Marc Joseph Nutrition - Blog

A large phone survey, commissioned by the non-profit Generation Rescue (GR) and conducted by independent opinion research firm Survey USA, found that, relative to unvaccinated boys, vaccinated boys were 2.5 times more likely to have a neurological disorder such as ADHD or autism.

The survey queried 11,817 households in Oregon and California, and gathered data on 17,674 children ages 4 to 17, including 9,175 boys and 8,499 girls. The survey method closely paralleled the approach and age ranges that the CDC has used to identify national prevalence rates for neurological disorders.

Survey Results

Significant relationships between vaccinations and neurological disorders (NDs) were found only in boys, which, as GR notes, is not too surprising, given that boys represent 80% of all ND cases.

Here are a few of the survey’s amazing findings:

A. All vaccinated boys, compared to unvaccinated boys:
- Were 155% more likely to have a neurological disorder
- Were 224% more likely to have ADHD
- Were 61% more likely to have autism

B. Older vaccinated boys, ages 11-17, compared to older unvaccinated boys:
- Were 158% more likely to have a neurological disorder
- Were 317% more likely to have ADHD
- Were 112% more likely to have autism

(GR notes: “Older children may be a more reliable indicator because many children are not diagnosed until they are 6-8 years old, and we captured data beginning at age 4.”)

C. All vaccinated boys, removing one county with unusual results, compared to unvaccinated boys:
- Were 185% more likely to have a neurological disorder
- Were 279% more likely to have ADHD
- Were 146% more likely to have autism

Also, all vaccinated boys and girls were 120% more likely to have asthma than their unvaccinated peers.

Call for Larger Scale Study

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In a recent Canadian study, a research team led by Dr. Eric Frombonne, Director of Pediatric Psychiatry at The Montreal Children’s Hospital, found no difference in mercury in the blood and hair samples obtained from autistic children and their mothers relative to samples from non-autistic children and their mothers.

Frombonne and his team concluded:

• Autism is not a form of mercury poisoning.
• “Chelation therapies, whereby heavy metals are removed from the body using specific compounds , are not useful in the treatment of autism. Chelation has never been proved efficacious as a biomedical intervention to treat autism.”

We can all go home now. Nothing at all to see here. Move along.

What They Didn’t Tell You

As it turns out, though, it’s a little more complicated than that.

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The current issue of Discover Magazine includes a cover story (”Autism: It’s Not Just in the Head“) that is to-date likely the best, easy-to-understand overview of the latest biomedical understandings and treatments for autism:

A disparate group—immunologists, naturopaths, neuroscientists, and toxicologists—is turning up clues that are yielding novel strategies to help autistic patients. New studies are examining contributing factors ranging from vaccine reactions to atypical growth in the placenta, abnormal tissue in the gut, inflamed tissue in the brain, food allergies, and disturbed brain wave synchrony. Some clinicians are using genetic test results to recommend unconventional nutritional therapies, and others employ drugs to fight viruses and quell inflammation.

Above all, there is a new emphasis on the interaction between vulnerable genes and environmental triggers, along with a growing sense that low-dose, multiple toxic and infectious exposures may be a major contributing factor to autism and its related disorders. A vivid analogy is that genes load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger. “Like cancer, autism is a very complex disease,” says Craig Newschaffer, chairman of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Drexel University School of Public Health, “and it’s exciting to start asking questions about the interaction between genes and environment. There’s really a very rich array of potential exposure variables.”

“What we’ve got here is a far more comprehensive set of characteristics for autism,” says [Harvard pediatric neurologist Martha] Herbert, “one that can include behavior, cognition, sensorimotor, gut, immune, brain, and endocrine [hormone] abnormalities. These are ongoing problems, and they’re not confined just to the brain. I can’t think of it as a coincidence anymore that so many autistic kids have a history of food and airborne allergies, or 20 or 30 ear infections, or eczema, or chronic diarrhea.” …

Herbert likens autism to a hologram: “Everything that fascinates me is in it. It’s got epidemiology, toxicology, philosophy of science, biochemistry, genetics, systems theory, the collapse of the medical system, and the failure of managed care. Each child that walks through my door is a challenge to everything I ever knew, and each child forces me to think outside the box and between categories.” …

… All this marks a Copernican-scale shift in our approach to the disorder. I myself [the article’s author, Jill Neimark] was irresistibly drawn to the subject when viewing an online video of a heavily affected 11-year-old who, after a series of chelation treatments to remove mercury, announced to his mother, “Mom, I’m back from the living dead.” The statement was heartbreaking in its simple eloquence. Mercury chelation, in this particular child’s case, was a near panacea.

Why should you care?

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In a recent study published in the journal Neuropediatrics, researchers observed that higher blood mercury levels were significantly associated with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Specifically, the case control study examined 52 children with ADHD (44 boys, mean age=7) along with a control group. Researchers found:

• significantly greater blood mercury levels in the children with ADHD than the control group (18.2 vs. 11.6 nmol/L)
• that children with blood mercury levels greater than 29 nmol/L (27% of the children studied) had nearly 10 times the risk of having ADHD

Mercury is not the only heavy metal associated with ADHD. As mentioned in an earlier blog post (One-third of ADHD Cases May be Tied to Lead, Smoking), lead exposure may also be a potential cause.

Whether mercury, lead, or another heavy metal may be involved, it’s important to use an appropriate diagnostic test. A blood test is not necessarily a good choice. Heavy metals tend to clear from the blood over the course of several months. So, if exposure to heavy metals is in large, infrequent doses (e.g., through a vaccine preservative), a blood test wouldn’t necessarily reveal an elevated level unless the test were done right after the exposure.

Also, even if the exposure were low-level and chronic (e.g., mercury fillings, fish consumption), blood levels may not be high. The blood test, though, doesn’t tell you anything about what amount of metals are being retained by the body’s tissues and organs — and that’s what you really care about most.

A challenge test using a chelation substance, like DMSA, is sometimes used to try get a better understanding of tissue levels. But it’s not accurate either. The test may tell you that you have high metal levels, but a negative test result doesn’t necessarily mean that you have low levels. It just means that the chelation substance didn’t pull any metals with that challenge dose. Think of it like a miner going into mine in search of gold. He scrapes the walls for a bit and finds no gold. Does that mean there’s no gold in the mine? Mmmm, no.

A better test for chronic, long-term heavy metal exposure or acute exposures that occurred more than a couple of months ago is a hair test. This test can help to reveal disordered essential mineral transport, which is a hallmark sign of heavy metal toxicity. The heavy metals displace and disrupt the normal use of essential minerals in the body (e.g., zinc, magnesium, calcium, etc.), including the deposition of these minerals into the hair.

You can read more about approaches for dealing with heavy metal toxicity and ADHD here and here.

A recent New York Times article highlighted what has become a growing trend over the last few years: giving multiple psychiatric medications to children:

[A] growing number of children and teenagers in the United States are taking not just a single drug for discrete psychiatric difficulties but combinations of powerful and even life-threatening medications to treat a dizzying array of problems.

Last year in the United States, about 1.6 million children and teenagers — 280,000 of them under age 10 — were given at least two psychiatric drugs in combination, according to an analysis performed by Medco Health Solutions at the request of The New York Times. More than 500,000 were prescribed at least three psychiatric drugs. More than 160,000 got at least four medications together, the analysis found.

The numbers are amazing, aren’t they?

The article notes that there is evidence that suggests individual medications may be useful for certain conditions, but that there is “virtually no scientific evidence to justify this multiplication of pills.”

The majority of the child prescriptions are for ADD/ADHD and depression (click image to expand):

What’s going on here? Stimulants, antidepressants, antipsychotics and anticonvulsants in young children? Why the greater use of these serious drugs (many with significant risk for side effects)? Most importantly, why the increasing prevalence of conditions in children requiring their use?

I think dietary factors and toxin exposure likely play significant roles in the greater prevalence of these conditions and the use of these drugs in children. Taking multiple prescription drugs without a closer look at potential root causes doesn’t seem to make much sense.

The behavior of many children (and adults) with attention deficit disorders often significantly improves with a shift to a whole foods diet that eliminates chemical additives. For others, exposure to toxins, such as those found in some vaccines and in the environment at large, may be an underlying cause. Safely reducing a child’s toxic body burden may help to improve the situation.

You can read more about a better approach to ADD/ADHD that attempts to identify and address underlying root causes here.

Autism is getting more much needed attention in the mainstream press. For example, it’s the cover story in this week’s issue of Newsweek.

And it certainly deserves to be. More than 500,000 people under 21 are diagnosed with autism. Approximately 1 out of every 166 children (and 1 out of every 100 boys) is diagnosed with autism (versus 1 out of every 10,000 children twenty years ago). 1 out of 6 children today is diagnosed with a developmental disorder.

The article discusses the efforts of parents and advocacy groups to pass the Combating Autism Act, which passed unanimously in the Senate and sets aside nearly $1B for autism research. Currently the bill is blocked by Rep. Joe Barton, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who says the legislation conflicts with his own proposal to reform the National Institutes of Health.

The bill approved by the Senate designated $45M for special centers that would focus on environmental research. Barton’s proposed revisions would eliminate this mandate. Also, some advocacy groups wanted the legislation to specifically include vaccines on the list of environmental factors to be assessed. The pharmaceutical industry lobbyists made sure that wording was removed in the Senate version of the bill.

(Update: Negotiations continue on the House version of the bill. Currently, the bill still includes the environmental language. Also, the last sentence in the paragraph above is incorrect. The $45M for environmental research still includes wording for research on vaccines and their components.)

The primary focus of the article, though, is on the absence of social services for people affected by autism once they become adults.

A few states like California and Connecticut, newly aware of the crisis, have launched efforts to meet adult needs. But until programs are widely available, families are left to cobble together a patchwork of solutions—from informal day care to hourly caretakers to private residential programs. But these are stopgap measures. Parents worry that they will run out of money to pay for these services—and that they won’t be around forever to arrange them for their children.

The entire article is worth reading and eye-opening to say the least.

Some Still in Denial

Amazingly, some practitioners and government representatives continue to suggest that the increase in autism rates may be the result of better diagnosis. This isn’t an issue of diagnosis. Anyone who has ever met a person affected by autism knows that the symptoms can’t be hidden.

Where are all the 40, 50 and 60 year-old autistics? Most people over the age of 30 would have trouble remembering if they met even one autistic person in school. Today, entire classes and special schools are being set up in school districts around the country to handle the dramatic increase in autistic and developmentally disabled children.

This is an epidemic, an epidemic that destroys lives and families, both health-wise and financially. And without better research into causes (including environmental factors such as mercury exposure) and effective treatments, the immense financial costs of taking care of autistic individuals, estimated to be in the trillions, will be felt by everyone.

Getting the Real Story

Unfortunately, the real story, examining the environmental influences and how biomedical treatments can help to restore function, isn’t being told by most folks in the mainstream press. There are, though, journalists, such as David Kirby and UPI’s Dan Olmstead, who have fought tirelessly to uncover what’s really going on, as well as many parents, organizations, scientists, healthcare practitioners, and even a few politicians.

Hopefully the word will continue to spread…

In news that you certainly didn’t see on the evening news, the organization Put Children First commissioned a survey of 9,000 individuals regarding the use of mercury in flu shots and got some very interesting results, e.g.:

• 76% of respondents are unaware that most flu shots contain mercury (the vaccine’s preservative, thimerosal, contains 50% mercury).
• After learning that mercury is an ingredient, 74% are less likely to get a flu shot and 86% say they are less likely to get their child a flu shot.
• 77% believe mercury should not be an ingredient in flu shots given to pregnant women and children.
• 73% believe the government should warn pregnant women not to get a flu shot if it contains mercury.
• More than 70% agree that Congress, doctors and medical groups (e.g., the American Academy of Pediatrics) should take responsibility for ensuring vaccines do not contain mercury.
• 80% of respondents and 84% of parents are willing to pay the $2.50 additional cost for a mercury-free flu shot.

Check out the results overview page here. Put Children First includes many eye-opening items of interest, including:

• 90% of the flu shots distributed this year for both adults and children will contain mercury (in the form of thimerosal, as will many other adult vaccines, such as some tetanus/diptheria booster shots).
• A mercury-containing flu shot contains 50,000 ppb (parts per billion) of mercury. If liquid contains more than 200 ppb, it is classified by the government as a hazardous waste. Drinking water cannot contain more than 2 ppb. Simply amazing.
• Mercury is estimated to be 1000 times as toxic as lead. Could you imagine the uproar if lead were included in vaccines? According to the Material Data Safety Sheet for thimerosal, no safe occupational exposure level has been determined.
• Links to recent articles published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the British Medical Journal (BMJ) questioning the effectiveness of flu vaccines.
• Links to studies documenting thimerosal’s extreme toxicity.

Certainly some information to consider before getting that next vaccination…

A new review study to be published in an upcoming issue of The Lancet notes that there are over 200 industrial chemicals that may damage the human brain, yet most are neither examined for potential effects on the developing brain nor tightly regulated. With one out of every six children now affected by a developmental disorder, the stakes are high.

As one of the study’s authors notes: “We must make protection of the young brain a paramount goal of public health protection. You have only one chance to develop a brain.”

This article does a good job of summarizing the study’s important points:

Few chemicals are assessed for neurotoxicity in the developing brain:

The authors then examined the published literature on the only five substances on the list–lead, methylmercury, arsenic, PCBs and toluene–that had sufficient documentation of toxicity to the developing human brain in order to analyze how that toxicity had been first recognized and how it led to control of exposure…the number of chemicals that can cause neurotoxicity in laboratory animal tests exceeds 1,000

The toxicity issue is most critical for children:

A developing brain is much more susceptible to the toxic effects of chemicals than an adult brain. During development, the brain undergoes a highly complex series of processes at different stages. An interference–for example, from toxic substances–that disrupts those processes, can have permanent consequences. That vulnerability lasts from fetal development through infancy and childhood to adolescence. Research has shown that environmental toxicants, such as lead or mercury, at low levels of exposure can have subclinical effects–not clinically visible, but still important adverse effects, such as decreases in intelligence or changes in behavior.

The impact is significant, both in terms of people and dollars:

[Researchers] conclude that industrial chemicals are responsible for what they call a silent pandemic that has caused impaired brain development in millions of children worldwide. It is silent because the subclinical effects of individual toxic chemicals are not apparent in available health statistics. To point out the subclinical risk to large populations, the authors note that virtually all children born in industrialized countries between 1960 and 1980 were exposed to lead from petrol, which may have reduced IQ scores above 130 (considered superior intelligence) by more than half and increased the number of scores less than 70. Today, it’s estimated that the economic costs of lead poisoning in U.S. children are $43 billion annually; for methylmercury toxicity, $8.7 billion each year.

What can be done?

The study’s authors have four recommendations:

1. Document chemicals that have caused toxic effects on the nervous system in humans to facilitate targeted preventive action against releases of these chemicals;
2. Document human exposures to neurotoxic chemicals and identification of subgroups at risk due to residence, occupation, diet, and other factors;
3. Research the consequences of developmental exposures to neurotoxic chemicals to expand our understanding of the long-term consequences of such exposures; and
4. Screen for neurotoxicity of commonly used chemicals to identify those that may present a hazard to brain development.

But they mention that these actions are expensive and will likely not be taken soon.

In the meantime, there are steps that individuals can take to protect themselves and their own children, including:

• Drinking filtered water
• Avoiding produce that is high in pesticides
• Reducing the use of harmful cleaning products in the home
• Selecting safer personal care products
• Having your residence tested for lead if it was built prior to 1978, and having lead paint professionally sealed and/or replaced
• Avoiding mercury in fish, amalgams, and vaccines

And for people who suspect toxin exposure may be an issue for either themselves, their own children, or future planned children, there are also other actions that can be taken.

In a recent study (free full text) published in the Journal of Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers found that children exposed to tobacco smoke while their mothers were pregnant and who were born to mothers who had high blood lead levels, were 2.5 and 4.1 times, respectively, as likely to develop ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

If these factors are indeed causally linked to ADHD, they may account for as many as 270,000 (tobacco) and 290,000 (lead) excess cases of ADHD in U.S. children.

Tobacco exposure is straightforward to reduce — don’t smoke and avoid being exposed to second-hand cigarette smoke.

Tips for reducing lead exposure include:

• Drink filtered water.
• Have your home or apartment tested for lead if it was built prior to 1978 (the year lead paint was banned for consumer use).
• Avoid remodeling or renovation of a residence where lead paint may have been used during the period of time before, during, after pregnancy.
• Only have such renovations done professionally, with proper safety precautions and cleanup, and if you have an alternate place to stay while they are being done.
• Follow a healthy diet with adequate calcium and iron, which will help to reduce the absorption of lead.

Other suggestions for reducing lead exposure are here.

If you suspect that you may have been exposed to lead and are concerned about the effects it may have on a planned/current child or yourself, there are approaches that one can take to safely reduce the body burden.

And for those individuals affected by ADD/ADHD, there are also nutritional and other steps that can be taken to reduce symptoms.

In August 2006, the FDA ruled that ADHD drugs, including Dexedrine and Ritalin, must carry new warnings about the risk of heart problems and psychotic behavior. These warnings join existing ones for Strattera (suicidal thoughts) and Adderall (heart problems).

An estimated 2.5 million children under 19 now take such drugs. Why are so many more children being diagnosed with ADHD? It’s unclear, but the increase appears to be real and not just a result of better diagnosis. Greater exposure to environmental toxins through diet, vaccines, and other sources may play a role.

Are these stimulant drugs really the best way to deal with the situation? The drugs may improve symptoms in some people, but are the potential underlying problems being addressed? Are the potential risks worth it?

There is a better approach that includes dietary changes and safe toxin removal.