ICE Detention Center Allegedly Sterilizing Women Without Consent

A nurse by the name of Dawn Wooten has sounded the alarm against an ICE detention camp in Georgia that has allegedly performed hysterectomies without consent. The allegations were made earlier last week with claims that several women have had their uteruses removed without consent.

Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images

In many cases, women who undergo treatment are told conflicting things. This was the case for one woman who was given multiple explanations as to what procedure she would be undergoing, ranging from having small amounts of tissues scraped away, to having her womb removed entirely. Women were not provided with proper translators, and the doctors did not speak Spanish.

Dr. Ada Rivera, the medical director of the ICE Health Services Corps, which oversees health care in the agency’s detention system, said that the reports would be fully and independently investigated, but that the agency “vehemently disputes the implication that detainees are used for experimental medical procedures.”

Inquiry Ordered Into Claims Immigrants Had Unwanted Gynecology Procedures

Detainees have come forward and pointed to Doctor Mahendra Amin, with claims that he treated patients roughly. Dr. Amin and his lawyer have both denied the allegations against them. The Department of Homeland Security is currently investigating the allegations. The Trump administration rolled back detention center standards after taking office, despite the already substandard conditions that ICE centers are known for.




Depressions Rate More than Triple During the Pandemic

The pandemic has been stressful for Americans, especially those who are working class, and a new study finds that stress reflected in our mental health. Available on JAMA Network Open, the study finds that rates of depression have tripled in the United States, rising from 8.5% before the pandemic to 27.8%. The data was collected from a survey with 1,441 participants conducted in April of 2020.

Spikes in depression are common during and after large scale trauma events. Researchers also evaluated the impact of stressors on the survey takers’ mental health. Lower-income individuals with less than $5,000 in savings who were exposed to a greater amount of stressors were most at risk for depression. This group was the most vulnerable before the pandemic and experienced a 50% increase in depression risk.

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

While further data will be needed to assess the trajectory of depression in the US population and potential treatment for affected populations, it seems important to recognize the potential for the mental health consequences of COVID-19 to be large in scale, to recognize that these effects can be long-lasting, and to consider preventative action to help mitigate its effects.28 In particular, this burden is being borne by economically and socially marginalized groups, suggesting that individuals with low income and with fewer resources may benefit from particular policy attention in coming months

Prevalence of Depression Symptoms in US Adults Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic




Glyphosate Isn’t Even the Worst Thing in Roundup

Much of the uproar surrounding the herbicide has focused on the active ingredient, glyphosate. But for glyphosate to penetrate plant cells, it needs an adjuvant. If you’re familiar with vaccine adjuvants like mercury or aluminum, you probably have a sinking feeling in your gut. And guess what?

You’re right!

Say hello to polyethoxylated tallow amine or polyoxyethyleneamine (POEA). POEA is derived from tallow, or animal fat (usually beef or sheep). It’s a detergent that constitutes 15% of Roundup formulations, and it’s one of the reasons roundup works as well as it does. When glyphosate-based products that don’t contain an ethoxylated tallow amine (ETA) formulation are used, water is more easily able to wash the herbicide off the plant. This renders the formula 6% effective.

Related: How to Eliminate IBS, IBD, Leaky Gut 

So why would farmers have to do without that extra 6% effectiveness? Easy answer there – the European Union banned POEAs in 2016. In their scientific assessment, the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) said,

Therefore the exposure assessment for operators, workers, bystanders, residents and consumers could not be performed. Compared to glyphosate, a higher toxicity of the POE-tallowamine was observed on all endpoints investigated.”

Statement of EFSA

According to another study in 2004,

As a result, human poisoning with this herbicide is not with the active ingredient alone but with complex and variable mixtures. Therefore, It is difficult to separate the toxicity of glyphosate from that of the formulation as a whole or to determine the contribution of surfactants to overall toxicity. Experimental studies suggest that the toxicity of the surfactant, polyoxyethyleneamine (POEA), is greater than the toxicity of glyphosate alone and commercial formulations alone.”

Glyphosate Poisoning

To be clear, POEA and other similarly formulated adjuvants are more toxic than glyphosate, yet regulators have no way of measuring how much exposure you’ve had because it isn’t the formula’s active ingredient. Yet studies that were done on fish and aquatic animals have found that Roundup formulations are significantly more toxic than glyphosate alone. Original Roundup was 10-40 times more toxic than glyphosate alone in fish species and 10-50 times more toxic in frogs. A fruit fly study in January 2020 found that fruit flies exposed to less than lethal amounts of both Roundup Concentrate Plus and POEA had decreased fertility.

POEA isn’t the active ingredient in Roundup, which is the reasoning used to explain why this substance has not been tested to the extent glyphosate has been. All that companies need to do is provide documentation saying an ingredient doesn’t kill weeds or insects for regulating agencies to see no need to ask for safety studies. Much of media coverage of the dangers of Roundup has focused on glyphosate because it has been labeled a probable carcinogen by a major worldwide health organization. What would POEAs be labeled if regulators actually looked into it?

Sources:



Trump Administration Removes Rules Requiring Companies Fix Methane Leaks

The Trump Administration has rolled back a regulation requiring oil and gas companies to detect and fix methane gas leaks from pipelines, storage facilities, and wells. The director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cited the economic benefits of relieving the burden of reducing air pollution on small-medium sized energy companies.

E.P.A. has been working hard to fulfill President Trump’s promise to cut burdensome and ineffective regulations for our domestic energy industry. Regulatory burdens put into place by the Obama-Biden administration fell heavily on small and medium-sized energy businesses.”

Andrew Wheeler, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency

This decision could have serious effects on climate. Methane makes up 10% of greenhouse gas emissions, but according to the EPA, methane is 28 to 36 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Methane gas emissions are at an all-time high globally, and fossil fuel leaks in the U.S. play a significant role in that.

Recommended: How to Eliminate IBS, IBD, Leaky Gut 

Over the past few years there has been an explosion of new research on this, and the literature has coalesced — 80 percent of papers show that methane from oil and gas leaks is two to three times higher than the E.P.A.’s estimates…” 

Robert Howarth, an earth systems scientist at Cornell University

Historically speaking, the United States government has proven it is more than happy to put business and profits before protecting the environment while paying lip service to climate concerns. The current administration clearly follows in those footsteps.




New Study Links Parkinson’s to Abundance of Opportunistic Pathogens in the Gut

Parkinson’s disease is a nervous system disorder that affects movement. As early as 2000, research has shown that Parkinson’s disease originates in the gut. Many studies have proposed that pathogens from the gut travel to the brain via the nervous system.

One animal study last year, for example, produced the best evidence to date of this gut-brain connection, demonstrating how misfolded proteins can travel to the brain through the vagus nerve. Another from earlier this year showed how some species of gut bacteria could inhibit the accumulation of these proteins, while another highlighted how altered neurons that regulate the digestive system may play a role in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease.

Parkinson’s linked to overabundance of opportunistic gut pathogens

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A new study done in 2017 by neurologists from the University of Alabama has shown that opportunistic pathogens take advantage of the body’s weakened defenses, driving infection, in Parkinson’s disease. Researchers used advanced DNA sequencing and computational tools to analyze data from previous studies as well as new independent data. Researchers looked at 520 cases of Parkinson’s and 300 controls within the study.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut 

The best treatment and prevention for Parkinson’s Disease is having a healthy gut. To learn more about gut health and how to heal the gut, check out this article.




COVID HotSpots Could Be Predicted by Google Searches

An increased number of google searches for gastrointestinal issues corresponded with an increase in COVID-19 cases, according to a new study published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. Researchers were inspired to look into this phenomena by the tendency of patients with COVID-19 to report symptoms like abdominal pain and diarrhea.

Our data underscore the importance of GI symptoms as a potential harbinger of Covid-19 infection and suggests that Google Trends may be a valuable tool for prediction of pandemics with GI manifestations…”

Kyle Staller, director of Mass General’s gastrointestinal motility laboratory

Related: Natural Coronavirus Prevention

Researchers used Alphabet Inc.’s Google Trends online tool to compare searches for diarrhea and loss of taste and appetite with reported COVID-19 cases. They found a positive correlation. Areas that experienced a high volume of gastrointestinal symptom searches, like New York, New Jersey, California, Massachusetts and Illinois, became states with high-disease burdens three to four weeks after the searches.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut

This study comes on the heels of another study that COVID-19 patients often have prolonged viral intestinal infections. Patients with gut infections continued to have positive stool tests, even after respiratory tests came back negative.




Gum Disease Associated with Higher Risk of Colon Cancer

Cases of colon cancer are on the rise in young people, and a study found that people with gum disease are at a significantly higher risk of developing colorectal cancers. Those with gum disease had a 52% higher chance of developing colon cancer and a 43% higher chance of developing throat cancer. The study also found that people who had lost two or more teeth were also at a higher risk for stomach (33%) and throat (42%) cancer.

Participants with periodontal disease and a higher number of teeth lost had a higher risk of developing the two gastrointestinal cancers, even after adjusting for other major risk factors…” 

Mingyang Song, Harvard assistant professor of clinical epidemiology and nutrition

The world was shocked when Chadwick Boseman, the 43-year-old actor who portrayed Black Panther, died of colon cancer recently, but he was part of the growing group of young adults who have been diagnosed with colon cancer. From 2011 to 2016, the rate of colon cancer diagnoses in the United States rose by 1% every year in people aged 50 to 64 and 2.2% in people under age 50. After excluding skin cancers, colorectal cancer is the third most diagnosed cancer in the U.S.

Your gums are indicative of your body’s overall health.

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