take absorb with any food that is difficult to digest.

If you can’t afford many supplements, or are overwhelmed by this information and don’t know where to begin, contact me. I don’t ever charge to talk to people.

Protocol

6am – Supplement Stack #1

Take two Abzorb with a big glass of cranberry lemonade. This is the right time to take systemic enzymes if you chose to take them.

9am – Supplement Stack #2

Salad time! The MycoPhyto Complex company recommends to take on an empty stomach, but I like to take it with salads and smoothies too.

12pm – Supplement Stack #2

Homemade Smoothie Time! If you’re extremely ill you may need to wait on the smoothies and just double up on the salads for the first week, but I’ve found that many people who were suffering from a plethora of ailments and having trouble recovering responded very well to pineapple smoothies. Pineapple smoothies (made with fresh pineapple), like the ones I have recipes for in the above link, pack a massive amount of enzymes and can help break down a lot of junk in the gut, while delivering large amounts of nutrition. But, fruit smoothies have plenty of sugar, so it’s a good time to repeat the supplements from 9am.

Use pineapple, coconut water, water, cranberry juice, or if you can withstand some sugar try granny smith apple juice, but don’t use sweet fruit juices for smoothies. Always use fresh pineapple when using pineapple. Always add as many vegetables and herbs as you can. I also suggest adding Total Nutrition Formula or something similar (here’s a recipe). If you want to make a smoothie without pineapple, I recommend coconut water as the liquid. Check out our smoothie article for more ideas.

3pm – Week 1 – Supplement Stack #2

3pm – Week 2 – Supplement Stack #1

6pm – Supplement Stack #2

Dinner time! Everything from scratch, nothing pre-made in any way, all whole food ingredients. See this article for more info and don’t hesitate to contact me.

9pm – Supplement Stack #1

Finish off the night with probiotic support and leave them alone for the night to do their thing.

Three More Supplements to Consider – Die-0ff, Heavy Metal Detox, & Bowel Movements

If a Herxheimer reaction is a concern (die-off) be sure to drink plenty of cranberry lemonade and I also recommend adding Total Nutrition Formula and the Intestinal Detox. Here’s a recipe to make your own Total Nutrition. This way you’ll get bentonite clay, charcoal, chlorella, spirulina, and more, which are all great for mitigating the die-off effects of a Candida detox, and they also chelate heavy metals.

You can take the Total Nutrition Formula with the smoothie or sprinkle it on the salad (or choke it down with water), and take the Intestinal Detox anytime throughout the day as directed.

If you’re not defecating easily and at least twice daily, I also highly recommend the Intestinal Cleanse. It kills parasites and moves the bowels better than anything else on the market that I know of, by far. I recommend taking it with the antimicrobials.

Conclusion

Morgellons is scary. It often causes otherwise social people to become unemployed shut-ins. Unless the doctor is abreast of the latest science, they will likely treat someone with Morgellons as if they’re mad. It’s a really hard thing to live with. Medical science does not yet really understand it, but understanding a disease doesn’t typically help big pharma to cure a disease. The good news is that every single person that I’ve worked with was able to completely eliminate all of the symptoms. It takes a few months, and a lot of discipline, but it’s very doable. The first step is to heal the gut.




Antidepressant Use Connected To Antibiotic-Resistance Superbugs

The more fluoxetine an E.coli microbe is exposed to, the more likely that bacteria is to develop multidrug resistance, says a new study from the University of Queensland in Australia. What is fluoxetine, and why is this a big deal?

Fluoxetine is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) and the active ingredient in some of the world’s most prescribed anti-depressants like Prozac and Sarafem. E.coli bacteria were exposed to fluoxetine for 30 days in different concentrations. The bacteria were then exposed to antibiotics like chloramphenicol, amoxicillin, and tetracycline. The microbes exposed to the fluoxetine showed an increased resistance to antibiotics that was 50 million-fold higher than the experiment control. The more the bacteria were exposed to the SSRI, the more quickly the drug resistance developed. Jianhua Guo is one of the authors of the study.

Fluoxetine is a very persistent and well-documented drug in the wider environment, where strong environmental levels can induce multi-drug resistance…This discovery provides strong evidence that fluoxetine directly causes multi-antibiotic resistance via genetic mutation.”

Related: Sugar Leads to Depression – World’s First Trial Proves Gut and Brain are Linked (Protocol Included)

Ubiquitous Fluoxetine

Fluoxetine is an incredibly popular drug. Healthcare practitioners issued more than 28 million prescriptions for it in 2018. It’s almost always among the top 30 medications prescribed worldwide. It’s everywhere, and the link between the antidepressant and antibiotic-resistant bacteria could have serious consequences.

This study is a lab-based study, and it’s fair to wonder how the drug and the bacteria interact in a real-world scenario. Scientists don’t know. When a drug this popular has the potential to hasten the evolution of multidrug-resistant bacteria though, we need more studies.

In People

Most antidepressants are taken for longer than a year. But even a short period on fluoxetine can give harmful bacteria the time they need to develop resistance. Prozac takes longer to exit the body than other SSRI medications like Paxil or Zoloft. While those examples 99 percent out of the body after 5 and 6 days respectively, Prozac takes nearly a month. These medications “fix” problems by disrupting the endocrine system. A disruption like that allows infections to flourish in the body.

Related: How To Heal the Gut

Not to Be Depressing…

We’re not ready for the level of antibiotic-resistant bacteria developing in our society. We know that antibiotics fed to food animals are a major source of those developments. Yet U.S. farmers are still using antibiotics regarded as “crucial to human health.” The authors of this study found that triclosan, an ingredient in antibacterial soaps, causes antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Now antidepressants have been linked to multidrug resistance.

We aren’t taking confirmed causes of this health seriously, and we are constantly finding new potential causes we hadn’t even considered. It’s a recipe for disaster.

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Five Ways to Cure Athlete’s Foot

Athlete’s foot thrives in damp, warm areas and can spread from person to person. Athlete’s foot fungus is often contracted from pool areas, public bathrooms, and locker rooms, hence the name, “Athlete’s Foot.” Ringworm and Candida are two types of fungus that most commonly cause athlete’s foot. There are many types of Candida and many types of ringworm and many other fungi that can infect us in many different ways. Fungi like feet because feet are generally within socks and shoes, which make for the kind of warm, moist environment preferable to fungi.

Prevention

The prevailing opinion is that anyone can catch athlete’s foot, but this is not true. Susceptibility to outer fungal infections like athlete’s foot indicate a weak immune system which indicates an unbalanced gut – a gut full of Candida, which leads to an abundance of Candida in the body. The best way to prevent athlete’s foot is to keep a healthy and balanced gut. We have more on gut health near the end of the article, and here are some other preventive measures that will also help accelerate healing as well:

  • Keep toenails short
  • Change socks regularly
  • Rotate shoes
  • Don’t go barefoot in a gym locker room or pool area, wear flip-flops
  • Dry feet thoroughly after bathing; especially between your toes
  • Give feet time to breathe
  • Put a few drops of essential oils in each shoe every day into the toe area
  • Open a probiotic capsule and put contents into each shoe at the toe area

Socks and shoes cause feet to stay moist and dark with little to no airflow. Fungi love these conditions. If you’re dealing with athlete’s foot, give your feet some time to breathe outside of shoes and socks. For instance, wear sandals in the house, relax with bare feet on the autumn, keep your floors, feet, and sandals clean and dry,  and go to bed without socks. If feet sweat regularly, even outside of socks and shoes, this is a sign the endocrine system needs repair.

Must Read: Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

Topical treatments don’t get to the root of the problem but combine three or more of the following topical solutions with an efficient gut protocol like the one listed below and you should be able to get rid of athlete’s foot fast. Keep the gut healthy and be rid of it for good. We don’t recommend baking soda or cornstarch. These two ingredients can in some cases make the fungus infection worse.

Essential Oils

Essential oils are often applied undiluted, directly to the skin, which is effective, but this can also cause pretty serious pain to broken skin. Other options include making a foot bath and making a topical solution with essential oils with a carrier like aloe vera, or coconut oil (or both). You can also use avocado oil, olive oil, or any other healthy oil as well, but I like the antifungal properties and the thickness of coconut oil and I also like the soothing aspects of aloe.

Add 5-10 drops of your preferred essential oil to a one to two tablespoons of coconut oil or aloe vera (gel or juice).  The gel is easier to use, obviously, but it’s best if you’ve got the whole plant, fresh and unprocessed. An easy way to use this solution is to apply the carrier on the foot near the infection but about a half an inch away from any broken or irritated skin, and then add a few drops of the essential oil, mix, and repeat until the desired amount of essential oil has been applied. Then, spread throughout the infected area.

Apply this treatment at least three times a day (five or more for best results) until the infection is gone.

Top antifungal essential oils

  • Lemongrass
  • Satureja Montana
  • Tea tree oil
  • Oil of oregano
  • Thyme
  • Rosemary
  • Peppermint
  • Lemon
  • Clove
  • Garlic
  • Lavender
  • Geranium
  • Cinnamon
  • Citronella
  • Eucalyptus

Lemongrass and Satureja Montana have come out on top for antifungal properties in multiple studies comparing the antimicrobial effectiveness of essential oils, but fungi are very adaptive, so mix it up. Try one or two on the first few rounds and then try one or two others on the next application.

Foot Baths

Another option is to soak your feet in an antifungal bath. Forty drops of essential oils mixed with water can make for a potent antifungal footbath, and you can also add these essential oils to any of the following footbath solutions. Don’t forget to dry your feet thoroughly after soaking. Ideally, these soaks are done two times a day at least, preferably three to five, until all signs of the infection are gone.

Epson Salt

  1. Add a half a cup of Epsom salt to a small, suitable container for your feet
  2. Soak the infected foot or feet for 15 minutes, three times a day

Or, better yet, do an Epson salt bath; soak your whole body in a tub. And of course, add your favorite essential oils.

Vinegar

Vinegar is acidic. Fungi that commonly infects us (including Candida) don’t like acidity. But vinegar can cause pain to broken and otherwise damaged skin, so beware. But it usually is very effective.

  1. Mix one part apple cider vinegar with 3 parts warm water in a small, suitable container for your feet
  2. Soak the infected foot or feet for 15 minutes, three times a day
  3. Once finished, dry feet completely

Feel free to combine essential oils with vinegar and epson salt. Do not mix hydrogen peroxide with vinegar

Hydrogen peroxide with iodine

This is our least favorite solution. It’s messy, it stains, and it can be very painful with damaged skin. But a recent study did find that the combination kills fungi effectively, and using these two ingredients together are much more effective than using them separately.

  • Pour hydrogen peroxide into a suitable container for the feet
  • Pour enough to cover infected areas of the foot when submerged
  • Add a tablespoon of Iodine or about a quarter cup of an iodine solution, available at most drugstores

The foot bath solutions can also be applied topically. So can the following herbs and other supplements.

Garlic

Garlic is going to hurt damaged skin but it also accelerates healing.

  1. Crush a clove of garlic and mix it with an oil to apply topically
  2. Apply the paste to the infected area and leave it alone for 30 minutes.
  3. Wash off the area and dry completely

Supplements For Topical Use

SF722

This is the best fungal killer on the market. It will burn for a little bit, and it’s intense, but the pain goes away pretty quickly, and I know of nothing that works faster or better to kill the fungus. The other benefit of SF722 is that fungi cannot build up a resistance to it like it can with other treatments. Try taking five capsules of SF722 three times a day (fifteen total) and break open a gel tab to apply topically three or more times a day as well.

Probiotic

A probiotic capsule can be opened and used topically. This provides some immediate relief and it’s not painful at all. I recommend rotating this with SF722 throughout the day. I like Abzorb, which is a probiotic and an enzyme – both kill fungi.

Colloidal SilverOil of OreganoPau D’ArcoCoptis Chinensis

Much less painful than the other treatments but I don’t think it’s as effective either. The other herbs listed here are very effective against fungal infections but can cause some pain when applied to broken skin.

Heal the Gut

If you have athlete’s foot you’ve got a body with an abundance of Candida. This is also true if you have recently had a vaginal yeast infection, a white tongue, allergies, or pretty much any chronic inflammatory illness. If you suffer from athlete’s foot, Lyme disease, AIDS, or diabetes, the first step is to heal the gut. Here is a supplements stack for fungal elimination, and articles below that I recommend to help balance the gut. Supplements can help a lot, and SF722 is the best one to get if you can only afford one, but a healthy diet is crucial. If you think your diet is healthy, but you deal with chronic illness, I contend you need an even better diet. See the article links below for more on that.

Fungal Supplement Stack – Knock Out Yeast, Candida, Mold, Fungus

The first three should be plenty for most people, but for really prominent fungal issues or for impatient people with a bigger budget I’d recommend all of these:

Gut Health Articles




Pet Store Puppies Cause Multi-State Bacterial Infection

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have released their investigation into a string of multidrug-resistant campylobacter infections that affected 118 people from 2016 to 2018. The cause? Puppies sold at 6 different pet stores across 18 different states.

The first cases of Campylobacter jejuni were identified in Florida. After reviewing the data, scientists linked them to a national pet store chain based in Ohio. At the end of a collaborative investigation between the CDC and local state health departments, where officials from six states collected puppy fecal samples, antibiotic records, and traceback information, 118 people were found to have contracted campylobacter from the pet store puppies. Twenty-nine of the people affected were employees of the 6 pet companies linked to the infections. The specific bacteria isolated in this investigation was traced back to 25 different breeders and 8 distributors of dogs.

Shoddy Practices

Of the 149 puppies investigated for this study, 142 of them had received at least one course of antibiotics. The majority of research into antibiotic-resistance and animals has focused on animals raised for food like cattle and chicken. In fact, the bacteria that caused this infection, Campylobacter jejuni, is one of the most common causes of food poisoning in the U.S. and Europe and most commonly found on raw poultry. But this discovery suggests that the same issue we’re experiencing with factory-farming could be taking place with pets, especially those raised in puppy mills.

Recommended: How To Heal Your Gut

Puppy mills and unscrupulous breeders are notorious for poor living conditions for the animals that live there. Dogs are kept in overcrowded, unsanitary cages for nearly 24 hours a day. The conditions in these frequently unlicensed facilities mirror those in your typical factory farm. This is one of the first studies to suggest that those comparisons extend to potentially dangerous pathogens found at both kinds of farms.

The Future

This outbreak shows another way antibiotics have snuck into our daily life. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria pose one of the most potent threats to public health in the future. Within the next thirty years, these microbes will likely kill more people than cancer. There also aren’t new antibiotics in development. Managing antibiotic resistance through the avoidance of unnecessary antibiotics is more crucial than ever before.

Recommended: After Taking Antibiotics, This Is What You Need To Do To Restore Healthy Intestinal Flora

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BPA Linked to Insulin Resistance, Diabetes in Humans

A new study now links “safe” levels of Bisphenol-A (BPA) and the development of type-2 diabetes, insulin resistance, and other metabolic disorders. The Food and Drug Administration considers BPA safe at oral exposure levels of 50 micrograms per every kilogram of body weight every day. Published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, researchers based at the University of Missouri wanted to determine if humans exposed to BPA exhibited the same symptoms as mice. Frederick vom Saal, an endocrinologist at the MU College of Arts and Science and co-author on the study, thinks this study provides a compelling argument that they might.

This exploratory study needs to be replicated because it suggests that BPA exposure at a dose considered safe by U.S. regulators could alter glucose-stimulated insulin responses in humans…Our study is an initial step toward investigating whether exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals, such as BPA, contributes to insulin resistance and eventually Type 2 diabetes.”

Methods

For this study, researchers gave non-diabetic men and postmenopausal women oral doses of the FDA’s safe level of BPA. They also administered a placebo. Those who were given the BPA had altered insulin responses. Those results occurred both when scientists used an oral glucose tolerance test and a hyperglycemic clamp.

Related: How to Detox From Plastics and Other Endocrine Disruptors

Bad News BPA

Most people know BPA is bad, even if they don’t know why it’s bad. In addition to insulin resistance, the chemical has been associated with inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, cancer, and a whole host of hormonal issues. It’s been banned in the majority of children’s products, but the alternatives to BPA aren’t much better. A recently released Washington State University study found that BPA alternatives like bisphenol-S caused genetic abnormalities similar to those caused by the product they’re replacing.

Related: How to Heal the Gut

Even something as simple as a cash register receipt can be a big deal. The BPA found in register receipts is unbounded, meaning it is loose and more readily absorbed through the skin. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency conducted receipts tests in 2014 and found that the thermal paper used in 18 hospitality business had from 54–79 micrograms of BPA per square centimeter of paper. That’s more than the accepted safe oral dose of BPA.

Death By a Thousand Cuts

At this point, it’s plastics. There are several different types of plastic, and not all of them have inspired a cause for concern. Part of that can be attributed to a desire from good enough by plastics manufacturers and government officials. But good enough has so far led to a steady increase in mystery illnesses that linger and seriously impact a person’s quality of life.

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