It’s easier to break something than it is to fix it…and the way we take care of ourselves is broken. It’s broken to the point that a new study published in Pediatrics, the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, states that more obese children and young adults should consider weight-loss surgery as a treatment. After doing a followup with patients up to twelve years after weight loss surgery, study authors found that patients’ Body Mass Index (BMI) decreased an average of 29 percent and instances of diabetes and high blood pressure significantly dropped.

Why Weight Loss Surgery?

According to the Centers for Disease Control, obesity affects 13.7 million children between the ages of 2 and 19 in the U.S. Data shows that almost one in five children in the United States is obese. Obesity is the number one chronic illness in U.S. children, and it can lead to serious health problems later in life like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal disorders, and cancer.

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

It’s impossible to attribute the obesity epidemic to one factor, though there are likely culprits. In the United States, portion sizes are out of control. Look no further than fast food, something that more than 1 in 3 Americans eats on a given day. A McDonald’s hamburger in 1955 topped out at 3.7 ounces. Today, a Quarter Pounder Deluxe is 9.2 ounces. Kids are being served more, so they’re eating more.

But at the same time, they’re also eating less. Nearly two-thirds of global calories come from four crops: wheat, corn, soy, and rice. In addition to the lack of diversity, most of those crops end up in highly processed foods. These are the foods that are widely available, from gas stations to grocery stores. Children eating a western diet are eating more highly processed, nutritionally deficient food than they have at any time in the past.

Weight Loss Surgery as an Option

Reducing obesity requires a multi-pronged strategy: get educated, stop eating unhealthy food, and start eating vegetables. But broccoli is not an inherently crave-able food. It’s especially unappealing to a palate used to an endless supply of processed cereals, nuggets, and gummy fruit snacks. Children are not known for their ability to choose long-term benefits over immediate gratification.

From that viewpoint, weight-loss surgery is a viable option for childhood obesity. The most commonly performed weight-loss surgeries performed on children and adolescents are gastric bypass surgery and adjustable gastric band surgery. These surgeries are generally successful, as most estimates find that 80 percent of patients experience an improved quality of life.

Related: Stop Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

Widening the Gap

Bariatric surgery can make a difference in the lives of obese children, but it doesn’t address how the child got to that point in the first place. It also ignores the growing portion of the population that cannot afford to pay for a $20,000 surgery. It is likely that the majority of children who would benefit from this surgery are not going to be able to afford it or the maintenance that follows it, yet lower-income kids are more likely to be overweight or obese. According to the CDC, “the prevalence of obesity decreased with increasing level of education of the household head among children and adolescents aged 2-19 years.” The children that can afford weight-loss surgery are less likely to need it because their parents will likely be better informed, they will have better access to education and healthy food, and they will have healthcare coverage. Surgery is one way to lose weight, but it doesn’t address why losing weight was needed in the first place.

Sources:

• More Obese Children Should Get Weight-Loss Surgery, Doctors Say – Live Science
• More severely obese kids should get surgery, MD group says – AP
• Pediatric Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery: Evidence, Barriers, and Best Practices – Pediatrics
• Childhood Obesity Facts – CDC
• More than 1 in 3 adults eat fast food on a given day, CDC survey finds – USA Today
• Childhood and Adolescent Obesity – ASMBS

The numbers are in! Lawsuits against the world’s most popular herbicide, Round-up, have increased dramatically from 18,400 cases in July to 42,000 cases in October.

German company Bayer AG purchased agricultural behemoth Monsanto in June of 2018, and since then the pharmaceutical company has suffered three significant losses in rulings against glyphosate. Due to these, Bayer has seen a significant rise in the number of claims filed against the herbicide. The company comments in a statement shared with Reuters…

With the substantial increase in plaintiff advertising this year, we expect to see a significant surge in the number of plaintiff filings over the third quarter.”

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In Order

The first verdict was bit of a shock.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate, the active ingredient in Round-up, as “probably carcinogenic in humans” in March of 2015. The United States federal government, especially the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), doesn’t agree with that status. When the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment declared glyphosate as carcinogenic to humans, the EPA went as far as to issue a news release to notify companies that the agency would not approve product labels stating that glyphosate causes cancer. In light of that opposition, arguing to a jury that the herbicide causes cancer when the federal government disagrees would be a fool’s errand. Yet Dewayne Johnson received a verdict for $289 million dollars in San Francisco County superior court in August 2018 (that award would later be cut down to $78 million). Lawyers estimate that Bayer’s brand new acquisition is facing 4,000 similar cases.

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

Those numbers didn’t seem to bother the company. CEO Werner Baumann went on various news shows in February 2019 to discuss the company’s 2018 stats and reported positive results. During a CNBC interview, Baumann said the company was optimistic looking into 2019. According to the interviewer, Bayer was facing 11,000 lawsuits.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/02/27/bayer-ceo-says-company-is-confident-about-growth-in-2019.html

It seems Baumann’s optimism was misplaced, as Bayer lost another California lawsuit during March of 2019. The plaintiff was awarded $80 million (that amount would later be reduced by the presiding judge to $26 million). This decision had clear consequences. Retail giant Costco stopped selling Round-up, and Bayer stock prices dropped almost $4,000 in less than two weeks.

May 2019 brought another verdict against the company. The amount of money awarded to the two plaintiffs increased significantly, with the jury awarding each person $1 billion in damages (that sum would later be reduced by a different judge to $86.7 million). Bayer’s second-quarter report in July 2019 stated that there were 18,400 lawsuits in regard to glyphosate and cancer.

Now we have over 42,000 people involved in lawsuits against Bayer and glyphosate. The number of glyphosate lawsuits has more than doubled in the past four months. The judge presiding over the second verdict against Bayer, Vince Chhabria has mandated confidential mediation aimed at settling the 900 cases he currently oversees, but it is unlikely that will be enough to slow down the number of lawsuits accumulating.

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Decisions

This doesn’t seem like a big deal. There have only been three verdicts against the company. While juries awarded the plaintiffs substantial amounts, all three judgments have been later reduced. Bayer seems to have accepted this as the cost of doing business.

The increase in lawsuits against glyphosate is a positive thing. It’s a necessary thing. But it isn’t nearly enough. Roundup has been on the market since 1974. The amount of plaintiffs seems small when you consider the damage that had been done by forty-five years of using this product. Even more importantly, Bayer won’t care until they see this affect their bottom line – their stock prices. It remains to be seen if that will entice them to do the right thing for the environment and human health.

Sources:

• Roundup weedkiller: 42,000 plaintiffs sue Bayer over glyphosate – Deutsche Welle
• Number of Bayer Lawsuits May Increase to 45,000 – Mercola
• Bayer expects significant surge in number of U.S. glyphosate cases – Reuters
• EPA Takes Action to Provide Accurate Risk Information to Consumers, Stop False Labeling on Products – EPA.gov
• U.S. judge appoints Ken Feinberg mediator for Bayer Roundup settlement talks – Reuters

Neonicotinoids, a class of pesticide linked to the decline of bee populations worldwide, have also been linked to declining bird populations. Researchers from the University of Saskeccthwan exposed a population of migrating white-crowned sparrows to imidacloprid (a neonicotinoid manufactured by Bayer). Birds given the highest dosage lost significant percentages of their body weight and necessary fat storage with hours of exposure. The same group of birds also deviated from usual eating patterns, and many of the sparrows took an extra 3.5 days to continue their migration. This is a big deal for bird populations. According to Christy Morrissey, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Saskatchewan and a co-author of the study,

There is a major systematic population decline in farmland birds, and these commonly-used pesticides are an identifying mechanism.”

What It Means

Migration is a critical and dangerous time in a bird’s life. There are increased numbers of predators, and timing migration correctly is crucial to successful reproduction. Birds that arrive later than the others will arrive to find that many mates and quality nesting spots have already been chosen. Neonicotinoid exposure caused many birds to delay their migration by an extra 3.5 days, more than enough to negatively affect migrating bird populations. How is the insecticide doing that?

This study found that birds exposed to imidacloprid stopped eating and lost up to six percent of their overall body weight and about seventeen percent of their fat reserves. The stored fat is especially important for migration, as it provides the energy necessary for long migrations. The research team in charge of this study previously reported on the detrimental effects of imidacloprid on birds in 2017, where the birds experienced weight loss and disorientation. Four of the birds in that study died within 24 hours of receiving their last dose of the pesticide, with researchers euthanizing two due to breathing difficulties and foaming at the crop (a pocket in the throat where birds temporarily store food).

Unpleasant, Yet Unsurprising

The majority of research and concern surrounding neonicotinoids has dealt with bees. The European Union voted to ban these types of pesticides with the exception of use in covered greenhouses in order to protect bee populations. Major Canadian cities like Montreal and Vancouver have also banned the insecticide. Bees exposed to neonicotinoids are reported to have more difficulties surviving the winter, maintaining their hive and larvae, experienced problems reproducing, and have compromised immune systems, among other issues.

A 2019 study also found that bees exposed to imidaclopridexperienced flight difficulties for bees in a controlled environment. Like this recent study on birds, researchers found that the bees experienced disruptions in the usual flight patterns. Whereas the birds waited until they were more able to complete their migration, the bees in the study from Imperial College London exhibited hyperactive behaviors for the first portion of their flight which then dropped off, resulting in shorter flights. Daniel Kenna is the first author of the study,

Neonicotinoids are similar to nicotine in the way they stimulate neurons, and so a ‘rush’ or hyperactive burst of activity does make sense…However, our results suggest there may be a cost to this initial rapid flight, potentially through increased energy expenditure or a lack of motivation, in the form of reduced flight endurance.”

Regulating these Pesticides

Neonicotinoids are one of the widely used groups of pesticides in the world. In the U.S., they’ve been sprayed on up to 95% of corn and canola, as well as other crops like soybeans, cotton, sorghum, sugar beets, cereal grains, rice, nuts, wine grapes, and assorted fruits and vegetables. These chemicals have been proven to disrupt bee and bird populations, crucial parts of a working ecosystem. In 2017, the rusty patched bumblebee became the first bee on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) endangered species list, but little else has changed in the U.S. In fact, things are likely to get worse.

The previous administration’s FWS announced plans to phase out neonicotinoid usage by January of 2016. The Trump administration reversed that ban in 2018. The Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of sulfoxaflor, another pesticide shown to harm bee populations, confirms that this administration is unconcerned with the damage these insecticides do to our necessary pollinators.

Sources:

• Decline of migrating birds could be partly due to pesticides – New Scientist
• A Widespread Pesticide Causes Weight Loss and Delayed Migration in Songbirds – Audubon
• Common pesticide makes migrating birds anorexic – Science
• Two Widely Used Pesticides Found to Disorient and Sicken Migrating Songbirds – Audubon
• Bees Exposed to Neonicotinoid Pesticide Become Hyperactive Before Crashing Out, Reducing their Ability to Forage – Newsweek
• Trump administration sued over controversial rollback of insecticide ban – The New Food Economy
• Trump administration to approve pesticide that may harm bees – The Guardian

The researchers in the Mayo Clinic journal article studied 309 men and women between January 1, 2000, and October 21, 2014, with an average age of just over 46. All had been tested and newly diagnosed with celiac.

Several micronutrients were low in each patient, but a zinc deficiency eclipsed them all. In fact, 59.4% of the patients were found to be zinc deficient, and to varying but lesser degrees, deficiencies in the other nutrients, including copper.

Related: Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases

Zinc is the second most abundant trace mineral in our bodies. We don’t store it so we need to ingest zinc regularly. Zinc is needed for the proper function of more than 100 enzymes in your body. Zinc helps us digest food and synthesize proteins, vitamins, and other minerals.

Our study suggests that the presentation of celiac disease has changed from the classic weight loss, anemia and diarrhea, with increasing numbers of patients diagnosed with nonclassical symptoms. Micronutrient deficiencies remain common in adults, however, and should be assessed.” Assessment should include vitamin D, iron, folic acid, vitamin B12, zinc and copper.

Dr. Bledsoe, the study’s primary author

Zinc deficiency was observed most frequently at diagnosis, the study says, with 59.4% of patients having a deficiency. Other deficiencies included iron, vitamin D, copper, vitamin B12 and folate.

Related: Gluten Intolerance, Wheat Allergies, and Celiac Disease – It’s More Complicated Than You Think

Zinc is absorbed throughout the small intestine. Celiac disease damages the small intestinal. It is also very likely that zinc is needed for gluten digestion. If that’s true, a zinc deficiency would create a negative feedback loop with gluten digestion issues.

Vitamin D, copper, zinc, and iron are imperative for a healthy microbiome. And, gut bacteria play a key role in how we utilize copper, zinc, iron, and B vitamins. Smoking inhibits the uptake of minerals including the aforementioned while it reduces vitamin levels including vitamin D and B vitamins.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut 

People who smoke alter their gut microbiomes substantially. Studies show smoking causes many vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Tobacco users do not digest food as well, and an inability to properly digest gluten is more likely in someone who smokes.

In my experience, people who are dealing with autoimmune disease cannot digest gluten well. Autoimmune disease is synonymous with an impaired gut microbiome.

Additional Sources:

• Celiac Disease and Nutrient Deficiencies: How Are Your Zinc Levels? – Nourished Health
• Micronutrient deficiencies common at time of celiac disease diagnosis – Science Daily
• Powerful research tool uncovers link between gut microbiota and copper – UCalgary UToday
• Zinc Uptake by Lactic Acid Bacteria – Hindawi

Yesterday, an Oklahoma judge Thad Balkman, of Cleveland County District Court, ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $572.1 million to the state for fueling an opioid epidemic with deceptive marketing practices.

The shares for Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) were up after the ruling because the sum is said to be substantially less than shareholders had expected. The state’s attorney general was seeking $17 billion.

The expectation was this was going to be a $1.5 billion to $2 billion fine. $572 million is a much lower number than had been feared.”

Jared Holz, healthcare strategist for Jefferies & Co.

The state’s lawyers said Johnson & Johnson is an opioid “kingpin,” arguing that the marketing efforts caused doctors to over-prescribe the addictive painkillers which lead to a surge in drug addiction and overdose deaths in Oklahoma.

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Judge Balkman said prosecutors did demonstrate J&J’s contribution to a “public nuisance” in its marketing.

Those actions compromised the health and safety of thousands of Oklahomans. The opioid crisis is an imminent danger and menace to Oklahomans.”

Judge Balkman

The payment is said to be used for the care and treatment of opioid addicts.

More than 2,000 additional opioid lawsuits are due to go to trial in Ohio in October unless the parties reach a settlement.

Of course, Johnson & Johnson vigorously denied wrongdoing and says it will appeal the decision.

In 2017 Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay $417 million and then in 2018, they were ordered to pay $4.7 billion for asbestos in Johnson & Johnson talcum powder. Johnson & Jonhson is also one of the top five vaccine manufactures.

Glyphosate was added to California’s Proposition 65 list of carcinogens in July 2017. Products containing Glyphosate, like Monsanto’s RoundUp, were supposed to have warning labels on the packaging that stated potential cancer risks. The glyphosate cancer warnings were scheduled to be on the packaging of glyphosate products in summer of 2018 But in 2018 Monsanto challenged the law and a federal judge temporarily banned California’s plans to add cancer warning labels on glyphosate-based products. And now the EPA has stated they will “no longer approve product labels claiming glyphosate is known to cause cancer.”

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

The EPA will not allow labels that indicate a link between glyphosate and cancer. Registrants selling products that contain glyphosate have 90 days from August 7th to show compliance removing the warning.

The State of California’s much criticized Proposition 65 has led to misleading labeling requirements for products, like glyphosate, because it misinforms the public about the risks they are facing.”

EPA Statement

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This means that while Costco bans glyphosate and Bayer/Monsanto is facing more than 10,000 lawsuits and losing millions of dollars in those lawsuits (maybe billions soon) for the damage glyphosate can do to one’s health, it won’t have a warning label, but coffee and supplements sold in California will have cancer warnings labels.

Due to the way they’re processed, many fish oil supplements contain synthetic fish oil. DHA and EPA from fish oil are triglycerides, which are highly bioavailable. In most fish oil supplements, the DHA and EPA have been converted to ethyl esters — a synthetic substrate with low bioavailability that comes with health concerns.

A study, recently published in Annals of Internal Medicine on July 9 of 2019, examined the effectiveness of supplements and diets to prevent cardiovascular disease. The study looked at reviews and trials that encompasses 277 trials and 992,129 participants. They found that Omega-3 products yielded “low-certainty” evidence that they were associated with reduced risk for myocardial infarction and coronary heart disease.

One of the many problems with such medical studies is the products used. Some studies have highlighted this issue with fish oils.

Other studies looking into what common fish oil supplements actually contain have found that they have lower amounts of omega-3 than specified on the label, variable content and unregulated purity, and potentially significant levels of saturated fat and rancid oils.

Scientific American

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A recent article from Dr. Mercola’s site explains this issue in depth.

Whittel estimates about 98% of the omega-3 products on the market are inferior (and perhaps even toxic) due to the way the fish are caught and processed — a summary of which is provided in the graphic below.

In short, in order to render the rancid fish safe for human consumption, it must be cleaned, and what’s left at the end of this process is a synthetic ethyl ester omega-3 oil. The reason why some brands are able to provide you with higher concentrations of DHA, for example, is also because of this deconstruction and reconstruction process, and this appears to be part and parcel of Amarin’s complaint.

The processing most fish oils undergo transforms the omega-3 fats from their triglyceride form into an ethyl ester form. In fish, the DHA and EPA occur in the form of triglycerides, which are the most bioavailable. In most commercial fish oil supplements, however, the DHA and EPA are delivered in the form of ethyl esters.

Mercola recommends making sure your fish oil contains DHA and EPA in their triglyceride form. The company needs to process the fish oil the right way. Cold-pressed, minimally processed fish oil with triglyceride DHA and EPA is more expensive to produce.

We recommend Carlson and Nordic Naturals. Green Lifestyle Market carries Nordic Naturals fish oil.

Mercola also recommends krill oil, which has greater bioavailability.