Marc Joseph Nutrition - Blog

There have certainly been many questionable articles dismissing the suspected vaccine-autism connection, but the San Francisco Chronicle opinion-piece (The Truth About Autism) written by Kaiser Permanente pediatrician Dr. Rahul K. Parikh is probably one of the more egregious in its twisting of the truth.

Parikh begins by discussing one of his patients:

“Since learning of her son’s diagnosis, Andy’s mother had been vigilant. In her research, which she presented to me in a binder, she was positive about two things:

First, Andy was part of an epidemic of autism that has afflicted kids during the past 20 years. Second, the routine, life-saving vaccines that Andy had received during the first two years of his life had at least contributed to — if not been — the cause of his illness.

On both of these issues, nothing could have been further from the truth.”

One would think such a bold statement denying a vaccine-autism link would be followed by strong supporting evidence. However, Parikh fails to provide that.

Instead, Parikh says:

“The increase in autism cases is due to a better understanding of the disorder and its prevalence.”

Parikh goes on to provide nothing but subjective reasoning to support this claim:

• There is “more professional and public awareness.”
• Kids previously classified as mentally retarded or developmentally disabled are now classified as autistic.
• There is greater incentive to diagnose kids with these disorders because kids diagnosed on the autistic spectrum qualify for state aid.

Question:

If the increase is just a case of better diagnosis, where are all the 40 year-old autistic people? If there has been no change in the rate of autism, there should be millions of autistic older adults.

And, yet, there aren’t.

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A review article published in the peer-reviewed journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine summarizes the impact of heavy metals mercury and cadmium on the vascular system.

The overall vascular effects of mercury include oxidative stress, inflammation, thrombosis, vascular smooth muscle dysfunction, endothelial dysfunction, dyslipidemia [high LDL cholesterol, low HDL, high triglycerides], immune dysfunction, and mitochondrial dysfunction. The clinical consequences of mercury toxicity include hypertension, CHD [coronary heart disease], MI [myocardial infarction], increased carotid IMT and obstruction, CVA, generalized atherosclerosis, and renal dysfunction with proteinuria …

… Cadmium concentrates in the kidney, particularly inducing proteinuria and renal dysfunction; it is associated with hypertension, but less so with CHD. Renal cadmium reduces CYP4A11 and PPARs, which may be related to hypertension, sodium retention, glucose intolerance, dyslipidemia, and zinc deficiency.

More on Mechanisms

There are several primary ways in which heavy metal exposure may increase the risk for vascular disease:

Increased Oxidative Stress - Mercury and cadmium have high affinity for molecules that contain sulfhydryl groups (-SH), including several sulfur-containing antioxidants, such as N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), alpha-lipoic acid, and glutathione. As a result, when the body is exposed to these heavy metals, antioxidant function is compromised and oxidative stress increases.

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As reported in The Huffington Post by David Kirby, journalist and author of the book Evidence of Harm, today marks the start of a key event in the vaccine-autism debate:

On Monday, one of the most important legal proceedings in American medical history will get underway at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington. There, a special panel of three judges will begin hearing evidence to support — and refute — the hypothesis that mercury in vaccines and/or the live-virus measles-mumps-rubella [MMR] shot caused autism or autism-like symptoms in some American children.

Monday will mark the first time ever that evidence of autistic harm from childhood vaccines is examined and cross-examined in a court of law. This is far from a slam dunk case for either side, and the stakes - professional, financial, emotional — could not be more intense.

The case being heard beginning today (Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services) is the first test case selected from over 4800 autism claims filed with the federal claims court (aka the Vaccine Court). Any decisions in the case will likely affect future guidance for other Vaccine Court and autism cases around the country.

The Stakes

Back in 1986, a vaccine compensation system was developed by Congress to limit the liability of vaccine manufacturers. A 75-cent tax has been levied on each vaccination shot and put in a compensation fund, which currently totals $2.5 billion.

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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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In a five-year study published in the top journal Neurology, researchers found that individuals who developed mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or Alzheimer’s disease had observable changes in brain structure long before the onset of cognitive decline.

Compared to the group that didn’t develop memory problems, the 23 people who developed MCI or Alzheimer’s disease had less gray matter in key memory processing areas of their brains even at the beginning of the study when they were cognitively normal.

“We found that changes in brain structure are present in clinically normal people an average of four years before MCI diagnosis,” said study author Charles D. Smith, MD, with the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington and member of the American Academy of Neurology. “We knew that people with MCI or Alzheimer’s disease had less brain volume, but before now we didn’t know if these brain structure changes existed, and to what degree, before memory loss begins.”

The findings are definitely interesting, but not too surprising. As shown in the video below, it is known that exposing nerve cells to toxins may lead to damage consistent with that observed in Alzheimer’s disease:

How Mercury causes Neurodegeneration (brain degeneration)

Toxin exposure is, of course, not the only potential cause of cognitive decline. Nutritional deficiencies, stress, genetics, and other factors may also be involved.

Waiting Not a Good Option

As someone who experienced and recovered from MCI at a relatively young age, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of not ignoring minor cognitive changes (e.g., ability to think, focus, remember). MCI and Alzheimer’s disease are NOT a normal part of aging.

Each person has an internal reference point to their own cognitive abilities and usually is capable of recognizing changes in function long before friends, family, and co-workers may be aware there is an issue. It’s important to be self-aware and try to compare your current capabilities with where they’ve been and where you’d like them to be.

As this study suggests, if you suspect a decline in cognitive function, the time to act is now, as such change may be preceded by years of structural changes.

There are many preventive and therapeutic steps that may help prevent, slow, and possibly even help to reverse the development of conditions like MCI and AD. You can read an overview of my approach to helping people here. Diet, supplementation, lifestyle changes, and in some cases, low/frequent-dose chelation, may each play a role.

Cognitive decline is not inevitable. Don’t believe anyone who says it is.

____________________________

Discover How Nutrition Can Make a Difference in Your Life …

Marc Joseph Nutrition

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.

From the January 1, 2007 issue of American Family Physician (AAFP):

2007 Childhood and Adolescent Immunization Schedules - Evolution or Intelligent Design?

“The first childhood immunization schedule was released in 1983 and provided guidance to physicians as to which of the four vaccines recommended at the time (i.e., diphtheria and tetanus toxoids and pertussis [DTP], oral poliovirus vaccine [OPV], measles, mumps, and rubella [MMR], and tetanus and diphtheria toxoid [Td]) to administer at each of seven age ranges (i.e., two, four, six, 15, and 18 months, four to six years, and 14 to 16 years). All told, a child born in 1983 would receive 11 vaccine doses between birth and 18 years of age…

…The recommended schedule continues to provide guidance to busy physicians. Today, American children receive 39 recommended vaccine doses by age 18, a 3.5-fold increase over the past 25 years. This explosion of antigens has been associated with a 6.3-fold increase in vaccination-related costs. The estimated 1983 private market cost for one child to receive all recommended vaccines was $254 (adjusted to present day, excluding administrative costs); this amount has grown to $1,601 ($1,744 when optional annual influenza vaccine is added for children six to 18 years of age).2 The vaccine cost alone to fully immunize each U.S. birth cohort (approximately 4 million children) is an estimated $6.4 billion.”

PDF of the 2007 Recommended Child Immunization Schedule

Concerns

Evolution or Intelligent Design? Are those our only two choices?

11 vaccine doses in 1983 vs. 39 doses today. Wow.

I’m not necessarily anti-vaccine. There are some pretty terrible diseases out there (e.g., polio). However, that sure is an amazing increase in antigen exposure over a very short period of time.

My health concerns are two-fold:

1. The cumulative toxin exposure, e.g.:

• Ethyl mercury in the preservative thimerosal, which is still used in 90% of all flu vaccines for children and adults, as well as in other adult vaccines, such as tetanus/diphtheria booster shots. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) still does NOT recommend mercury-free shots to either pregnant women or children, despite the fact that a mercury-containing flu shot has 50,000 ppb mercury, while liquid with only 200 ppb is considered hazardous waste by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
• Aluminum hydroxide, a common adjuvant (immune stimulant) added to vaccines, which is linked to Gulf War Illness and causes motor neuron death in mice.

2. The potential immune system imbalances created by both the increased number of vaccine antigens injected into young children and the interactions between them.

Financial Incentives

As noted above in the AAFP article excerpt, the pharmaceutical industry’s financial incentives for expanding vaccination schedules are significant. $254 in revenue per child in 1983 vs. $1,601 today.

This recent article in the LA Times describes the “renaissance” in vaccine development:

Breakthroughs in technology, increased funding and higher profits are spurring a boom in vaccine discovery and development that could save or improve the lives of millions of people by attacking such scourges as cancer and malaria …

… “It’s clear there is a renaissance going on around vaccines,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “We have made more progress with some [vaccines] in the past few years than we have in the past 30.” …

… Perhaps the best evidence of a vaccine revival is that the pharmaceutical industry is returning to the market …

… Overall, the number of vaccines in development has risen from 285 in 1996 to 450 today.

Drug executives say they can charge considerably more for today’s vaccines — up to several hundred dollars or more — versus a few dollars for older vaccines.

Might financial incentives and political influence be driving the introduction of some of these vaccines?:

Texas Governor orders anti-cancer vaccine

“Perry has ties to Merck and Women in Government. One of the drug company’s three lobbyists in Texas is Mike Toomey, Perry’s former chief of staff. His current chief of staff’s
mother-in-law, Texas Republican state Rep. Dianne White Delisi, is a state director for Women in Government.

The governor also received $6,000 from Merck’s political action committee during his re-election campaign.”

Bottom Line

I’d like to see greater study into the potential interaction between the different vaccine antigens and the effects on the immune system. Creating products that help most people with the risk of potential harm to a small subset of people doesn’t seem like such a good bet when you’re one of the people in the small subset.

With autism and developmental disorders continuing to skyrocket (record numbers in California in 2006 — a topic I’ll cover in a separate future post), we need to better understand the potential risks created by these greatly expanded vaccination schedules.

In this blog, I regularly raise the topic of vaccines and potential toxin and immune injury. The reasoning is that:

1. These injuries affect potentially millions of people in both acute and subclinical ways, with effects that may last lifetimes.
2. The emotional and financial costs of helping family members deal with these illnesses are extremely high.
3. Nutritional and other biomedical interventions can play a significant role in helping people to heal and recover.

David Kirby, author of the excellent book Evidence of Harm that discusses the role of the mercury-containing vaccine preservative thimerosal in autism, has a great post (There is No Autism Epidemic) on The Huffington Post blog.

Kirby notes that there is a group of people who call themselves “neurodiverse” and appear to be high-functioning autistics (often described as Asperger’s Syndrome). This group strongly resists the autism label and the stigma associated with it. Kirby says that’s fine and entirely understandable.

What isn’t ok, in both Kirby’s opinion and mine, is saying, as neurodiversity proponents do, that autism doesn’t represent a significant and widespread health problem, that children with much more severe forms of autism are “neurodiverse” and should be allowed to just live “as is” without treatment. Kirby goes on to list some of the common traits of these affected children, e.g.:

I am talking about kids who begin talking and then, suddenly, never say another word.

I’m talking about kids who may never learn to read, write, tie their shoes or fall in love.

I’m talking about kids who sometimes wail in torture at three in the morning because something inside them hurts like a burning coal, but they can’t say what or where it is.

I’m talking about kids who can barely keep food in their inflamed, distressed guts, and when they do, it winds up in rivers of diarrhea or swirls of feces spread on a favorite carpet or pet (no one said this kind of “autism” was pretty).

Kirby minces no words in calling out the severity of the situation:

American kids are in huge trouble. One in six has a learning disability. Asthma, diabetes, allergies and arthritis are ravaging their bodies in growing numbers. And little of this is due to “better diagnostics” or “greater awareness.”

It can only be attributed to radical changes in our environment over the last 10-20 years. There is something, or more likely some things in our modern air, water, food and drugs that are making genetically susceptible children sick, and we need to find out what they are.

Mercury remains a logical candidate for contributing to “autism spectrum disorders,” either alone or in combination with other environmental insults. Mercury exposure can kill brain cells. It can cause loss of speech and eye contact, digestive and immune dysfunction, social withdrawal and anxiety, and repetitive and self-injurious behaviors.

Go check out the entire post. It’s a good read. The reader comments are interesting as well.

It’s clear that what today are called autism spectrum disorders are really biomedical disorders strongly shaped by environmental factors, such as toxin exposure, and involve significant damage to the nervous, immune, and gastrointestinal systems. Surely, both scientists and practitioners will continue to push forward in 2007 to better understand the environmental triggers and to refine biomedical treatment approaches.

There’s already quite a bit that can be done today using dietary, supplementation, and detoxification interventions to help individuals affected with autism and ADD/ADHD heal and recover function. You can read more about these approaches here.

Beginning this year, 200,000 members of the U.S. military will be required to get the anthrax vaccine or lose their jobs.

The Pentagon is reviving its mandatory anthrax vaccinations despite allegations that the shots have contributed to as many as 23 deaths and sickened hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of soldiers.

How many of them will have a similar experience as James Francis?:

[M}erchant seaman James Francis and his mates got an ultimatum: Take anthrax and smallpox vaccinations or lose your jobs.

Francis’ Seattle attorney, Russell Williams, described the shipboard scene the next day off the isle of Crete as: “Wham, bam. ‘Get in line. Take your shots.’”

Within days of taking the two shots, Francis’ feet began to tingle and burn. When he later took the second in a series of six anthrax shots, his health slid downhill. Since then, the 45-year-old messmate from Las Vegas has fought a rare nervous system disease known as Guillain-Barre Syndrome, along with chronic pain, pneumonia and a life-threatening blood clot.

Members of the military often have the additional problem of receiving multiple vaccinations on the same day (some of which contain the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal). Is it any wonder that soldiers develop neuro-immunological and auto-immune diseases at such high rates?

To-date, the FDA has recorded more than 4,700 reports related to anthrax shots over the last 16 years, but acknowledges that the reports will “inevitably be underreported.” One doctor quoted in the article above notes that she alone has treated approximately 2,000 cases.

There is a little recourse for military personnel if a negative vaccination reaction occurs. Vaccine makers cannot be sued, and military personnel are prohibited from suing the federal government.

The controversial anthrax vaccine is called BioThrax, and its use and potential negative effects have been debated for years:

In 2004, lawyers for sick soldiers won a court injunction blocking the mandatory shots until the Food and Drug Administration reviewed the license of Maryland-based vaccine manufacturer Emergent BioSolutions. In December 2005, the FDA declared the vaccine safe and restored the license.

Despite testimony from military doctors regarding negative anthrax vaccination effects, the Pentagon decided in October 2006 to reinstate mandatory smallpox and anthrax shots. This despite the fact that:

Numerous public health experts believe BioThrax causes a range of problems, particularly among women and people prone to autoimmune diseases. They list Guillain-Barre, which can kill or paralyze; other neurological disorders; diabetes; arthritis; chronic fatigue syndrome; chronic muscle and joint pain; respiratory ailments; vision problems; memory loss, and depression …

… [A]s recently as May, the Government Accountability Office said that the vaccine’s long-term safety “has not been studied.”

In December 2006, the lawyers who succeeded in getting the earlier injunction filed another suit seeking a new injunction.

It’s truly a shame that the members of our military are being used as guinea pigs in this vaccination experiment. Can you blame soldiers like Retired Army Capt. B. David Hodge for saying:

“I love my country,” Hodge said. “It’s my government I don’t trust.”

Surely, he’s not alone in that thought.

China’s black gold rush:

[T]he Chinese plan to build no fewer than 500 new coal-fired power stations, adding to some 2,000, most of them unmodernised, that spew smoke, carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere …

And its effects on China:

… It is often darkness at noon in Datong, just 160 miles west of Beijing, where vehicles drive in daytime with their headlights on to grope through the miasma.

One of the four filthiest towns in China, it stands at the heart of the nation’s coal belt in Shanxi province, a region that mines more coal every year than Britain, Russia and Germany combined.

Cancer rates are soaring, child health is a time bomb and the population, many of whom are heavy cigarette smokers, are paying the price for China’s breakneck rush to riches and industrialisation — an estimated 400,000 premature deaths nationwide because of pollution every year …

Some Chinese officials acknowledge the problems:

Pan Yue, the outspoken head of the government’s state environmental protection bureau.

“Acid rain falls on one third of China’s land, most of our biggest seven rivers are poisoned, a quarter of our people have no clean drinking water and a third of them breathe polluted air”

In short, it’s a big environmental mess for China.

However, as noted in this Discover Magazine article (Blown Away), it’s also a significant problem for other countries, such as Japan and the United States. Dust clouds created by storms in arid regions of Asia carry the particulates, bacteria, viruses, soot, acids, radioactive isotopes, and pesticides in the air over China across the sea. The contents of the dust clouds then settle on the land of other countries. For example, it’s estimated that:

Roughly half the mercury contamination in the United States comes from Asia; much of it may arrive aboard particles in atmospheric dust clouds.

Here’s a satellite photo of an April 2002 dust cloud extending over Japan:

Thus far, China officials have been unable to slow the growth in pollution:

Beijing has proved unable to compel local leaders to spend money on filters that could cut sulphur emissions from smoke stacks by 95%. Nor will they buy new western technology for power stations, which could operate more cleanly and efficiently.

And, like the U.S., China has not signed the Kyoto Treaty that would limit emissions of climate-changing gases.

Steps will clearly need to be taken to curb the pollution. Otherwise, other countries will experience the negative health effects observed in China — if they haven’t already.