Fungal infections are demonstrating resistance to fungicides in the same way that bacteria react to antibiotics, warns a new report in Science magazine. Many perceive fungal infections like candida, athlete’s foot, and others to be relatively harmless, but an estimated 1.5 million worldwide die from fungal related causes. These microbes have slowly been building resistance to traditional methods of treatment, and according to the report, that’s scary news.

Fungal infections on human health are currently spiraling, and the global mortality for fungal diseases now exceeds that for malaria or breast cancer.”

How Did We Get Here

These potentially devasting microbial evolutions follow the same pattern. People and animals are given large amounts of unnecessary antibiotics or fungicides. Even if these drugs kill all of the pathogens they are meant to (and they don’t always), they also eliminate the beneficial bacteria as well. Once the beneficial bacteria is cleared out, bacteria and fungus left untouched by the treatment have a clear field to thrive. This allows the microbes strong enough to withstand the medication with the best possible environment for it to colonize.

Related: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

Scientists predict a yearly death rate of 10 million people from antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the year 2050 if things continue as they are. Currently, deaths from those bacteria number 700,000 people a year. Estimates for deaths caused by fungal infections this year are at 1.5 million. Fungus and their spores are causing more deaths, and the most commonly used treatments for fungal issues are being used more frequently and diversely than antibiotics are.

Burying the Lede

There are two reasons to be incredibly concerned about antifungal-resistance. We are using azoles, the most commonly used family of antifungals, as medicine for people and animals, as crop protection, for preserving lumber, and as antifouling coatings applied to the outside of ships. These fungicides are everywhere, and if we’ve learned anything from the widely published antibiotic-resistant superbugs, this is bad news.

Another reason? The fungus is impossible to contain, and fungi are better at becoming airborne than other pathogens like bacteria and viruses. Every inhale contains multiple fungal infections waiting to happen. Much of our food is grown with fungus specifically added to it. There is no escape.

Related: How to Kill Fungal Infections

Taking It Seriously

Agriculture has known about fungus resistance to azoles for more than a decade. We’ve been on this train for a while now, and no one is activating the brakes. How bad is the crash going to be?

Immune System Importance

Dangerous mycotoxins (toxic substances produced by fungi) can develop in the compost pile, household mold, grains like wheat and sorghum, pet food, and dietary supplements. More people die from fungal infections than from tuberculosis. People who are taking antibiotics or who have compromised immune systems are especially susceptible. Which boggles the mind really…antibiotic use leaves you at a greater risk for a potentially dangerous fungal infection.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut

We can’t always control what we’re exposed to. The most common (and frustrating) fungal infections are caused by candida, a necessary digestive microbe! What we can control is how our body reacts to them. Balancing your microbes is key to a healthy immune system and avoiding serious illness.

Sources:

• Deaths from fungal infections exceeding malaria, say researchers in new drug resistance warning – The Independent
• Worldwide emergence of resistance to antifungal drugs challenges human health and food security – Science Magazine
• How fungi kill millions globally – CNN
• Genesis of Azole Antifungal Resistance from Agriculture to Clinical Settings – Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
• Attacking fungal infection, one of world’s major killers – Science News

Whole Foods Market executives emailed suppliers last Friday to announce that the company will delay the rollout of its GMO Labeling Policy. The company’s comprehensive labeling policy was slated for September 1st. They have not announced a new timeline for the policy.

In a copy of the announcement obtained by The New Food Economy, Gallo and two vice presidents write that the pause is a response to suppliers’ concerns about having to comply with two competing sets of rules: Whole Foods’ own GMO labeling requirements, and rules newly proposed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which are currently open for public comment.”

The confusion is understandable. As currently proposed, the USDA policy would make several substantive changes to the way GMOs have traditionally been defined by the food industry—starting with the terminology itself. The government’s preferred nomenclature is “bioengineered” (BE), which only refers to a food that has had another organism’s genes spliced into it by a process called transgenesis. Other types of genetic modification, including some produced by gene-editing tools like CRISPR, would not need to be labeled. – New Food Economy

Whole Foods previously announced that it soon would require food suppliers to “label products that contain genetically modified (GMO) risk ingredients and were not third-party verified as non-GMO or organic.”

Whole Foods stated in a separate memo that all suppliers still must acquire third-party verification by a Whole Foods-approved program for any “non-GMO” claims on the food labels.

Be sure to check out How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering.

Some reports indicate that Americans eat more and more of their meals at restaurants. Other reports say restaurant eating is on the decline. Most reports say that millennials are eating out more and that they don’t know how to cook. We’re not sure where the truth lies, but we’re pretty sure it’s not normal for twenty-year-olds to be cooking most of their own meals. And, more importantly, young consumers are growing more concerned with finding healthier food choices, whether they are eating out or not.

On that note, the single most important thing you can do for your health is to prepare your own food from scratch. Now, a new study published in the journal Environment International states that Americans’ are getting more than they bargained for when they eat out. Eating out restaurants frequently is correlated with higher body levels of phthalates.

Phthalates are not food additives; at least, they’re not intentional. Phthalates are chemicals that are mixed with plastics to make them more pliable or flexible. They are also linked to reduced semen quality, diabetes, lower IQ, cancer, and more. The chemicals can leach into food as they are stored in restaurant-style plastic containers, handled with food-handling gloves, and processed through plastic processing equipment.

Related: How to Detox From Plastics and Other Endocrine Disruptors

George Washington University, UC-Berkeley, and UC-San Francisco analyzed urine sample data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which is a government-backed health survey that is performed every two years. Data from more than 10,000 Americans (between 2005 and 2014) included urine analysis along with what they ate the day before and where they got the meal. Approximately two-thirds of the respondents reported having eaten restaurant food the prior day.

We found that people who eat out more at full-service restaurants, cafeterias, and fast-food restaurants have nearly 35 percent higher phthalate exposures than people who bought their food from a grocery store, and are presumably eating at home,” – Ami Zota, senior author on the study, Mother Jones

The reports also states that people who ate restaurant-made meat sandwiches (including hamburgers) saw increased phthalate levels higher than that of people who ate homemade meat sandwiches. Fast food consumption showed a big increase in phthalate exposure.

Our findings suggest that eating fresh, less processed foods at home can potentially reduce biologically-relevant phthalate levels in your body, and that’s something you could do tomorrow,” – Julia Varshavsky, lead author on the study

Phthalates last in the body for about a day, so the good news is that it’s not too hard to detoxify oneself of most of them by not eating out, but it begs the question, what other plastic and chemical contaminants are we getting from restaurant foods? Not to mention rancid industrial cooking oils, GMOs, and extreme cooking temperatures that cause Advanced Glycation End Products.

Study:

• Dining out associated with increased exposure to harmful chemicals called phthalates

Recommended Reading:

• Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included
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• How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

A newly published study in Nature Communications has discovered that a peptide found in tobacco plants, NaD1, is able to combat Candida albicans cells. The compound is found in the plant Nicotiana alata, which is one of roughly 70 species of tobacco not grown for commercial use. The outer layer of Candida albicans, the most common cause of yeast infections, is torn apart by the peptide, causing the death and explosion of the fungus. According to Dr. Mark Hulett, a study author from the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science,

They [the peptides] act in a different way to existing antibiotics and allow us to explore new ways of fighting infections. It’s an exciting discovery that could be harnessed to develop a new class of life-saving antimicrobial therapy to treat a range of infectious diseases, including multi-drug-resistant golden staph, and viral infections such as HIV, Zika virus, Dengue and Murray River Encephalitis.”

Candida’s Diet

Candida is an especially insidious fungus. Since the candida is always present in the body, keeping the opportunistic microbe in balance is key. Unfortunately, the standard American diet, high in sugar and processed foods, is incredibly suited to the fungus.

Recommended: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

Figuring out the Future

The discovery of this plant’s effectiveness in killing Candida could be a breakthrough in treating the fungus. Or it could be devastating in a way we haven’t anticipated. Candida serves a necessary function, aiding in nutrient absorption and digestion. It also releases toxins as it dies, and death by explosion seems guaranteed to cause significant die-off symptoms.

Recommended: How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

Maybe this will work. Likely it won’t because it doesn’t deal with how the candida got out of control in the first place. The issue is diet, and that will take a more thoughtful and holistic approach than pharmaceuticals can offer.

Sources:

• La Trobe’s Infection-Busting Discovery – Latrobe.edu
• X-ray structure of a carpet-like antimicrobial defensin–phospholipid membrane disruption complex – Nature Communications
• 6 Most Common Types of Candida – yeastinfection.org
• Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections – Organic Lifestyle Magazine

Two of the pillars of modern medicine are in trouble and it’s for the same reason – ignoring microbial evolution. Conventional medicine charged ahead with rampant antibiotic use without a full understanding of the microbiome and how our immune system works or taking into account the additional impact of eating antibiotic-treated animals regularly. Bacteria consistently exposed to low-level antibiotics has evolved past those treatments, requiring doctors to prescribe increasingly strong antibiotics to conquer these incredibly resilient bacteria. For years we’ve been treating harmful pathogens like elite athletes, giving them increasingly difficult hurdles that only the strongest survive. Now, antibiotic-resistant superbugs will kill 10 million people a year by 2050 if the way we use antibiotics doesn’t change.

Now we are finding that vaccines do the same thing with complex pathogens. The vaccine suppresses the host’s response to the pathogen but doesn’t kill it. This gives more virulent, more quickly replicating bacteria a chance to multiply without killing the host. No one dies…but the bacteria evolves to the point that the vaccine is no longer effective.

Recommended: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

Whooping Cough

People vaccinated for pertussis are carriers of the whooping cough bacteria, even if they never contract the illness. In that respect, the vaccine succeeds…but only in the short term. Since the host of the pathogen doesn’t expire from it, the bacteria develop into a stronger version of pertussis. Caused by the bacteria Bordetella pertussis, whooping cough has never been eradicated and the number of cases has been slowly increasing for years. Conventional news outlets are quick to blame anti-vaxxers every time there’s an outbreak of whooping cough, an easier solution than examining the effectiveness of the vaccine.

The whooping cough vaccine was first modified in 1992 on a recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control after it was linked to seizures. The new version targets specific proteins in the bacteria, which is the perfect opening for other proteins to fill the power vacuum. Like antibiotics, microbes that don’t get targeted are able to thrive. While research has periodically called for an examination of the vaccine as reported cases of pertussis increase, a 2014 study from Australia confirms that the strains of whooping cough not targeted by the vaccine are thriving. Ruiting Lan, senior author of the latest study on whooping cough and associate professor at School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences at the University of New South Wales says, “It’s like a game of hide and seek. It is harder for the antibodies made by the body’s immune system in response to vaccination to ‘search and destroy’ the whooping cough bacteria which lack pertactin. This could mean that these pertactin-free strains have gained a selective advantage over bacterial strains with the pertactin protein.” In the course of four years, the percentage of whooping cough samples that lacked the protein targeted by the vaccine jumped over 70 percent. And that’s just in Australia. Lan also commented that “The fact that they have arisen independently in different countries suggests this is in response to the vaccine. More studies are needed to better understand the effects of vaccination on the evolution of the organism…”

Marek’s Disease

Another example of disease evolution in relation to vaccines is Marek’s Disease, a deadly ailment affecting chickens that has evolved enough to render two vaccines irrelevant and costs the poultry industry more than 2 billion dollars a year. Andrew Read, a scientist Pennsylvania State University Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, believes that the vaccine may be causing more harm than good. He’s been researching how vaccines allow bacteria and viruses to evolve and gain virulence for over 15 years and is also associated with the concept of “leaky” vaccines. Leaky vaccines, also called imperfect vaccines, save the vaccinated individual from death but turn them into a disease incubator. In his study of Marek’s Disease, Read linked leaky vaccine and increased microbe virulence.

When vaccines prevent transmission, as is the case for nearly all vaccines used in humans, this type of evolution towards increased virulence is blocked. But when vaccines leak, allowing at least some pathogen transmission, they could create the ecological conditions that would allow hot strains to emerge and persist. This theory proved highly controversial when it was first proposed over a decade ago, but here we report experiments with Marek’s disease virus in poultry that show that modern commercial leaky vaccines can have precisely this effect: they allow the onward transmission of strains otherwise too lethal to persist. Thus, the use of leaky vaccines can facilitate the evolution of pathogen strains that put unvaccinated hosts at greater risk of severe disease. The future challenge is to identify whether there are other types of vaccines used in animals and humans that might also generate these evolutionary risks.”

Marek’s Disease affects chickens, which doesn’t sound scary. The disease isn’t going to just jump to humans…that’s not how things work. But if we’re learning anything, it’s that science’s refusal to seriously consider and investigate vaccines mean that we don’t know exactly how things work.

Related:How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children

We Cannot Keep Up

Vaccines are designed to target a specific strain of a bacteria or virus and encourages the immune system to defeat it. The vaccine and its response are frequently victorious. But that focus has ignored the realities of infection and the way microbes evolve. The defeating a particular pathogen or strain of bacteria leaves room for another one to take its place. In the case of Marek’s Disease, the third iteration of the vaccine still works, but there isn’t a new one in the works.

In its success, the vaccine has opened the door to a host of other issues that modern medicine won’t be ready for until it’s too late. Of course, we won’t be ready. You can’t fix something until you admit there’s a problem, and admitting that vaccination causes serious issues is too costly an error to cop to.

Sources:

• Vaccines Are Pushing Pathogens to Evolve – Quantas Magazine
• Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens – PLOS Biology
• Whooping cough bacterium evolves, mutation makes existing vaccine less effective – TechTimes
• Leaky vaccines could lead to more virulent pathogens – PLOS Blogs
• ‘Leaky Vaccines’ Could Spur More Dangerous Disease – Mercola.com

A new study sampled twelve different beers in the Great Lakes area and found all to be contaminated with microplastics. Researchers also surveyed tap water from the same region and found microplastics in eight of the nine samples as well.

Thanks to climate change, the world is looking at previously accepted practices with a greater focus on sustainability and a new study finds one area that’s a bigger problem than we thought – travel. Global tourism in the year 2013 was responsible for 4.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, or 8% of the year’s total emission. Previous studies have focused on the fuel costs associated with air travel, but newly published research in Nature Climate Change examined the impact that tourism-driven food, shipping, and hotels have as well. Unsurprisingly, the majority of the traffic comes from travelers to and from high-income countries. If travel trends continue, global emissions from tourism will amount to 6.5 billion metric tons by the year 2025. Climate-conscious travel might be harder to achieve than imagined.

Running on Fumes

Planes are a major source of air pollution, which is the cause of an estimated 5.5 million deaths a year). While 92 percent of those deaths occur in lower or middle-incomes, plane exhaust and emissions are still causing significant casualties. Earlier in the decade, researchers found that those emissions kill more people than actual plane crashes, with annual deaths recorded at 10,000 and 1,000 respectively.

Recommended: Hawaii Approves Bill Banning Sunscreen That Harm Coral Reefs

Smaller trips are worse for the environment, as airplane pollution is highest at takeoff and landing. For the traveler who wants to save time, airplanes are the best option. But the question of how sustainable it is will increasingly take the forefront in discussions of tourism and travel options. How much more serious would the climate change discussion be if Americans made chose airplanes instead of cars for the majority of trips from 500 to 1000 miles?

Where Travel is Going

People are still trying to define ethical and environmentally-friendly travel. But that has butted against climate change tourism, otherwise known as visiting places where climate has or will change the landscape fundamentally. It’s easy to take advantage of the current fear of missing out (FOMO) by promising trips to locales that will no longer exist in the future like Greenland, Venice, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Amazon rainforest.

Recommended: How Farmed Fish Degrades Our Health and the Environment – Better Options Included

Travel Options

The irony of climate change tourism is deeply upsetting from an environmental point of view. By seeing these wonders up close, we hasten their demise. But seeing them up close forges a connection, often times inspiring the traveler to do something about or inspiring deeper thought into the issues of climate change. Travel also brings knowledge and diversity, our best chances of future success. So is it worth it? And what will VR bring to the table?

Sources:

• Tourism is four times worse for the planet than previously believed – Science Magazine
• The carbon footprint of global tourism – Nature.com
• Plane Exhaust Kills More People Than Plane Crashes – National Geographic
• Here’s Why Obama Is Cracking Down on Airplane Pollution – Mother Jones