Healthy Andy

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that drinking green tea can help you live longer.  Many studies in the past have examined the specific health benefits of either green tea, or the active antioxidants in green tea, but this study examined the actual consumption of tea and compared it to mortality rates in Japanese adults.

The Ohsaki National Health Insurance Cohort Study

This study began back in the ’90s in Japan, following over forty thousand adults over the age of 40 without any history of major chronic disease (heart disease, cancer, that sort of nasty stuff).  Individuals were followed up on over the course of the next eleven years to see how many had died from any cause. Participants filled out a questionnaire that asked some basic questions about daily nutrition habits, including the consumption of green tea.  This makes this study very similiar to the Nurse’s Health Study, a study that has followed over 100,000 nurses over the course of decades (except, since it’s an American study, they don’t specifically ask about green tea).

For the Ohsaki study, participants were asked if they drank green tea never, occasionally, 1-2 cups per day, 3-4 cups per day, and 5 or more cups per day.  The authors noted that the typical “cup” of green tea is about 100 milliliters (about 3.5 ounces).

By the way, one of the nice things about this study is, the researchers took the time to see if their questionnarie was at all accurate.  They picked a sample of people and had them do a more comprehensive food diary for three days on four seperate occasions.  They found that there was a moderate to strong correlation between reported intake and actual intake.

The Results: Green Tea Makes You Live Longer

After accounting for potentially confounding variables like age or physical activity, the researchers found that the more green tea people drank, the less likely they were to die from any cause.  The effect was obviously most noticeable in the 5 or more cups of tea per day group; if you used non-tea drinkers as a baseline, the hazard ratio was 0.88 for the 5 cups a day drinkers.  This means that for every 1 non-tea drinker, 0.88 tea drinkers died… which basically means green tea makes you live longer.

The effect was even MORE pronounced among women; the hazard ratio was 0.77 for the heavy tea-drinkers.  So for every 100 non-tea drinkers who died, only 77 tea drinkers died of any cause.  The researchers followed these effects for eleven years.

Then, they took a look at more specific causes of death (they reviewed data for seven years for this). They found that green tea consumption significantly reduced the risk of death from cardiovascular disease, but didn’t reduce the risk of death by cancer.  After looking even closer into the data, they found that when it came to cardiovascular disease, the greatest protection was from stroke.  Once again, the effect was most pronounced in women, who had a 42% less chance of death by stroke if they were drinking 5 or more cups per day of green tea (compared to one or less).

This shouldn’t be a big shock to readers of this website- we’ve talked before about how antioxidants make arteries more elastic and pliable (and therefore healthier).  Since strokes are caused by either blockage or rupture of an artery in the brain, healthier arteries are going to be less prone to those kinds of problems.  And I don’t know about you, but I have no deep and burning desire to experience a stroke, so I’m going to keep drinking green tea and live longer than I would have otherwise!

Stay healthy!

By the way, the full text of this study is available online for free at this link:  http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/296/10/1255.long

“Fish Oil May Not Prevent Depression, Says Study”, says the headline on a leading news website, even though the study isn’t about taking fish oil. Lies and misrepresentations tend to make me froth at the mouth in furious anger, so I just can’t let this go unanswered.

The latest in a long tradition of crappy science mixed with crappy journalism, this MSNBC article summarizes the results of a poorly-designed study which leaps to incorrect conclusions, and in the process, misleads the reader even more by interchanging the words “fish” and “fish oil”. Well, let’s see if Healthy Andy can’t untangle this mess for you.

First off, the study is question was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and was based off of a large nutritional survey that followed over 50,000 nurses over ten years. To sum up, the researchers checked to see who was eating fish, compared that to who ended up getting depressed, and found no correlation. Then, they declared that EPA and DHA, the main active ingredients in fish oil, have no effect on preventing depression.

Hang on, buster. Not so fast.

Let’s start by correcting the journalist who wrote that misleading headline. This study did NOT study the effect of taking fish oils. It studied the effect of eating fish. It’s not the same thing.

Does it sound like I’m splitting hairs? Here’s why there’s a difference: dosage. Eating fish obviously will provide EPA and DHA from the oils naturally present in the fish. However, it’s nowhere near as much as you get by taking a fish oil supplement.

In fact, dosage is the big reason why this entire study and subsequent news article should be kicked in the head and shown the door. If you eat some high Omega-3 fish every day, you MIGHT end up with a gram or two of EPA and DHA. And while that’s the dosage range I recommend for people without any problems to use as a basic health maintenance dose, if you look at the dosage used to actually treat depression, that’s a whole other story.

If you want to actually treat depression or similar mood disorders, you need to think bigger than a gram or two a day.  Try more like nine or ten grams a day of EPA and DHA.

So, not surprisingly, if you only give someone about one tenth the required dose to make a certain change in the body, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO SEE ANY CHANGE.

Plus, how much fish were these women eating?  What counts as “eating fish”?  Do shellfish count?  Farm-raised fish (which has very little Omega-3)? Did they calculate out the EPA and DHA content of the fish?  That would be pretty hard to do in this case, seeing as how they are relying on a recall survey (“what did you eat yesterday?”), and people really suck at estimating portion size.  Did these women eat fish every day?  Every other day?  How much and what kind (since different varieties of fish have differing Omega-3 contents)?

The bottom line is, the researchers really can’t tell how much EPA and DHA these people were ingesting on a regular basis.  Which means, they really can’t reach any conclusions about anything.

At best… at BEST… if you ignore the  fact that the researchers couldn’t accurately estimate Omega-3 intake, this study suggests that it’s hard to eat enough fish to improve mental health.  Which, I could’ve told you before, simply by looking at the dosage used to treat depression (nine to ten grams daily… you’re talking several pounds of high-quality fish here).  But to use a headline stating that fish OIL doesn’t have any effect on depression, is just plain wrong and misleading.

In fact, fish oil does seem to have a positive effect on depression.  You just have to take a sufficient dosage.  So shut your face, MSNBC, and do your homework before you go writing headlines.

A recent study published in the journal Obesity shows a link between H1 type antihistamines and weight gain. The study found increases in weight, waist size, and insulin levels compared to control groups.

This is an obvious concern, because antihistamines are such a commonly prescribed and used class of medications.  However, like so many other medications, antihistamines have side effects, and weight gain appears to be among them.

What’s an H1 antihistamine?

H1 antihistamines are medications that block the histamine receptors to reduce the inflammatory process.  Histamine is a chemical released by the body to signal the start of inflammation, and like most chemicals that act on the body, certain parts of the cell have receptors that recognize that histamine is around.  Once the receptor comes into contact with histamine, bingo… inflammation starts.

Rather than prevent the release of histamine, H1 antihistamines block the receptor, so histamine is still floating around, your body just can’t see it.  They also tend to make you drowsy as a side effect, which may account for part of the weight gain effect.

Common H1 antihistamines are Allegra, Clarinex, and Zyrtec.

Antihistamines and Weight Gain

This study took the results of data from a big survey done back around 2005 and compared antihistamine takers to non antihistamine takers.  After controlling for factors such as age and gender, the researchers found a correlation between taking prescription antihistamines and the weight gain factors mentioned earlier; weight, waist size, and insulin levels.

How much weight?  Women taking these drugs were about ten pounds heavier on average.

As always, it’s important to note that correlation is not causation; just because we see two things occuring at the same time doesn’t mean one causes the other.  It could be that people with bad allergies just don’t exercise as much as people without allergies. 

However, it is especially concerning to me that there was an effect on insulin levels as well as weight gain, considering the serious out-of-control issue this country has with the incidence of diabetes.  People who are currently having problems with insulin resistance or diabetes should definitely bring this study to the attention of their physician if they are considering taking antihistamine medication.

Other, non-medication options for reducting inflammation include taking heavy-duty OPC type antioxidants like pycnogenol and resveratrol.  I cover more on this topic in this article on antioxidants and inflammation.

Stay healthy!

Just in case injecting botulism toxin into your face somehow sounds like a good idea, one of the more interesting botox side effects has just come to light:  a decreased sense of perception when it comes to reading other peoples’ emotional states.

This is especially interesting, because it’s a little counter-intuitive.  Sure, one might expect that other people might have trouble reading YOUR emotions, once you’ve killed off everything that moves your facial muscles move.  But why would YOU suffer the same side effect from botox?

Botox Side Effects

While it’s true that Botox works by paralyzing facial muscles in the hopes of decreasing the onset of wrinkles, it turns out it can alter our ability to essentially mirror the facial expressions of others as well.  This really just makes sense; the muscles that create the facial expressions are all dead to the world, so how could we mimic what we see on other peoples’ faces?

This is important to our perception, because a part of how we tell what other people are feeling is to (at least partly) mimic their facial expressions.  The physical act of creating the same expression allows us to emphathize with the other individual.

How do we know this?  Well, the researchers that examined the deadened perception botox side effects also used a nifty gel that actually increases the action of the facial muscles… sort of a reverse Botox.  They found that the reverse-Botox people were even more perceptive to other peoples’ emotions than controls.  Their results were published in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science.

I find this interesting on a number of levels.  First, that mimicing facial expressions is such an important part of our emotional response to others… that feeling what others feel starts as imitating their physical response to their emotions.  Second, that anyone would be so crazy as to inject a toxic substance into their face, on purpose. 

Just another example as to how we shouldn’t mess around too much with how the human body works.

Stay healthy!

Because of the tragedy unfolding in Japan with their nuclear reactors, fears of radiation sickness have prompted a rush in the USA on potassium iodine tablets, which are used to protect the body from certain kinds of radiation poisoning.  However, these fears are largely baseless and resemble panicked hyteria more than a viable precaution.

Yes, it’s true, there is radiation leaking out of those reactors, but it’s FIVE THOUSAND miles away.  Any radiation reaching the US coast will be seriously, seriously diluted to the point where it is unlikely to be a concern.

Plus, radiation pills aren’t magic.  They only protect the thyroid gland.   Here’s how it works.

Potassium Iodine Tablets

The thyroid is a gland located in the center of your neck,  just behind the windpipe.  It’s important for regulating certain hormones, metabolism, and other fun stuff.  Most important to our conversation, it uses a ton of iodine.

Why does that matter?  Well, sometimes when there’s a problem with a nuclear reactor, it spits out a radioactive form of iodine.  Your body can’t tell the difference, so it will run that radioactive iodine through the thyroid gland, putting it (and you) at risk for cancer.

So, the idea is, if you flood the body with good old fashioned non-radioactive iodine, the radioactive stuff never gets in.  It’s like there’s too long of a line in front of the nightclub; the radioactive stuff just never makes it past the crowd.  That’s where the “anti-radiation pills” come in.  They’re just loads of potassium iodine.

These pills don’t protect you from:

• any other form of radioactive material that is ingested
• any form of external radiation

So basically you get to keep your thyroid nice and intact while the rest of you goes to radioactive hell.  Don’t think that potassium iodine tablets are some sort of magical anti-radiation pill.  They’re not.

Plus, in this particular instance, the radiation leaking out of Japan doesn’t seem to have much radioactive iodine involved, so at this point, there really wouldn’t be much point in gobbling down large amounts of potassium iodine tablets.

By all means, radiation exposure is a definite health hazard and shouldn’t be taken lightly, but I don’t want people grabbing on to false or unnecessary precautions because they’re in a panic.  Staying informed is your best precaution.

Stay healthy!

There’s some really interesting research that recently came out not only on inflammation and obesity, but inflammation and diabetes as well.  Really, the two are closely related because of the influence of the hormone insulin, so this shouldn’t be so surprising, especially if you’ve read my post on insulin and weight gain.

To sum up, consuming a diet high in fat seems to create a problem with inflammation in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain that links the nervous system to the endocrine (hormonal) system through a little nubbin at the base of the brain called the pituatary gland (also called the “master gland”).  This inflammation then impairs the effects of two hormones, insulin and leptin, on signalling the body about fat storage.

Okay, let’s break down what that all means.

Inflammation and Obesity

First off, there’s a chemical on/off switch for inflammation in our body called NF-kB (NF- “kappa” B).  When NF-kB is activated, it’s like in those submarine movies where that klaxen horn begins blaring Ah- WOOO-GA!  Ah-WOOO-GA! and a voice shouts over the loudspeaker “Dive!  Dive!”.

Okay, maybe that’s just my hyperactive imagination.  But seriously, when NF-kB is activated, it tells the body that inflammation is necessary in that area.  We’ve discussed NF-kB in detail before in this post on inflammation and antioxidants.  The key thing to realize for this discussion is, a high-fat diet seems to activate NF-kB in the hypothalamus, leading to inflammation in that area.

This leads to resistance to the hormones insulin and leptin.  Insulin we’ve discussed many times before- it’s the hormone involved with controlling blood sugar.  It’s also the hormone of interest in diabetes and the pre-diabetic state called “metabolic syndrome”, “syndrome x”, or just plain “insulin resistance”. 

Resistance to insulin causes all kinds of health problems, but in this case, we’re mostly interested in the fact that abnormal expression of insulin causes weight gain.  If you’ve heard of low-carb diets, the whole mechanism behind their action is to control the levels of insulin in your body so that you don’t get fat.  Once again… abnormal action of insulin leads to fat gain.  Since an inflamed hypothalamus leads to abnormal action (i.e., resistance)  of insulin, it therefore also leads to fat gain.

Inflammation, Leptin, and Hunger

What about that other hormone, leptin?  What the heck IS that other hormone, leptin?

Leptin is a hormone that controls the sensation of hunger and/or saiety (the feeling of being full).  Again, when inflammation kicks in throughout the hypothalamus, you end up with an abnormal expression of this hormone… in other words, an inflamed brain is always telling you you’re not full yet, no matter how full you actually are.

So not only does an inflamed brain disable the hormonal mechanisms that help burn off fat and sugar (that’s insulin), it also disables the hormonal mechanism that tells you to stop stuffing your pie-hole in the first place!  Is it any wonder how this could lead to weight gain? 

There’s been links between inflammation and obesity before, but this is a much stronger link because the hypothalamus, as I mentioned earlier, pretty much runs the show when it comes to your hormones.  That means that inflammation there is going to have a far greater effect than inflammation in the peripheral tissues.

Fat Quality and Inflammation

I talk a lot about the importance of healthy fats in the diet, and how the balance of Omega-3 (anti-inflammatory) fats and Omega-6 (pro-inflammatory) fats is so vital to proper function in the body.  It may very well be that it is not a problem of overall quantity of fats, but an overdose of those inflammatory Omega-6 fats that is leading to this inflammation problem in the hypothalamus.

In fact, one of the articles on the subject shows that saturated fats are far more likely to induce this inflammed state in the hypothalamus, and therefore leading to the disruption in insulin and leptin that contributes to weight gain. Monounsaturated fats did not seem to have the undesirable effects.

My advice is, this is even more evidence to avoid processed foods (which are high in pro-inflammatory Omega-6s) and stick to a whole foods diet (also called a “primal” or “paleo” diet).  Additionally, supplementing with Omega-3 fats like fish oils can help reduce inflammation, and antioxidants can help, as well.  Read that article I linked to above for evidence on how antioxidants seem to shut off that NF-kB inflammation switch.

Since inflammation and obesity are linked, you want to avoid that situation as much as possible.  A healthy whole foods diet is the best defense.  After all, who wants an inflamed brain?

Stay healthy!

Once again, a disturbing report has been published calling into question whether our public water is safe to drink.  This time, it isn’t evil corporations dumping chemicals into our water supply… now, it’s problems with the delivery system itself.

Our water infrastructure is older than sin.  Okay, maybe slightly newer than that, but mostly it dates from the WWII era.  And, like our crumbling roadways and bridges, these old water systems are failing at an alarming rate, leading to water main breaks and other breaches in the water supply system. 

How often does this happen?  To the tune of something like 700 times a day… just for water main breaks.  That’s not counting incidents involving smaller water lines that may go unnoticed for a good period of time.  It’s gotten so bad that the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the country a D- on its report card for drinking water infrastructure in 2009!

Municipal Water Safe To Drink?

Yes, I'm sure this water is perfectly safe to drink. Or, NOT.

Think of a water pipe as a sealed system.  Water can flow along it and avoid being contaminated by the surrounding environment- it’s one of the things that is supposed to keep our water safe to drink.  But if that pipe gets cracked, the seal is broken and all sorts of contaminants can leak into the water that’s coming to your home.  Rainwater trickling down through the dirt will carry even more of that nasty sludge into the cracked pipes, leading to contaminated drinking water for anyone downstream from that location.

If it’s in the middle of a city, for example, think of all the chemicals and other pollutants that build up on the surface of a paved street, only to be washed into the ground when it rains.  This is going to trickle through the dirt and get into cracked pipes. 

Or even worse, imagine if that split open pipe is near a sewage line which might ALSO be compromised.  One expert is already claiming that a recent E.Coli outbreak in Colorado is the result of cracked and contaminated water pipes.

If you’ve read many articles on this site, odds are you know that I’m not a big fan of municipal water supplies.  More and more terrifying reports are coming out on how unsafe our water is, like this study on how common drinking water contamination is from just one cancer-causing chemical. 

But this issue of infrastructure goes beyond that.  Now, not only is our water polluted from the get-go, but even more toxic junk is getting into it as it travels to our homes!  Is there any wonder why I only drink filtered water?

Water Filtration

Notice I said FILTERED water, not bottled water.  Bottled water is just water in a bottle… it can be purified, not purified, whatever.  Many water bottling companies simply bottle already contaminated municipal water supplies.

However, this is not true across the board.  Plenty of bottled water IS filtered, and filtered to a significant extent.  As an example, I have a friend who used to work at a Dasani water bottling plant, and from his description, they filter the living beJesus out of their water before they bottle it.

So, you just have to do a little homework when you go to buy bottled water to make sure it’s filtered.  Or, you can get distilled water, which by law has to be actually distilled (which purifies it).

The other option is to get your own filter and do it yourself.  There’s a ton of filters on the market, ranging from small portable filters to pitcher-size filters to units that plug in under your sink and filter everything before it reaches the spigot.

Whatever your choice, make sure to filter your tap water to make your drinking water safe to drink.  I can’t stress this enough- you cannot rely on the government to protect you.  Take precautions now.

Filter out that nasty tap water and stay healthy!

American Society of Engineer’s report on water infrastructure:  http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/fact-sheet/drinking-water

Newly released Wikileaks documents suggest the United States is willing to wage trade war tactics on the European Union in order to force acceptance of genetically modified (GM) crops.

If this smells like another evil Monsanto plot, your nose has got it right.  Monsanto, for those of you new to the debate, is a massive biotech company that’s big on creating genetically modified crops and forcing them past any legal opposition despite real health concerns.  They’re apparently also big on the idea of controlling the world’s supply of food, since they can patent their seeds and sue farmers who use the age-old method of using seeds from last year’s crops to plant this year’s harvest (the NERVE of those farmers!).

As usual, big money special interests that are borderline Darth Vader-evil have managed to hijack the power of the US federal government for their own ends.  A series of Wikileaks cables shows that embassies in Europe are calling for the United States government to put pressure on the European Union to block any opposition to GM crops, using so-called “trade war” tactics if necessary.

Studies have already shown that GM crops, and Monsanto crops in particular, are dangerous and cause organ damage, but apparently, the stance of the US government is screw all that because tons of money is at risk for a giant faceless corporation who tried to hide those risks with statistical trickery.

I don’t want to get off on a rant here (oh, who am I kidding, sure I do), but is this what I’m paying taxes for?  So that some a-hole ambassador or other government employee who’s bought and paid for by one Evil Empire or another can use their influence to force unhealthy and dangerous genetically modified crops on foreign lands?  Meanwhile, our roads and bridges are crumbling, an entire generation is suffocating with student debt, and drug companies have completely taken over our health care system.

The cables themselves are pretty creepy if you read through them.  One flat-out acknowledges that 85% of the local population thinks GM crops are dangerous, and yet, still advises that pressure be brought against the government on behalf of GM crops and Monsanto.  And there’s talk of the Vatican’s stance on GM crops… really?  We’re spending our resources convincing the Pope that God digs GM crops?

I don’t know about you, but I have a serious problem with Mosanto railroading their dangerous GM crops into production in THIS country, much less allocating taxpayer resources to insure they can destroy the health of foriegn lands as well.  Let’s not forget that trade war tactics usually hurt our economy as well as theirs… something the US economy can hardly afford just so Monsanto can march a little closer to world food crop domination.

Many thanks to my friend and fellow health blogger Emily Giuffre’ for bringing this to my attention!

Includes links to some individual Wikileaks cables: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/03/wikileaks-us-eu-gm-crops?utm_source=streamsend&utm_medium=email&utm_content=13190181&utm_campaign=Food+News+Tuesday%2C+January+4

A recent report from a non-profit environmental group confirms what I’ve said for years: we’ve got a serious drinking water contamination problem.  Specifically, this report mentions chromium-6, a carcinogen that entered into popular awareness from the movie “Erin Brocovich”.

You know, every six or eight months, some yahoo at some newspaper or other media outlet decides to re-visit the same old nonsense story about how drinking tap water is fantastic, delicious, and cures all ills, while bottled water is a big fat sham and anybody that buys bottled water is a giant stupidhead (their words, folks, not mine.  Okay, maybe I embellished SLIGHTLY).  In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

I learned that typical municipal water supplies are a delightful mix of deadly poisons years ago while getting my doctorate.  While taking a public health class, the professor mentioned that they had tested the water fountains with a pool testing kit and found the chlorine levels UNSAFE TO SWIM IN, let alone DRINK.

And yet, every year, some politician will start up a propaganda campaign on how safe and fantastic their water supply is, and how bottled water is just some guy in a stained T-shirt filling old plastic jugs with a garden hose out in his back yard, cackling evilly the entire time.  It’s infuriating.

Don’t get me wrong.  There are some bottled water brands that are indeed worthless.  But there’s other brands that are highly, highly filtered.  Yes, it’s true, they may get their feed water from a municipal water supply, and THEN they send it through a bazillion filters that take out 99% or more of the pollutants.  So a good quality brand of filtered, bottled water is definitely better than sucking down the toxic crap that normally comes out of the tap.

I’m getting slightly off topic.  I do that sometimes.  We were discussing a recent study on contaminated water.

The Study On Drinking Water Contamination

The testing was conducted by a non-profit group called The Environmental Working Group.  They had volunteers  around the country collect local water supplies and then tested those samples for hexavalent chromium (chromium-6), and were shocked to find a heck of lot more of this stuff than they thought they would.

Twenty-five out of thirty-five major cities tested over California’s state limits. TWENTY-FIVE out of thirty-five!  That’s… *pulls out calculator, punches buttons furiously* …71.4% of cities tested!  Thirty-one out of thirty-five (89%) had measurable levels of the stuff .

California is the only state to regulate chromium-6 levels, and they say don’t go over 0.06 ppb (parts per billion).  The big winner in this study, Normon, Oklahoma, has levels TWO HUNDRED times that.

Here’s how the cities stacked up:

Norman, Okla. – 12.9 ppb
Honolulu, Hi. – 2.00 ppb
Riverside, Calif. – 1.69 ppb
Madison, Wis. – 1.58 ppb
San Jose, Calif. – 1.34 ppb
Tallahassee, Fla. – 1.25 ppb
Omaha, Neb. – 1.07 ppb
Albuquerque, N.M. – 1.04 ppb
Pittsburgh, Pa. – 0.88 ppb
Bend, Ore. – 0.78 ppb
Salt Lake City, Utah – 0.30 ppb
Ann Arbor, Mich. – 0.21 ppb
Atlanta, Ga. – 0.20 ppb
Los Angeles, Calif. – 0.20 ppb
Bethesda, Md. – 0.19 ppb
Phoenix, Ariz. – 0.19 ppb
Washington, D.C – 0.19 ppb
Chicago, Ill. – 0.18 ppb
Milwaukee, Wis. – 0.18 ppb
Villanova, Pa. – 0.18 ppb
Sacramento, Calif. – 0.16 ppb
Louisville, Ky. – 0.14 ppb
Syracuse, N.Y. – 0.12 ppb
New Haven, Conn. – 0.08 ppb
Buffalo, N.Y. – 0.07 ppb
Las Vegas, Nev. – 0.06 ppb
New York, N.Y. – 0.06 ppb
Scottsdale, Ariz. – 0.05 ppb
Miami, Fla. – 0.04 ppb
Boston, Mass. – 0.03 ppb
Cincinnati, Ohio – 0.03 ppb

Go Philly!  We’re only three times higher than safe levels!  Hurray!  (Villanova is suburb of Philly, for those of you who aren’t from around here).

By the way, if you live in Reno, Nevada, you’re cool.  No chromium-6 there.

Dangers of Chromium-6

Okay, so big whoop.  There’s something called chromium-6 or whatever in our water.  So what?

So cancer, that’s what, Tough Guy.  In particular, this chemical seems to be really, really good at causing stomach cancer.  Animal studies suggest it also causes damage to the liver and lymph nodes (not surprising, as those are filtration systems for the body).

Certain populations are more susceptible to damage.  Children and infants are at more risk from exposure to carcinogens in general, and people with low-acid stomachs are more likely to have problems as well (it’s harder for them to convert chromium-6 to the useful form).  Who has a low acid stomach?  Well, people taking antacids or proton pump inhibitors for indigestion, for starters.

Where’s This Stuff Coming From And Why Are We Drinking it?

Chromium-6 can erode from the soil, but normally it comes from steel and pulp mills, or metal plating or leather tanning industries.  The standards on this chemical are strangely lax; even though the EPA finally got around to labelling it likely to cause cancer, there’s still no nationwide standard on it.  Instead, federal guidelines measure “total chromium”, which includes the vital mineral form trivalent chromium (chromium is important in glucose metabolism) as well as the carcinogenic chromium-6.

Even then, they’re only regulating it to a level so that it won’t irritate the skin.  Do you think maybe a chemical gets potentially more dangerous in lower doses if you bypass the skin by, say, DRINKING it?  I think so.  I think that’s why we don’t drink chlorinated pool water.

So the bottom line is, there’s no real protection going on here.  There’s tons of this carcinogenic compound in a large percentage of our tap water, and nobody’s bothering to do anything about it.  I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.  Don’t wait for the goverment to fix things for you.  You’re in for a long wait. 

Plus, I want you to think about this.  Chromium-6 is ONE chemical pollutant that we know about in tap water. THAT WE KNOW ABOUT.  If there’s one, there’s probably more.  So I’m worried about the water contamination that we DON’T know is there, even more so than what we DO know is in there. As ridiculous as these chromium-6 levels are, they’re also indicative of a much greater problem.

My advice is to stick to filtered water.  I flat out refuse to drink tap water. Ideally, you would filter both drinking and bathing water, but definitely don’t drink that toxic crap coming out of your tap.  I’ll be following up soon with another article on the specifics of filtered water, how to choose a filter (or brand), etc.,  but until then, get yourself a few jugs of distilled water and stick to that.

Check that list of cities… how does YOURS stack up for drinking water contamination?

Stay healthy!

Source article: http://static.ewg.org/reports/2010/chrome6/html/home.html

Great.  As if there weren’t enough problems with the stuff already, now there’s evidence of the toxic chemical mercury in high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

HFCS, of course, is a common artificial sweetener used in practically every processed food imaginable.  Both cheaper and sweeter than sugar, high fructose corn syrup has been linked to a whole host of health problems from obesity to diabetes to you name it.

A 2009 study on the sweetener (published on the web site of the Minneapolis-based nonprofit Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy) found that about 30% of products tested that contained HFCS also contained mercury.  These products included Hunt’s Tomato Ketchup, Frosted Blueberry Pop-Tarts, Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup, and Nutri-Grain Strawberry Cereal Bars.

There’s Mercury In High Fructose Corn Syrup?  From Where?

One of the chemical products used to make HFCS is caustic soda, and up until recently, mercury was used to make caustic soda.  Nowadays, hardly anybody in the US uses mercury to make caustic soda, but guess what?  Not everybody buys their high fructose corn syrup from US suppliers. A lot of this stuff comes from overseas.

So, that’s one way in which mercury might find its way into high fructose corn syrup.  But really, it doesn’t matter where it’s coming from, only that it’s there.

Dangers of Mercury

The effects of mercury depend on things like how much of it you’re exposed to, what sort of mercury it is (methylmercury is the worst), and the age and health of the person affected.  Elemental mercury is typically a problem when it’s inhaled.  Obviously we’re not dealing with that in a food product.

Methylmercury is more easily absorbed and tends to cause neurological problems, especially in fetuses and children.  Other forms of mercury are linked to GI tract problems (that’s how this type is absorbed) and damage to the kidneys as well as neurological symptoms.  So this is not stuff to mess around with.

Having said all that, the levels of mercury found in these foods was rather small (and the type was unclear).   Here’s the thing, though.  When I read the statement from ConAgra’s spokesperson which goes something like ”the levels of mercury reported in our ketchup are well below the EPA’s safe exposure level”, I didn’t breathe a sigh of relief. I said to myself, why is there ANY mercury in ketchup?  How about ZERO mercury in my food?  Can we shoot for that?

Another thing I’d like to point out is the presence of HFCS, which is a seriously unhealthy additive even without the mercury, in what many people might think of as a “healthy snack”:  Nutri-Grain bars.  Folks, just because the word “grain” is the name, and there’s nice pictures of wheat or something on the package, doesn’t make it healthy.  If it comes in a box or a can, it’s probably junk.

It’s too hard to keep track of all of the nasty chemicals and additives put into these processed foods.  High fructose corn syrup is just one of many, many additives that will slowly kill you in disgusting ways, so why not avoid the issue entirely by sticking to whole, organic foods?  It’s a far more simple solution than trying to keep track of which unpronounceable chemicals do what, and a far more effective solution than waiting for the government to actually rein in and control the food industy (which will never happen).

Stick to whole foods, avoid the mercury and high fructose corn syrup, and stay healthy!