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A patient recently came in who was in the middle of the fires and complained of difficulty breathing.  The fires were literally a mile or so away from her home.  Her garage was covered with ash and soot.  Her house and car smelt like smoke.  If her home was covered in ash and soot, just imagine what she was breathing in.

I live about 20 miles away from some of the fires and it affected my breathing.  I can’t imagine what it would be like if I lived closer.  One of the first things that comes to mind regarding these fires are the chemicals released into the air from the burned homes.  Even more significant are the chemicals used in the fire retardants that are dropped from planes.

“It’s fairly well known that it’s toxic to aquatic organisms, to fish,” said Sue Husari, the fire management officer for the Pacific West region of the National Park Service. “In a lot of cases, we prefer to limit its use, but it’s definitely one of the tools we use.”

The use of the most common type of retardant, a fertilizer-like, phosphate-based compound, can vary by state or by who oversees the land where a fire is spreading. Among federal agencies, the Park Service is relatively cautious with retardant because part of its mission is to protect natural and cultural resources for public use. The State of California, however, has the largest aviation fire operation of any state and uses retardant aggressively not only to contain fires — retardant’s intended purpose — but also to try to extinguish them before they reach populated areas.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/us/16wildfires.html?ref=earth

Tips to help if you’ve been exposed to the fires:

Note: if you live anywhere in the vicinity of Santa Barbara or Southern California, you’ve been exposed.

Increase your detoxification mechanisms. Your lungs and liver are the most heavily impacted and both are primary routes of detoxification.  (If you are having serious respiratory issues due to the fires, please consult with your physician before beginning any self/home therapy).  I usually recommend 1,000 mg N-acetyl cysteine (NAC) and 1,500 mg buffered vitamin C with bioflavanoids per day.  These will seriously kick up your detoxification mechanisms.

Drink lots of water. 1 liter for every 50 lbs of body weight.

See your local Chiropractor and have them adjust your rib cage to help increase your lung capacity.  When you’re exposed to airborne toxins your rib muscles and diaphragm go into a spasm and decrease your lung capacity.

If you have any questions please email me

Ask any veteran suffering from the syndrome and they’ll say “duh?”

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

According to the report, Gulf War illness is a “complex of multiple concurrent symptoms” that “typically includes persistent memory and concentration problems, chronic headaches, widespread pain, gastrointestinal problems, and other chronic abnormalities.”

The illness may also be potentially tied to higher rates of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease — among Gulf War veterans than veterans of other conflicts.

The illness is identified as the consequence of multiple “biological alterations” affecting the brain and nervous system.  (Source: http://tinyurl.com/67gh4p)

The article notes that there isn’t an effective treatment for this syndrome.  I partly agree with that statement.  Treatment will depend upon the severity of toxic exposure and overall damage done to bodily tissues and organ systems.

Here’s what we do in our clinic to help decrease toxic load upon your body:

Repair your digestive tract with supplements such as L-glutamine and deglycyrrhizinated licorice.

Mobilize, bind and excrete toxins. I find that using micro-current modalities such as the Energy Balance Pro and far infrared saunas are excellent to mobilize toxins.  I also like to use the Erchonia low level laser to stimulate the tissues to release stored toxins and to help excrete them.  I use N-acetyl cysteine, alpha lipoic acid, buffered vitamin C and silymarin to help with binding and excretion of toxins.

Minimize and avoid subsequent toxin exposure. Listen to my guest appearance on “The Craving’s Coach” podcast about toxins (part 2 here) for more tips on this.

Replace depleted vitamins, minerals, enzymes, proteins, fats and carbohydrates. I recommend at minimum everyone who has past toxic exposure (which is essentially everyone to some degree) be on a high grade multi-vitamin / multi-mineral supplement, enzymes, and high grade fish oil supplements.

If you have any specific questions about any of my recommendations, feel free to email me

Aloha!

Listen to the podcast here.

Again, thank you Diana for giving me the opportunity to share my passion with your listener audience.

The study, published online in the open-access journal BMC Neurology, found the strongest ties to the use of herbicides and insecticides, such as organochlorides and organophosphates. Drinking well water or living or working on a farm, two common experiences for pesticide exposures, did not appear to be associated with Parkinson’s.

Many Parkinson’s disease cases are thought to be due to an interaction between genetic and environmental factors. By studying related individuals who share environmental and genetic backgrounds, researchers said they could identify specific differences in exposures between individuals with and without the disease.

“Previous studies have shown that individuals with Parkinson’s disease are over twice as likely to report being exposed to pesticides as unaffected individuals, but few studies have looked at this association in people from the same family or have assessed associations between specific classes of pesticides and Parkinson’s disease,” study author Dana Hancock said in a prepared statement.

Researchers from both Duke University Medical Center and the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine interviewed 319 Parkinson’s patients and more than 200 of their relatives to get details about whether they ever were exposed to pesticides, lived or worked on a farm, or drank water from wells.

Parkinson’s disease, which affects about 1 million people in the United States, is characterized by symptoms such as tremors and muscle rigidity. Several gene variations have been tagged as contributing to the disease, but these rare defects account for a small proportion of those affected by disorder.

While several other studies have supported pesticides as a risk factor for Parkinson’s, “biological evidence is presently insufficient to conclude that pesticide exposure causes PD,” Hancock said.

“Further investigation of these specific pesticides and others may lead to identification of pertinent biological pathways influencing PD development,” he said.

Dr. Mike’s comments on this article:

It amazes me that studies like this are only surfacing now when the research has been there for years. Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” outlines the deleterious effects of persistent organic pollutants. Think about it, if these chemicals are strong enough to kill plants and animals, it sure can kill our cells as well.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that just because you don’t feel the effects immediately that its not affecting you at all. Remember the term “bioaccumulation.” This is when toxins accumulate and are stored in the fatty tissues over time. A great book to read on this subject is Dr. Sherry Rogers “Detoxify or Die.”

We’ll be releasing a podcast on this topic in a week or so. Check back to hear what I have to say about TOXINS.

Books mentioned in this post:

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson Read more about this book…

Detoxify or Die by Sherry A. Rogers Read more about this book…

LOS ANGELES – With the goal of eliminating an estimated 37,000 pounds of harmful pesticides from local farms and communities, environmental agencies from the U.S and Mexico will collect obsolete or unwanted pesticides from area growers this week.

On Wednesday, pre-registered growers will bring in unwanted pesticides to the Allied Waste Facility in Imperial County, Calif. On Thursday, pre-registered growers will do the same at a collection site near Mexicali, Mexico. The collected pesticides will be disposed of at a licensed hazardous waste facility.

“Because agriculture is prevalent in Imperial County and Mexicali, there’s a legacy of pesticide use. We encourage growers from the U.S. and Mexico to legally dispose of unwanted and obsolete pesticides, reducing the threat of exposure to toxic substances to people and the environment,” said Katherine Taylor, Associate Director for Agriculture at EPA Region 9.

This event is sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Border 2012 program, California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation, Imperial County Agricultural Commissioner, Mexico’s Secretariat for the Environment and Natural Resources, SEMARNAT, and Mexico’s health agency ISESALUD.

“This effort is an excellent example of cooperation among state and federal agencies and our partners across the border,” said Mary-Ann Warmerdam, director of the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR). “We all share the same concerns about unwanted pesticides that pose a hazard to our people and our environment.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An estimated 5.2 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease, and it could steal the minds of one out of eight baby boomers, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Alzheimer’s Association.

Gone are the days of infectious disease outbreaks like tuberculosis and diptheria. We are in the age of degenerative diseases, diseases that manifests years after the initiatory factor. The question becomes “why are we seeing such a huge increase in degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s?” My personal hypothesis is that we’re being exposed to more and more adverse chemicals which are causing damage to our cells. These chemical toxins, though they may be in low dosages, accumulate in our fatty tissues such as the liver, kidneys and the brain. Then as the chemicals increase pass a persons toxin load capacity, disease sets in.

Listen to my brief podcast about this topic and stay tuned for the upcoming episode “The Toxic World We Live In.”

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So what are some other things that may contribute to chemical toxicity in GWS.  A few service men told me that huge palettes of “diet” sodas are left out in the 120 degree heat of the desert.  So what happens when artificial sweeteners such as Aspartame are heated up?  Well it turns into formaldehyde.  Formaldehyde is very toxic to your cells and causes cellular death (but hey you get a head start in the embalming process).  You may have heard contradicting information about this notion on the Internet such as the study that was written in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.  The study states:

Even daily large doses of the high-intensity sweetener aspartame, also known as NutraSweet, had no adverse effect on study subjects’ health and well-being, a visiting scientist at MIT reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition last week.”We conclude that aspartame is safe for the general population,” said Paul A. Spiers, visiting scientist in the Clinical Research Center (CRC).

What this study failed to address was the “total load” phenomenon.  Sure these people showed minimal side effects from the ingestion of Aspartame, but you must remember that our bodies are very resilient and will detoxify these foreign compounds in order to maintain our optimum biochemistry.  Soldiers in the field are being exposed to all sorts of exotic chemicals that add to their total load.  It’s like a trash can that keeps getting filled faster than it gets emptied; the trash just overflows.

Case in point: don’t use artificial sweeteners.  (If you do…stop.  If you did and have prolonged exposures to environmental toxins, detoxify quickly!)

Stay tuned for our up coming podcast on “The Toxic World we live in.”

Gulf War illness linked to chemical exposure | Science | Reuters

Technorati Tags: Gulf war syndrome, chemical toxicity

Meds lurk in drinking water