In a study published in the July 2006 issue of the prestigious Environmental Health Perspectives, Goth et al, linked thimerasol found in vaccines to alterations is the was dendric cells respond to biochemical signals. Dendric cells are the bodies signal men telling T cells to attack infectious invaders.  Unfortunately, thimerasol may interfere with these cells ability to read the invaders signals correctly. They go on to claim that concentrations of 200 ppb (parts per billion) of thimerasol can kill immature dendric cells which can set a child off into the world with an impaired immune system.

Let’s end the controversy today and have a worldwide ban on the continued use of thimerasol.

In the June 29th, 2006 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from China followed three groups of people with differing intakes and excretion levels of iodine. What they found was startling.  People with excessive and more than adequate intakes of iodine had a higher incidence of subclinical hypothyroidism than did those with low intakes. The upper groups also had a higher incidence of auto-immune thyroiditis as well. The group with mildly deficient iodine intake seemed to do best.

A couple of comments here.  First off, as is typical with medical research, only one item was looked at and that was the relationship between iodine and thyroid function which is myopic and counter to the complexity of human biochemistry.  Did they look at the interactions with protein intake, especially tyrosine competency?  Did they look into the availability of selenium in the diet?  Of course not. Instead they made a sweeping statement that excessive iodine can cause hypothyroidism and even hinted that too much iodine can cause thyroid cancer. This then is taken by the media to be gospel and public health officials will make decisions based on incomplete science.

If the concept of metabonomics is utilized as it should be, then personalized judgements of the need for iodine would be on a biochemically individualized basis instead of population based guesswork. Medicine needs to catch up to science before more damage to the public’s health is done.

What is important about this study is that blanket statements that everyone needs iodine is potentially dangerous as you may induce hypothyroidism instead of preventing it.  Back to biochemical individuality if you ask me.

PDBE’s are commonly used flame-retardants found in everything from electronics, automobiles and furniture. There are 3 main forms in use today, deca-, penta-, and octa-BDE’s each with drawbacks and potential toxic side-effects. Research has suggested that the deca-BDE was the least toxic as the other two have been implicated in fetal development disruption although the EPA considers deca-BDE a possible human carcinogen.

In a study that will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Environmental Science and Technology, researchers have found that certain forms of bacteria like Sulfurospirillum multivoranscan convert deca-BDE into a seven- or eight-bromine form which then imparts a greater toxicity to the chemical. Also, other bacteria can convert the newly formed chemical down even further which can make them even more toxic. Considering that PDE’s are ubiquitous in the environment, this is very disturbing news.

One of the arguments against the use of glucosamine was that it caused, or at least contributed towards the development of type 2 diabetes.  While many of us in the supplement field thought this was a bogus claim, it wasn’t until the recent American Diabetes Association meeting in Washington, D.C. (June 9-13, 2003) that researchers put that to bed. Rajaram J. Karne led a team that showed that taking high dose glucosamine “…doesn’t make any measurable difference on insulin’s action.”  So the next time your physician warns you about taking glucosamine, thell him to take 2 sugar pills and call you in the morning.

An unexpected finding also presented at the meeting was that people taking antidepressants are at a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes.  People on antidepressant medications had 3 times the risk of developing diabetes than others.  Another reason to try other means of relieving depression than taking drugs.  Your body will thank you.

In an upcoming issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers from the University of Montana will publish an article looking into the residents of Libby, Montana and how miners there who helped bring up vermiculate which was contaminated with asbestos have twice the risk of developing lupus and three times the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis if they were over the age of 65. This suggests that it is long term exposure which increases the risk of developing these diseases as miners under 65 had no difference than the general population did.

In a related research investigation done by the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C. there was evidence that asbestos causes an increased risk of developing laryngeal cancer. All in all, more bad news about this dangerous and toxic mineral.

In a paper published online in the Scandinavian Journal of Immunology researchers have shown that the concept of excessive cleanliness may hurt a child’s immune system and set them up for a lifetime of allergies. The study was on 58 wild rats and 10 wild mice versus 45 lab rats and 20 lab mice. They determined that the animals that lived in the wild had much higher levels of immunoglobulin-E than did the animals bred in captivity in clean conditions.

While this study alone does not prove that cleanliness is the cause, it is just another in a series of confirmatory research papers that suggest that trying to disinfect everything may not be beneficial for kids health. But then again ask any kid what they’d rather do, clean their room or play in the mud?

A group of 11 cousins had their stomachs removed after genetic testing revealed that they had a genetic “defect” that made them likely to get a rare form of stomach cancer that had killed a number of their uncles, aunts and parents. In all of my reading of the data on this procedure, no where did I see any talk about whether they were likely to get another form of cancer even though they removed they’re stomach. They may have had this procedure without any long-term benefit which will be quite sad.

What really strikes me is the lack of talk about trying to suppress the expression of the flawed gene. This concept is beginning to gain a great deal of emphasis as more and more scientists come to the realization that this is the way to go. One of the biggest purveyors of this idea is Dr. Bruce Ames of the University of California, Berkeley. If you’re interested in his work, do a Google search on him and be ready to be fascinated.

Well, I’m finally back after a brief but needed respite.

The topic today relates to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) which many health care professionals have wrongly thought of it as a psychological disorder. A recent coroners report in the UK showed that a 32 year-old women had actually died from complications from CFS. A neuropathologist named Dominic O’Donovan said that the inflammation in her spinal cord was a clean sign that the CFS that she had been suffering from over the past 6 years was at fault.

Getting told that “it’s all in your head” when a disorder is really biochemical in nature must be a frustrating experience. When my daughter was first diagnosed with epilepsy, the doctor told us to just get use to it as we weren’t able to do much else ourselves as the doctor was the “epileptologist” and we were just parents. It would be nice if there were more doctors willing to listen and learn.