Health & Fitness

Thomas Seyfried, Ph.D., professor of biology at Boston College, is a leading expert and researcher in the field of cancer metabolism and nutritional ketosis. His book, "Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management and Prevention of Cancer" is a foundational textbook on this topic, and in August 2016, he received the Mercola.com Game Changer Award for his work.

Here, we discuss the mechanisms of cancer and the influence of mitochondrial function, which plays a crucial role in the development and treatment of this disease. His landmark cancer theory is available as a free PDF.

Many of his views are now encapsulated in his most recent paper,¹ "Mitochondrial Substrate-Level Phosphorylation as Energy Source for Glioblastoma: Review and Hypothesis," published online December 27, 2018. He's also published a number of other papers^2,3,4 on the metabolic underpinnings of cancer.

"The paper … is a review and hypothesis paper identifying the missing link in Otto Warburg's central theory," Seyfried explains. "[Warburg] defined the origin of cancer very accurately back in the 1920s, '30s, '40s and '50s in his work in Germany. Basically, he argued and provided data showing that all cancer cells, regardless of tissue origin, were fermenters. They fermented lactic acid from glucose as a substrate.

Even in the presence of oxygen, these cells were fermenting. This is clearly a defect in oxidative phosphorylation. The problem is that for decades, people said Warburg was wrong — mainly because we see a lot of cancer cells take up oxygen and make adenosine triphosphate (ATP) from within the mitochondria … People began to question, 'If cancer cells have normal respiration, why would they want to use glucose as a fermentable fuel?'

The whole concept became distorted … The cancer cells simply choose to ferment rather than respire. Now, of course, if you look under the electron microscope at majority of cancers, you'll see that the mitochondria are defective in a number of different ways. Their structures are abnormal. The numbers are abnormal. There are many abnormalities of mitochondria seen directly under electron microscopy. Clearly, Warburg was not wrong."

Why Biopsies Are Risky

Before we go delve into the meat of how cancer actually occurs it would be good to review a diagnostic strategy that nearly all of us are offered when confronted with a cancer diagnosis. It is vital to understand that this may not be your best strategy and that for many it would be wise to avoid the biopsy.

Seyfried warns against doing biopsies, as this procedure may actually cause the cancer to spread. A tumor is basically a group of proliferating cells in a particular part of your body. For purposes of diagnosis, a small biopsy sample will often be taken to ascertain whether the tumor is benign or malignant.

The problem is that when you stab into the cancer microenvironment to remove a part of the tissue, it creates a wound in that microenvironment that in turn elicits the invasion by macrophages and other immune cells.

If you already have an acidic microenvironment, you run the risk of causing a fusion hybridization event in that microenvironment between your macrophages and cancer stem cells (as discussed below). This could turn a potentially benign situation into a malignant one, and if the tumor is malignant, stabbing into it could make a bad situation worse.

"The question is, what is the value of doing a biopsy in the first place? We take biopsies of breast tissue to get a genomic readout of the different kinds of mutations that might be in the cells. Now, if cancer is not a genetic disease and the mutations are largely irrelevant, then it makes no sense to do that in the first place. If the tumor is benign, why would you want to stab it? If the tumor is malignant, why would you ever want to stab it?

I came to this view by reading so many articles in the literature based on brain cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, liver cancer showing how needle biopsies have led to the dissemination of these tumor cells, putting these people at risk for metastatic cancer and death," Seyfried says.

In metabolic therapy, you would not touch the tumor; you would not disturb the microenvironment. By leaving it alone, you allow the tumor to shrink and go away.

"When you start to look at this as a biological problem, many of the things that we do in cancer make no sense. We have, in brain cancer, people say, 'You have a very low-grade tumor. Let's go in and get it out.' What happens is you go in and get it out, and then the following year it turns into a glioblastoma.

How did that happen? Well, you disturbed the microenvironment. You allowed these cells that are marginally aggressive to become highly aggressive. Then you lead to the demise of the patient," Seyfried says.

"That happens significantly because it's called secondary glioblastoma arising from therapeutic attempt to manage a low-grade tumor. The same thing can happen with all these different organs. You stab breast tumors, you stab colon tumors, you run the risk of spreading the cells …

My argument is the following: If the patient has a lump, whether it's in the breast, in the colon, lung or wherever or a lesion of some sort, that should be the cue to do metabolic therapy.

Do metabolic therapy first. In all likelihood, it will shrink down and become less aggressive. Then the option becomes, 'Should we debulk completely rather than doing some sort of a biopsy?' We want to reduce the risk, because if we can catch the whole tumor completely, then we don't run the risk of spreading it …

In our procedure, you bring the body back into a very high state of metabolic balance, and then you strategically go and degrade the tumors slowly without harming the rest of the body.

Radiation, chemo and the strategies that we're using today don't do this. They're based on the gene theory of cancer that genetic mutations are causing the cell cycle to grow out of control. Well, this is not the case. Again, a lot of these toxic procedures need to be rethought, reanalyzed in my mind."

Solving the Warburg Theory's Dilemma

In biology, structure determines function. This is an evolutionarily conserved concept. So, how can mitochondria be structurally abnormal in tissue, yet have normal respiration? As Seyfried notes, this doesn't make sense. Confusion has arisen in part because many study cancer in culture, and "make profound statements and comments regarding what happens in culture," Seyfried says.

"If you look at cancer cells in culture, many of them do take in oxygen and make ATP, but at the same time, they're fermenting. This was the conundrum. They called it the Warburg Effect. They're fermenting, but many people at the same time thought their respiration was normal.

This was the main problem with Warburg's theory. But Warburg clearly said in his papers [that] it's not the fact that they take in oxygen; it's how much ATP they can generate from oxidative phosphorylation, which is the normal respiratory capacity of the mitochondria."

As explained by Seyfried, if you measure ATP and look at oxygen consumption in tumor cells, it appears they're making ATP and taking in oxygen, therefore, their respiration is assumed to be normal. However, when you look at the tissues in cancer patients, the mitochondria are abnormal.

"What I and Dr. Christos Chinopoulos from Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary, who is the world-leading expert on mitochondrial physiology and biochemistry … realized [was] that the mitochondria of tumor cells are actually fermenting amino acids, glutamine in particular. They're not respiring. They're fermenting an alternative fuel, which is glutamine," Seyfried says.

Warburg's Cancer Theory Proves Correct

With this understanding, Warburg's theory can be proven correct — cancer arises from damage to the mitochondria's ability to produce energy through respiration in their electron transport chain.

The compensatory fermentation involves not only lactic acid fermentation, but also succinic acid fermentation using glutamine as a fermentable fuel. It's been known for decades that glutamine is a main fuel for many different kinds of cancers, but most people thought it was being respired, not fermented.

Seyfried and Chinopoulos' discovery confirms that cancer cells in fact have damaged respiration, and to survive, the cancer cells must use fermentation. The two most available fermentable fuels in the cancer microenvironment are glucose and glutamine. Hence, targeting glucose and glutamine is a crucial component of cancer treatment.

Without glucose and glutamine, the cancer cells will starve, as they cannot use ketones. The simplest approach to cancer then is to bring patients into therapeutic ketosis, and then strategically target the availability of glucose and glutamine.

"Basically, what we're saying [is] that mitochondrial substrate-level phosphorylation is a non-oxidative metabolism mechanism inside the mitochondria that would generate significant amounts of energy without oxidative phosphorylation," Seyfried says.

Genetic Mutations Are Not the Cause of Cancer

According to Seyfried, mitochondrial dysfunction is at the heart of nearly every type of cancer. Unfortunately, few oncologists have this understanding and many still believe cancer is the result of genetic defects. However, nuclear transfer experiments clearly show cancer cannot be a genetic disease.

"There's been no rational scientific argument that I have seen, to discredit the multitude of evidence showing that the [genetic] mutations are not the drivers but the effects [of mitochondrial dysfunction]," Seyfried says.

"As a matter of fact, there's new information now where people are finding so-called genetic drivers of cancer expressed and present in normal cells, normal skin and also esophagus … This is another [issue] — how you get these so-called driver mutations in normal tissues. We're also finding some cancers that have no mutations, yet, they're fermenting and growing out of control.

There are a number of new observations coming out that challenge the concept that cancer is a genetic disease. And once you realize that it's not a genetic disease, then you have to seriously question the majority of therapies being used to manage the disease. This [helps] explain [why] we have 1,600 people a day dying from cancer in the United States.

Why do we have such an epidemic of suffering and death when we have been studying this disease for decades? Well, if you look at the massive amounts of scientific papers being written on cancer, you'll often find that they're structured around gene defects.

What I'm saying is that if cancer is not a genetic disease and the mutations are downstream epiphenomena, why would the field continue to focus on things that are mostly irrelevant to the nature of the disease? What I'm saying is very devastating, because I'm telling the majority of the people in the field that they're basically wasting their time …

I think we can drop the death rate of this disease by about 50% in 10 years if cancer is treated as a mitochondrial metabolic disease, targeting fermentable fuels rather than using toxic therapies that are focused on downstream effects.

Radiation is designed to stop DNA replication. DNA replication requires energy. If you pull the plug on their fermentable fuels, they're not going to be able to replicate anyway … All of the things that we're doing to treat cancer is basically approaching the disease from a misunderstanding of the biology …

We know viruses can cause cancer. We know radiation causes cancer. We know carcinogens cause cancer. We know intermittent hypoxia causes cancer. We know systemic inflammation causes cancer. We know just getting older puts you at risk for more cancer.

We know there are inherited mutations in the genome that can cause cancer. But how are all these things linked through a common pathophysiological mechanism? The common pathophysiological mechanism is damaged through the structure and function of the mitochondria.

Every one of the issues … including inherited mutations, damage the respiration of a particular population of cells in a tissue. You look at the breast cancer gene (BRCA 1), for example. People will say, 'Cancer must be a genetic disease because you inherit a mutation that causes the disease.'

You only get the disease if that mutation disrupts the function of the mitochondria. Fifty percent of women who carry the mutation never get cancer or breast cancer because the mutation, for some reason, did not damage the mitochondria in that person."

So, to summarize, the true origin of cancer is damage to the respiratory function of the mitochondria, triggering compensatory fermentation, which is run by oncogenes. Oncogenes play a role by facilitating the entry of glucose and glutamine into the cell to replace oxidative phosphorylation.

Why and How Cancer Spreads

Seyfried also has a very different view on the biology of metastasis (the spread of cancer). He explains:

"We've looked at cancer stem cells in a number of our preclinical models … These guys grow like crazy in place. The tumor just keeps expanding, but it doesn't spread. It doesn't spread into the bloodstream or metastasize to various organs.

We discovered a very unusual cancer 20 years ago. It took us 10 to 15 years to figure out what it was. You can put a few of these cells anywhere in the mouse's body and within three to four weeks, this mouse is full of metastatic cancer. It made the cover of the International Journal of Cancer, when we published this back in 2008, but we had worked on the problem for years.

We couldn't figure out what it was that made these cells so incredibly metastatic. We found out that once we identified the biology of the cell, it turned out [it has] many characteristics in common with the macrophage, which is one of the most powerful immune cells in our body.

We said, 'Wow. Is this unique only to this kind of cell or do metastatic cancers in humans also express characteristics of macrophages?' We looked and we found that almost every major cancer that metastasizes has characteristics of macrophages. Then we said, 'Well, how could this possibly happen? Is it coming from the macrophage?'

A number of scientists ... have all clearly shown that there is some fusion hybridization character going on. In other words, macrophages, our wound-healing cells, they come into a microenvironment where you might find many proliferating neoplastic stem cells, but they don't have the capacity to metastasize.

It's only when the macrophages fuse with these stem cells that you have a dysregulated energy metabolism coming in this hybrid cell. This hybrid cell now has characteristics of both stem cells and macrophages.

The stem cell is not genetically equipped to enter and exit tissue. The macrophage, as a normal cell of your body, is genetically equipped to enter and exit tissue and live in the bloodstream. They're very strongly immunosuppressive. These are all characteristics of metastatic cancer."

Metastatic Cancer Is a Hybrid Cell Combination

According to Seyfried, metastatic cancer cells are essentially a hybrid, a mix of an immune system cell and a dysregulated stem cell, the latter of which could originate from a disorganized epithelial cell or something similar. In short, it's a hybrid cell with macrophage characteristics.

Macrophages are essential for wound healing and part of our primary defense system against bacterial infections. They live both in the bloodstream and in tissues, and can go anywhere in the body. When an injury or infection occurs, they immediately move in to protect the tissue.

"The metastatic cancer cell has many of those same properties," Seyfried explains, "But the energy and the function of the cell is completely dysregulated, so it proliferates like crazy but has the capacity to move and spread through the body, so it's a corrupted macrophage. We call it a rogue macrophage."

Like macrophages, metastatic cancer cells can also survive in hypoxic environments, which is why most angiogenic therapies are ineffective against metastatic cancer.

So, what do these metastatic hybrid cells need to survive? Both macrophages and immune cells are major glutamine consumers, and according to Seyfried, you can effectively kill metastatic cells by targeting glutamine.

Conventional Cancer Treatments Are Unnecessarily Deadly

However, it must be done in such a way so as to not harm the normal macrophages and the normal immune cells. In other words, it must be strategic. For this reason, Seyfried developed a "press-pulse therapy" for cancer, which allows the patient to maintain normal immune system function, while at the same time targeting the corrupted immune cells — the macrophage fusion hybrid metastatic cells — as well as inflammation.

"The therapies we are using to attempt to kill these [metastatic] cells put us at risk for having the cells survive and kill us. You can control these cells for a short period of time, but they can hunker down and enter into some sort of a slightly dormant state, but they reappear.

People say, 'Oh, these tumor cells are so nifty and smart they can come back at you.' The problem is you've never really challenged them on their very existence, which is they depend on fermentation to survive. If you don't target their fermentation, they're going to continue to survive and come back at you.

Many of the therapies that we use — radiation, chemo and some of these other procedures — are not really going after the heart of the problem. That oftentimes put you at risk for the recurrence of the disease. Your body is already seriously weakened by the toxic treatments. And in the battle, you lose. If you are fortunate enough to survive … your body is still beat up.

You have now put your [body] at risk for other kinds of maladies … Why are we using such toxic therapies to kill a cell when we know what its weaknesses are? These are the paradigm changes that will have to occur as we move into the new era of managing cancer in a logical way."

A Strategic Approach to Killing Cancer Cells

To properly address cancer, then, you need to clean up the microenvironment, because the microenvironment will strategically kill cells that are dependent on fermentation while enhancing cells that aren't. At the same time, the microenvironment will also reduce inflammation.

"You also have to be very careful not to kill your normal and healthy immune cells, because they need glutamine too," Seyfried says. "What we find is that when we strategically attack the tumor this way, it turns out that our immune cells are paralyzed.

The cancer cells are killed, but the normal immune cells are paralyzed. They're not dying, they're just not doing their job. What we do is we back off the therapy a little; allow the normal immune cells to regain their biological capacity, pick up dead corpses, heal the microenvironment, and then we go after the cancer cells again.

It's a graded response, knowing the biology of the normal cells and the abnormal biology of the tumor cells. This is a beautiful strategy. Once people know how you can play one group of cells off another, and how you can strategically kill one group of cells without harming the other cells, it really becomes a precision mechanism for eliminating tumor cells without harming the rest of the body.

You don't need to be poisoned and irradiated. You just have to know how to use these procedures to strategically kill the cells. Protecting normal macrophages is part of the strategic process. Killing the corrupted ones is part of the strategic process. Again, you have to put all of these together in a very logical path. Otherwise, you're not going to get the level of success that we should be getting."

The Press-Pulse Strategy

This strategy is what Seyfried calls "press-pulse treatment," and essentially involves restricting the fermentable fuels — glucose and glutamine — in a cyclical fashion to avoid causing damage to normal cells and tissues. Glucose is effectively restricted through a ketogenic diet. Restricting glutamine is slightly trickier.

The press-pulse strategy was developed from the concept of press-pulse in the field of the paleobiology. A "press" was some chronic stress on populations, killing off large numbers, but not everything, because some organisms can adapt to stress. The "pulse" refers to some catastrophic event.

The simultaneous occurrence of these two unlikely events led to the mass extinction of almost all organisms that existed on the planet. This was a cyclic event over many hundreds of millions of years. The geological records show evidence for this press-pulse extinction phenomenon.

"What we simply did was take that concept and say, 'Let's chronically stress the tumor cells.' They need glucose. You can probably kill a significant number of tumor cells by just stressing their glucose. That's the press. The press is different ways to lower blood sugar. You put that chronic stress on top of the population either by restricted ketogenic diets [or] therapeutic fasting. There are a lot of ways that you can do this.

Also, emotional stress reduction. People are freaked out because they have cancer, therefore their corticoid steroids are elevated, which elevates blood sugar. Using various forms of stress management, moderate exercise — all of these will lower blood sugar and contribute to a chronic press and stress on the cancer cells.

However, you're not going to kill all cancer cells if you just take away glucose. Because the other fuel that's keeping the beast alive is the glutamine. We have to pulse, because we can't use a press for glutamine targeting, because then you're going to kill your normal immune cells or impair them, and they are needed for the eventual resolution of the disease.

What we're going to do is we're going to pulse various drugs. We don't have a diet system that will target glutamine. Glutamine is everywhere. It's the most abundant amino acid in your body … But you have to use [the drugs] very strategically; otherwise they can harm our normal immune system and then be counterproductive ...

I think that once we understand how we can target effectively glutamine without harming our normal immune cells … this is the strategy that will make most of these other therapies obsolete ... It's cost-effective and non-toxic and it will work very well.

But we're still at the very beginning of this. We need to continue to develop the doses, timing and scheduling of those drugs that are most effective in targeting glutamine that can be done without harming the rest of the cells in our body."

If you would like to support Dr. Seyfried's research, please consider making a donation to the "Foundation For Metabolic Cancer Therapies." The donation tag is on the top row of the of the foundation site. This Foundation is dedicated to supporting Dr. Seyfried's studies using metabolic therapy for cancer management with 100% of the donated funds going directly to research on metabolic therapy for cancer.

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In this interview, Albert Bates, director of the Global Village Institute for Appropriate Technology and author of "Burn: Using Fire to Cool the Earth," discusses how biochar can transform agriculture while simultaneously normalize our climate.

Biochar also has a wide range of other industrial uses that can allow us to radically reduce carbon in our atmosphere. Many believe climate change is a fabrication concocted by political scientists with a vested interest.

But the reality is, we have changed our world with pollution and destructive agricultural practices that are devastating the ecosystem and influencing our global weather patterns. The good news is, adding biochar to soil and building materials of all kinds is a simple and inexpensive strategy that can remediate much of this damage.

Moments of Revelation

Bates began his investigation into this issue while working as an attorney. He explains:

"I was doing environmental law and represented a group of plaintiffs who were suing a chemical company for polluting a local water supply … an aquifer, which is federally protected. It was kind of a slam-dunk case.

But the chemical company came into court and argued that there's plenty of water in Tennessee. We don't need to be protecting sources that are 1 kilometer underground. I brought in experts to show climate change is going to change the amount of water that we need in the future.

Population growth is going to change the amount of water we need. We really should be protecting those sources … I won the case, but I lost my nerve. I began to [think], 'Oh my gosh. What's going to happen here on Earth?' … I had this revelation at that time. I left the practice of law and went off and became a mushroom farmer …

It was a time for me to just take stock, to sit back and to be with my forest and to think about things and not be in the conflict zone until I'd sorted it out … Eventually I became more involved with permaculture. I became a permaculture instructor.

That took me to a conference on permaculture in Brazil. While there, I [saw] what they call the 'terra preta de indio' … the Amazonian dark earths. This was a mystery that had been around for 400 years.

How did people living at the equator make these rich, deep black soils that go meters deep into the ground, when, really, everywhere you look that's at that latitude, it's a two-season system with a rainy season and a dry season?

The ground doesn't store the nutrients. The plants do. When a plant dies, it's immediately taken back up into the living biomass. There's really no soil wealth like we have in the temperate zones. So how did it happen that they have this rich, deep black soil in the Amazon?

The answer was that they had made it. They had made that fertile soil … I had to understand, 'How does this work? How did you actually build soils?' It turns out the secret ingredient was charcoal … they had created a structure in the soil. It wasn't chemistry that was making the fertility. It was biology. That hard, mineralized carbon became a habitat for soil microbes."

The Importance of Soil Biology

As explained by Bates, soil microbes create what you might think of as a coral reef in the soil — a highly fertile area of water storage, air storage and nutrient storage that can nourish a wide variety of soil microbes. This soil biology makes for very nutrient-dense plants. That, in turn, allowed large civilizations to flourish in the Amazon.

The charcoal also takes carbon from the atmosphere, sequestering it in the earth for long periods of time — thousands of years, typically, provided you don't use destructive agricultural processes such as tilling. So, this carbon sequestration benefits not only soils and plants but also the atmosphere.

"Right now, at this point in time, we really need [carbon sequestration] for another reason; we need to have that timeout to give us some time to slow our emissions down, to go carbon-neutral.

This is what you might call carbon-negative or a drawdown effect of carbon actually leaving the atmosphere, leaving the ocean and coming back into the land, where it had been, as fossil fuels, before."

How Biochar Is Created

Now, a simple wood fire is not sufficient, as this will merely create ash, which doesn't create the carbon structure needed. What you need to do is burn the biomass without oxygen. This creates a type of charcoal typically referred to as biochar.

"Biochar is distinguished from charcoal," Bates explains. "Every fire goes through two stages. The first stage is you warm up the material or maybe strike a match and the phosphor in the end creates the flame. That heats up the match for just a moment, and then you get the burning, the smoke and the flame.

As it begins to burn down the match, it leaves behind a charcoal stick. That's the first phase of the fire. That's carbonization. That's actually the burning of the gases … Each [gas has] its own kindling temperature. The last to go would be carbon. Finally, what happens is the carbon oxidizes and joins with oxygen.

It turns into CO₂ or CO. As that carbon stick on the end of the match turns into ash, that's the second stage of the fire. In the process of making charcoal — I'll distinguish that from biochar in a second — the process is to stop it before it oxidizes.

The way you do that is to deprive the fire of oxygen … So, you're baking at the first stage. You're burning off the gases … And then you're holding that last stage, the hard carbon stage, in a permanent condition and not letting it go to ash and not creating smoke. That's the pyrolysis process. That's the carbonization …

If you look at it under a microscope, you see that it's got all of these pores. Some of that is the original plant structure and some of that is the volatile gases. As they explode, they cratered the sides of the original vessels of the plant and left behind the skeletal structure …

What you get there is this ability to absorb and adhere things. It's got a cation exchange. It's kind of magnetic in the way that it sticks things to its walls. It's particularly strong in sticking nitrogen [and] sulfur …"

Biochar for Detox and Cattle Feed

The ability to absorb is what makes activated charcoal and biochar so effective for detoxification. Caution needs to be used when taken internally, as it will chelate beneficial minerals as well. I like to take it at least one hour before or two hours after a meal.

But it's really inexpensive and something, I think, most people can benefit from, considering it's nearly impossible these days to avoid toxic chemical exposures. You need some type of detoxification agent to help eliminate some of these toxins. Biochar can be an effective tool for that. Biochar is also used to great benefit in livestock. When you add biochar to the animals' diet, it helps eliminate the need for antibiotics.

"It's especially significant in cattle," Bates says. "Cows have enteric digestion. They've got their rumen. They're doing fermentation in their stomachs. You've got this process of fermentation, which is a microbial soup. It's bacterially active ferment.

If you can add a little bit of biochar to that, it actually improves it the same way it improves the microbial habitant in soil. It becomes that coral-reef effect within the gut of the animal … Their rumen gets really good. The antibiotic need diminishes to zero. They then add weight faster.

They have a higher efficiency of feed conversion, so less food puts on more weight or produces more milk than it had before they started supplementing 1% to 2% biochar into their diet. Not only that, when it comes out the back end of the animal, first off, you're getting about 30% less methane production … when you add biochar to the diet at 1%.

But now, that manure is now rich in biochar, and so, it's going to compost about one-third or a quarter faster than normal composting operations would take. It scavenges nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide. It takes those elements that would become greenhouse gases in the composting process, holds them, uses them and puts them back into what's the final product that's going into the soil.

A cow that's been grazed in an open pasture and is being fed biochar as a supplement is fertilizing that pasture to the point where the roots of the grasses grow deeper and thicker. The grasses come up faster and more nutrient-dense, so that, again, reduces the cattle feed requirement.

You can graze more cattle on the same amount with faster rotations because of this. And then you have the effect of the cattle — the pasture recovering [faster] and being able to resist floods and droughts. It just continues to get better year after year because the biochar is slowly being added to the soil from the cow. So, you've got this beneficial loop."

In his book, Bates features an Australian farmer, Doug Powell, who fed his cows biochar and added large amounts of dung beetles to his fields. The beetles roll up balls of manure and bring them underground. In the first year, he increased profits by $20,000 simply by bringing more biochar into the ground. This is just one innovative solution offered in "Burn: Using Fire to Cool the Earth."

Climate in Crisis

Bates has investigated the predicted effects of 1, 2 or 3 degrees Celsius of warming. In his 1990 book, "Climate in Crisis," Bates made some predictions that are now coming to pass.

"Right now, we're seeing this breakdown of the polar vortex … We used to have just this circular motion around the pulse of the Jetstream. The North Pole, in particular, had this very even circular motion. It had a little bit of waves in it.

We get cold fronts every now and then coming down to the Northern United States. But for the most part, it was a fairly even average distribution. Then, starting about two to three years ago, we had what we call Rossby Waves.

They may begin to break and dive deep into the continent and at the same time drive heat far up into the Arctic. That's had the effect of accelerating the melting of the Arctic, the Greenland ice [and] Siberian permafrost, which is an accelerant, because the permafrost is full of methane …

That's now being released to the atmosphere. This year we're seeing forest fires above the Arctic Circle … There are methane fires coming out along the coastlines. We're seeing this rapid melting of Greenland and of the Arctic …

If you look at a map today, right now, where is the temperature at this moment in the world? You will see it's really hot in Greenland. And then just right next to that, in Scandinavia and the Northwestern corner of Russia, it's extremely cold. [In] China it's extremely hot.

And then you go a little bit farther around and you find that it's hot in Southern Alaska. Now we're starting to see this alternating heat and cold as that big wave motion is happening from the pole to the equator.

That's climate weirding. It's making it extremely difficult for farmers to do normal crops, to predict when's the cold going to be too extreme or when they're going to get a drought.

They're actually getting these enormous swings of high temperatures and then cold temperatures, and then high temperatures and then cold temperatures. We hit records all across Europe last week: 108 degrees Fahrenheit in Paris. The next day, the Tour de France stage had to be cancelled because of ice, snow and slush on the roadway.

That's what I'm talking about. It's these extremes that are very challenging. When I start to look for solutions, I have to say it's about trees. It's about forests. It's about more photosynthesis."

Again, even if you don't believe in climate change, the solutions Bates offers are good for the planet no matter what. There is absolutely no downside to using them.

It's going to lower pollution levels (and who doesn't want cleaner air, water and soil?), improve the quality and nutrient density of crops, reduce chemical runoff and thus reduce toxic algae growth in our oceans. These strategies are also economically beneficial, so there's a significant profit motive as well.

Novel Uses for Charcoal

Aside from adding biochar to farm fields, there are myriad other uses. As noted by Bates, you can add it to steel, concrete, asphalt, buildings, bridges, roads and tunnels.

"Let's start putting carbon into everything. Let's start using more wood. Let's start having more of a wooden kind of a vernacular to our way of living.

Actually, it's very beautiful and it has benefits, like it makes the cement stronger. It makes the asphalt less likely to form potholes. There are all these benefits that you get when you start to experiment with these materials," he says.

"We've had this problem in the scientific community, which was looking for ways to go beyond just emissions reductions and actually pull carbon out of the atmosphere. They found limits to this biochar strategy …

How many trees would you have to have, or how much waste material from one source or another would you have to have in order to make enough biochar to make a difference, and then where would you put that biochar? They figured maybe 2 billion tons a year could be put into agriculture and into making fertilizers. That's not enough.

We need to get about 50 billion tons out of the atmosphere every year because we're putting 40 billion tons up there. We need to take out what we're putting up there and another quarter or so in order to start bringing down the concentrations in the atmosphere, in order to restore the climate back to normal.

We need to have an active drawdown system. How do you do that? My co-author, Kathleen Draper, and I began to look at, 'Where can we store biochar besides agriculture?' We started to look at biochar plastics. I could actually make a polymer using biochar that is comparable to the kind of polymers that you would use to make roofing tiles, surfboards, boats or any number of things.

It's hard. It's durable. It's going to be there but it's also taking carbon out of the atmosphere. I looked at cement. If you take normal cement and replace part of the sand that's in the cement, if you can replace up to maybe 8%, you're not reducing the strength of the concrete. The first 2% actually increases the strength.

There's no reason for a cement maker not to be replacing sand with biochar. The cost is comparable and the price of sand is going up and the price of biochar is coming down. So, let's make cement with a biochar content …

You're increasing the strength. You're increasing the crack resistance, the anti-spalling, which is heat resistance. You're increasing the tensile strength and the compressive strength. All of that just by changing out sand for biochar."

Biochar Provides EMF Shielding

Another reason for using biochar in building materials is the fact that the carbon acts as an electromagnetic field (EMF) shield, thus insulating you from EMFs from the environment. It also intercepts Wi-Fi and blocks infrared. In essence, it's an effective solution for creating a Faraday cage, radically reducing the amounts of radiofrequencies that are entering your home environment from the outside.

"I go around looking at electromagnetic sources with my meter. I get spikes near the electrical boxes. I think it would be so easy if the plastics that make those circuit boxes or those wall-framing sockets were just made of this kind of material instead of just plain plastic. They could be blocking that electric spectrum from entering the room, just that simply," Bates says.

Biomass Sources

Now, we wouldn't necessarily want to burn down our forests to create biochar, and the good news is we don't need to. Bates cites an Australian study that looked at novel sources for biochar. Two sources, chicken litter and paper mill waste, could provide biochar into the indefinite future for Australia, the paper found.

Other sources include municipal sewage or biosolids, industrial pallets, textile scraps, sawdust and scrap wood from furniture factories. At present, only 20% or so of the waste stream is being utilized. According to Bates, it's large enough that we don't need to cut down trees to make biochar.

"You can be making biochar on a local scale, community scale, from small reactors, close to source; identifying waste streams ahead of time and then tapping those to make your biochar with.

If it's a little bit contaminated … you wouldn't want that in your garden. But you could use it for a cement. You could put it into the roadways. If you add it to asphalt, it reduces a number of potholes. It makes the highway more flexible. The cars get better mileage both on gasoline and on the tires.

You actually have this beneficial effect from adding it to asphalt. All of those things are possible. You could use those waste streams that are contaminated and put it into those products that don't have to be as pure as your food."

China Leads the Way in Biochar Innovation

After finishing his book (which is why this is not in there), Bates went to China, where he discovered biochar has become a new industrial revolution. China, Bates says, is far ahead of everyone else in this area, installing biochar reactors in areas where suitable waste streams are located.

They get rid of the waste and create biochar that is 15% more effective than conventional fertilizers yet costs less. Bates explains:

"In China, they went from small scale field trials to building the first prototype large reactors — rotary kilns that are processing thousands of tons a day — to … deploying six of them in strategic places around the country. And then the next year, going to 24. And then this year, going to 200. Next year, they're going to put it out on the new Silk Road to India, Africa and so on.

These are like plug-and-play. You just drop the reactor on the site where you've got a lot of biomass coming in from waste. You put it back into those fields and [they become] drought-resistant and flood-resistant. You get better yields and the price is less than fertilizer …

They're building ecovillages. They want to build 100 ecovillages in five years. These are villages that will be net draw down. They'll be taking more carbon out the atmosphere. They'll be self-sufficient in food and clean water and education and so forth within the village.

For the farmers who are moving to those villages, it's a better life. It's a better system than they had before. They provide the labor that's needed to work in those large biochar-producing units that they're putting in."

Sweden Has Embraced Biochar-Infused Pavement Materials

Sweden is also taking advantage of biochar technology, placing biochar underneath pavement and using biochar-infused streets and sidewalks. A small-scale test showed it massively improved tree growth and helped clean water supplies.

According to Bates, Stockholm had originally planned to meet its biochar needs using municipal wastes. They soon realized they needed more, so Finland is now producing biochar for them as well. Sweden reinvented a 200-year-old pavement recipe using gravel and wood oil instead of tar, and biochar (up to 20%) instead of sand. The water-cleansing effect is particularly noteworthy.

"Just the fact that the water itself is being cleaned from the streets and it goes back to the oceans clean — this is very important, especially when you think about microplastics and all of that kind of contaminants that you put into the environment all the time. That's being cleaned too. None of that is reaching the ocean," Bates says.

Activating the Biochar

An important point not to be overlooked is that when you're using biochar for agricultural purposes, you first need to charge or activate it before you put it into the soil. (It does not need to be activated when used in building materials.) As explained by Bates, the "Four M's" to remember are:¹

1. Moisten — Moisture must be added to the biochar. Fresh from the kiln, biochar is bone dry and hydrophobic (water-repelling). To make it retain water and support microbes, it needs to be made hydrophilic (water-absorbing) again, and this is done by adding sufficient amounts of water, without making it waterlogged. Typically, water is added to the kiln to cool it and stop the fire.
2. Micronize — Next, the biochar must be broken down into a smaller size through crushing, grinding and screening. Smaller particle sizes increase the surface area and allows the biochar to retain more water and allows for greater ion penetration.
3. Mineralize — Lastly, you need to mineralize it, meaning you need to add to it the minerals your garden needs, such as rock powder or sea minerals. That will provide the microbes' the nourishment they need to thrive. It will also add to the plant stores in your garden, allowing your plants to thrive.
4. Microbial inoculation — Next, you want to add microbes, fungi, bacteria and nonparasitic nematodes. These are aerobic bacteria that can be added through a compost tea. Alternatively, you can add the biochar to your compost pile.

When a plant is deficient in a trace mineral, say magnesium, the exudates that comes out from its roots will trigger a signal through the fungal network that this plant needs more magnesium.

If you have activated biochar in the soil at the root zone, there's automatic storage of minerals there. When there's too much of a given mineral, it's stored in the biochar's reef-like structure, and when something is needed, it's taken from that storage and transferred to the plant by nematodes. It is this dynamic structure of the biochar that allows for enormous plant growth.

Adding activated biochar can quadruple plant growth in the first year, Bates says. But you have to charge it properly. If the biochar is not activated, it will store nutrients but not release them to the plant, which can have the opposite effect that you're looking for.

More Information

For entrepreneurs, biochar now offers opportunities on par with those available at the beginning of the industrial revolution. "That kind of scale of change is underway," Bates says. "It's an enormous opportunity for microenterprise, for new businesses, for whole new industries to start."

One place to find opportunities is to visit the International Biochar Initiative (IBI) website.² "On any given day, you're going to find new material there and webinars and opportunities to learn about some of these new industries," Bates says. If any of this has struck a chord in you, you'll also want to pick up a copy of his book, "Burn: Using Fire to Cool the Earth."

The U.S. Biochar Initiative also holds an annual conference in North America,³ and the International Biochar Initiative has an international conference.⁴ There are also a number of other biochar conferences and symposiums where you can learn a lot in a very short amount of time.

Another valuable resource is the Innovations In Biochar website — a joint creation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Forest Service. It includes downloadable references such as how to build a kiln, how to use biochar in barns and compost piles, and much more.

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Women who have C-sections are no more likely to have children who develop obesity than women who give birth naturally, according to a large study. The findings contradict several smaller studies that did find an association between C-section deliveries and offspring obesity but did not consider the numerous maternal and prenatal factors that the researchers did in this study.

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A new documentary, “Shady Implants: The ‘Guinea Pigs’ of the Medical Industry,” exposes the corruption in the medical device industry. The film, produced by the German Public Broadcast Service DW, reveals that the number of health problems associated with medical devices has risen significantly in recent years.

This is strongly tied to a lack of government regulation, particularly in Europe, where medical device manufacturers get away with bringing potentially harmful products to market without conducting adequate safety testing.

In addition to sidestepping product safety testing, medical device manufacturers also pay surgeons big bucks to use their products, as well as encourage them to recommend the medical devices to their colleagues. The business model is similar to the pharmaceutical industry in the U.S., which often markets drugs to doctors by offering them perks such as free meals and travel.

The featured film reveals that a number of different medical devices have been linked to serious health problems. Some of these devices include artificial spine disk implants, breast implants, hip replacement devices, bone graft devices and insulin pumps.

The health problems linked to defective medical devices are often very severe and have resulted in sterility, paralysis, cancer, chronic pain and death. Even more disturbing is that patients report having no knowledge of these potential health risks.

‘It’s an Absolute Disaster. This Never Should Have Happened’

In the film, the first example of someone harmed by this act of gross negligence is Thomas Woska. He tells the film’s producers that he had an artificial disk implanted in his back that disintegrated into lots of tiny plastic pieces. His back is now full of plastic scrap from the defective device, and it’s extremely difficult to have removed. He is in so much pain he can no longer work.

Woska is one of 113 patients in Germany who received the defective artificial disk. Two-thirds of those patients had to undergo additional major surgeries to correct the damage caused by the defective disk.

The film shows Wosk visiting Dr. Karsten Ritter-Lang, a specialist in orthopedic and trauma surgery at STENUM Orthopedic Clinic in Ganderkesee, Germany. Ritter-Lang, who has treated dozens of patients harmed by complications from the defective disk implants, said:

“They are in a lot of pain. First of all, there’s the actual physical discomfort caused by the defective disk. And then, there’s the psychological distress, because they know they’ve got this ticking timebomb in their body.”

The corrective surgery that Wosk needs is a dangerous one. Trying to remove the tiny bits of plastic, some of which have become lodged behind Wosk’s spine, carries a risk of accidentally cutting in to vital organs and blood vessels.

The shattered device severely damaged his vertebrae, and removing it is like pulling out old pieces of chewing gum, says Ritter-Lang. It’s an absolute disaster. This never should have happened, he adds.

Medical Device Maker Ignores Problems in Animal Studies

The spinal implant that Wosk received was manufactured by Ranier Technology, based in Cambridge, England. The company is one of thousands of small businesses in Europe trying to break into the medical device market.

Ranier tested the plastic disks on baboons, and the results were later leaked by a whistleblower. The film shows Ritter-Lang reviewing the animal test results, which showed serious problems with the disks. He says:

“It’s clear from these studies that the implants did not become properly integrated into the spinal system. Later, I noticed similar complications in my patients who had been given these disks.”

Ranier ignored red flags about its spinal disk implants. Shockingly, it continued to the next phase of the approval process and began performing clinical tests on humans. Ranier tested the product on people for three short months before it received approval from the British Standards Institution (BSI) for two implants, Cadisc-L and Cadisc-C. The BSI did not consider the animal studies or the brevity of the human clinical trials.

Defective Spinal Disk Left One Man Sterile, Unable to Work

Twenty-nine people signed up for the disk surgery. One of them was Andreas Rode, a butcher who enjoyed boxing. In 2010, he was suffering from a herniated disk, for which his doctor recommended an implant. Although the disk had not yet been officially approved, he agreed to the surgery in hopes it would resolve his pain.

Rode felt fine after the surgery. But just like what happened to Wosk, the plastic disk broke apart. It did not integrate into his body like it was supposed to. Rode had to have emergency surgery to remove the tiny pieces of plastic that had broken away from the disintegrating disk.

He needed several more operations to remove the plastic. His outcome was catastrophic. Rode can no longer have children and he can’t work as a butcher anymore, nor can he box. His nerves are damaged and he is physically incapacitated. Rode says all he wants is for someone to admit they made a mistake, but he doesn’t see that happening any time soon.

Ranier Technology Files for Bankruptcy

While Rode lay in the hospital recovering, doctors in Germany continued to use the plastic disks. The German government received many reports about serious reactions to the devices, but for years it never did anything to stop the disks from being sold.

A head physician at one of the clinics who was using the plastic disks was later fired for accepting illegal payments from Ranier. The British manufacturer has since filed for bankruptcy.

The Guardian reported in 2018 that Ranier sought approval for its spinal disk in Europe because the process was easier than in the U.S. Like many medical device makers, Ranier hoped getting approval in Europe would help fast-track approval in the U.S. A large body of research on defective medical devices known as the Implant Files, reported:¹

“Like Cadisc-L, the regulatory strategy for Cadisc-C is to penetrate Europe first and follow up in the USA … On the whole the regulatory process and required testing tends to be more stringent in the US compared with the EU.”

Faulty Medical Devices Killed 83,000 in the U.S. in 10 Years

Between 2015 and 2018, regulators in the U.K. received 62,000 reports of adverse reactions to medical devices, according to a 2018 report by the Guardian.² A third of those cases resulted in serious health problems, and 1,004 of them died.

The U.S. FDA has received 5.4 million “adverse event” reports in the last decade. Injuries were reported in 1.7 million cases, and 83,000 people died. Nearly 500,000 underwent additional surgery to remove the device.

The data, which make up the Implant Files, are derived from 252 journalists and 59 media organizations across 36 countries that uncovered major problems with medical devices, an industry that totals $400 billion worldwide.

Breast implants are another medical device linked to health problems. An estimated 500,000 women globally have been affected by defective breast implants made of cheap industrial silicone, the same type of silicone used to seal windows, according to the film.

The implants are made of a textured, Velcro-like surface that attaches to the breast tissue. They have been linked to anaplastic large cell lymphoma, a rare form of Non-Hodgkin lymphoma that affects the immune system.

Defective Breast Implant Maker Convicted of Aggravated Fraud

Since 2015, 1,200 women in the U.K. have been seriously harmed by the defective implants.³ Complications with the implants were reported across Europe and in the U.S. and Canada. A series of investigations by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found that a poor design and a lack of safety testing are what led to health problems in patients.

Poly Implant Prothèse was one of the manufacturers of the textured breast implants. It was accused of selling hundreds of thousands of defective breast implants in 65 countries. A lawsuit against the company resulted in a conviction of aggravated fraud for its founder, Jean-Claude Mas, as well as four former employees, according to a report by The New York Times.⁴

Prosecutors in the case accused Mas of using a gel for the breast implants that was seven times cheaper than an alternative, and testing showed the company’s breast implants ruptured more easily than others. Around 7,000 women have sued Poly Implant Prothèse for damages. The company was accused of ruining thousands of lives, and using women as lab rats.⁵

EU Warned 10 Years Ago of Medical Devices’ Serious Threat

For at least a decade, some officials in the EU have warned about the dangers posed by medical devices. Dagmar Roth-Behrendt, former Germany MEP and special adviser to the EU Commission for Health and Food Safety, has called for more studies and better testing for medical devices.

Unfortunately, her efforts have been met with opposition from the medical device industry. Roth-Behrendt says medical devices should be regulated similarly to medications and be subjected to stricter quality control measures before receiving market approval. In the film she says:

“The problem is that the certification agencies are privately run, not government run. That’s led to a kind of business tourism, where companies come to Europe where they can get certifications for their products quickly and cheaply.

That’s bad enough for a hairdryer or a mixer. People want those products to be safe so that they don’t explode when they use them. But what about medical products that are placed inside your body? If something goes wrong with them, they can cause serious physical damage.”

Medical device manufactures are fighting that proposal. They think the current regulations are enough to keep people safe and that stricter laws would threaten hundreds of thousands of industry jobs.

Journalist Shows How Easy Medical Device Approval Is

In 2014, a Dutch journalist showed how easy it is to get approval for a medical device in Europe. In the film she says:

“We’re designing a device that’s not safe at all, a mesh implant that helps to stabilize the uterus. We found all the component parts at the supermarket, and took some photos. Now it’s ready to go.”

Because similar products are already on the market, the journalist did not need to sign up for human clinical trials. Up to 90% of high-risk medical devices do not have to undergo medical trials, she says. The journalist made an appointment at a certification center in Vienna, Austria, where they filmed the meeting with a hidden camera.

To their astonishment, the secret film shows that the official doesn’t care to see the actual product itself. Instead, he relies on the documents provided by the journalist. No doctors are present during the meeting. The undercover video shows the approval officer saying, “There is a clinical necessity, there is clinical evidence, there are well-known materials, so why not?”

Medical Device Makers Favor Europe’s Simple, Cheap Approvals

Under this lax approval process, Europe has approved more than 500,000 medical devices,⁶ but U.S. officials have criticized Europe’s regulatory process for doing so. One congressman went as far as to say that in Europe, “patients are treated like guinea pigs.” Manufacturers in Europe are legally required to report problems that damage people’s health, but they often don’t and face no penalties.

Another manufacturer caught selling defective products was Medtronic, the world’s largest medical device maker. In 2018, it agreed to a $43 million settlement with investors over allegations it made improper payments to surgeons to cover up problems with a bone graft product. Investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker says Medtronic’s business model is to pay doctors to put devices in people or to recommend their device to other doctors.

Medtronic’s bone graft product, Infuse, caused dangerous side effects in patients who had spine infusion surgery. Some of the side effects include nerve injury, increased pain, numbness, paralysis and additional surgery.

Medtronic Infuse Product Leaves One Patient Paralyzed

Medtronic’s Infuse product left Stefanie Clair paralyzed from the chest down. Clair says she had no idea of the risks posed by Infuse. An investigation later found that Medtronic purposely tried to downplay the risks of its Infuse product. Dr. Eugene Carragee, professor of orthopedic surgery at Stanford University Medical Center, said:

“The complications of Infuse weren’t trivial, they were catastrophic, cancer, sterility, life-threatening airway events.”

Medtronic also manufactured an unknown number of defective insulin pumps that caused harm and death in some patients. Germany’s faulty reporting system made it impossible to know how many incidents there were involving the defective insulin pumps.

Despite the problems, Germany continues to use private inspection companies, and attempts to reform this system have been rejected by the government.

Defective Hip Implants

Jurgen Thomas, a technical manager at a wine cellar, had hip replacement surgery. But four years later the device, which had titanium components, had to be removed. The hip implant rubbed against nearby bones, causing metal scraps to break off and end up in the surrounding tissue.

He suspected that the device had not been properly tested, so he filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer, Zimmer Biomet.

Seven hundred people received the defective hip implants. Some filed lawsuits that have been dragging on for years. Attorneys for Zimmer Biomet tried to pin the blame on the surgeons, and even some of the patients. Tim Abele received one of the defective hip implants. The harm caused by the device has hindered his ability to walk more than 500 yards at a time. He also lost his sense of taste and smell.

Investigation Finds Hip Implants Were Not Safety Tested

The plaintiffs suspected Zimmer Biomet knew about the problems with its hip implant. An investigation ordered by the court revealed Zimmer Biomet failed to properly test the implant. Yet it still qualified for certification by submitting tests from a similar but old device. Product testing expert Wolfram Mittelmeier said:

“If we were talking about the automobile industry, it would be difficult to compare one model of the same car with a newer model because the newer design would include some modifications.”

Sure enough, the investigation found the hip replacement defective because it rubbed against the surrounding bone structure. It’s a complication that would have been identified had the manufacturer done the proper safety testing. Even more disturbing is that these health risks had already been widely reported, including in research publications as early as 2003.

On October 15, 2018, a judge ruled that Zimmer Biomet’s hip implants should never have been approved for sale because the health risks were well-known and more testing should have been done.

The judge ordered Zimmer Biomet to pay Thomas 25,000 euros in damages. However, the manufacturer maintains their devices were not faulty and is expected to appeal, dragging out the case even longer.

The film concludes by speaking with an auditor who has worked for various medical device certifiers, who says he has serious concerns about how quality control measures are conducted on various medical devices. One of the problems is that many of the auditors are freelancers and don’t have the expertise to make qualified judgments, he says, adding: 

“None of them is really independent. They almost never decide that a product is risky. If they did, the testing company could get into trouble, and they might lose their job.”

European Law for Medical Devices Doesn’t Go Far Enough

In spite of these obstacles, things are beginning to change, at least somewhat, in Europe’s medical device industry. In 2017, Europe approved new regulations on medical devices that include more clinical studies, more controls and an independent database.⁷ But the new law does not change the root of the problem, which is a lack of independent product testing.

The new rules are set to go into effect in 2020, but the industry is already lobbying hard to delay that deadline. Sadly, Roth-Behrendt concedes in her efforts to create a state agency that would have imposed stricter controls on medical device testing. She says in the film:

“I wanted to draft legislation that would make sure the devices are safe for the patients, and would allow the companies to make money. But the new law doesn’t do that.

It still makes me angry after all these years. It’s like a wound that won’t heal. I’m upset that we weren’t able to make life safer for the around 741 million people who live in the EU. I feel as though I failed, and I take responsibility for that. I’m ashamed of myself and my colleagues. It makes me so mad that I almost want to cry.”

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In the past few years, eyelash extensions have become very popular, especially among young women. The extensions, attached by a professional at a salon, are glued individually to existing eyelashes in a process that can take three hours¹ and cost up to $400.²

The glue is made with butyl cyanoacrylate and octyl cyanoacrylate, although some glues may contain formaldehyde — which can potentially cause great irritation and other eye problems.³

The popularity of eyelash extensions stems from the time saved in makeup routines: Mascara does not need to be applied (or removed to prevent "raccoon eyes"), nor is eyelash curling necessary. Extensions are sometimes worn for six weeks before being touched up and, unlike false eyelashes or "falsies," do not fall off during some activities since they are individually anchored.⁴

But now doctors are saying that what many wearers think is the best feature of eyelash extensions — their duration — may be their worst. Left in place for weeks, the extensions' glue and accumulating bacteria can invite mites to move in, especially when the lashes are not cleaned adequately.

Doctors say they are increasingly seeing these tiny parasitic mites, which are sometimes referred to as "eyelash lice," on the lashes of extension users.⁵

What Are Eyelash 'Lice'?

The mites found on eyelashes, aka eyelash "lice," are Demodex folliculorum and Demodex brevis. They are contagious and can potentially spread from one host to another.⁶ They are so small — D. folliculorum is 0.3 to 0.4 mm long and D. brevis is 0.15 to 0.2 mm long — they can hardly be seen by the unaided eye.⁷

While both mites can inhabit the eyelashes, D. folliculorum feeds on skin cells while D. brevis feeds on sebum from oil gland cells. According to the Indian Journal of Dermatology the small size of these mites:

" … makes them invisible to the naked eye, but, under the microscope, their structure is clearly visible. It has a semi- transparent, elongated body that consists of two fused segments. Eight short, segmented legs are attached to the first body segment.

The eight legs of this mite move at a rate of 8-16 mm/h and this is mainly done during the night as bright light causes the mite to recede into its follicle.

The body is covered with scales for anchoring itself in the hair follicle and the mite has pin-like mouth parts for eating skin cells, hormones, and oils (sebum) accumulating in the hair follicles …The mites are transferred between hosts through contact of hair, eyebrows, and sebaceous glands on the nose …

… Demodex mites are present in healthy individuals and may have a pathogenic role only when present in high densities. The infestation may be clinically inapparent, but, under favorable circumstances, these mites may multiply rapidly, leading to the development of different pathogenic conditions."⁸

Eyelash 'Lice' Can Be Tricky to Diagnose

What are the symptoms of those in whom the mites have "multiplied rapidly" as the research above describes? Itching and burning eyes and eyelids are key signs, according to Review of Optometry,⁹ along with a feeling that something's in your eyes and fluctuating blurry vision.

While eye professionals may instinctively treat the conditions with artificial tears, if mites are the culprit, there will be no improvement.¹⁰ Since Demodex mites are so small, the eye conditions can be attributed to other causes, yet if not treated correctly, you can develop the infestation symptoms of redness, inflammation, blood shot eyes and blocked oil glands.

Demodex can also contribute to the more serious eye inflammation conditions of blepharitis, blepharoconjunctivitis and blepharokeratitis.¹¹ Demodex may look like blepharitis,¹² an inflammation of the eyelids from clogged oil glands, and the related conditions of blepharoconjunctivitis¹³ and blepharokeratitis.¹⁴

However, blepharitis and the related conditions are treated with lid hygiene, warm compresses and sometimes antibiotics or steroids, which are treatments that can actually worsen Demodex.¹⁵ Moreover, blepharitis conditions are usually not contagious,¹⁶ whereas Demodex infestations are. Clearly, a correct diagnosis is essential, and it requires an exam by a medical eye professional.

Demodex Are Spread by Lack of Hygiene

Eyelash mites are thought to develop from a combination of the glue used to adhere extensions and the accompanying bacteria when users don't remove their makeup and clean their lashes adequately.¹⁷ Though some wearers favor eyelash extensions for the time they save in makeup routines, time is usually not the reason some don't clean their lashes properly, says one makeup professional.

"There is an increase in women thinking if they … wash them they'll fall out faster," Janet Figueroa, a cosmetologist in Ontario, California, told Fox News.¹⁸ Demodex infestations can also stem from salon staff who fail to adequately clean their tools after each customer.¹⁹ It's very important to choose your salon carefully and read the online reviews of other customers.

While the mites themselves are not visible, evidence of an infestation can be apparent if you know what to look for, Figueroa said. She has seen -"yellow/flesh-colored buildup of old cells or makeup" in customers who admit they don't wash their lashes regularly.²⁰ The "yellow bulb like bumps on the lashes at the base of the natural lash" that Figueroa described to Fox have a scientific explanation, according to research in Clinical Optometry.²¹

"As these mites have no excretory organs, undigested material is regurgitated and combines with these epithelial cells, keratin, and eggs to form the bulk of the cylindrical lash deposits pathognomonic of Demodex infestation. These deposits, in turn, contain proteases and lipases, which cause symptoms of irritation.

In fact, of all ocular symptoms investigated, the only symptom to correlate directly with Demodex was lid irritation. Specifically, this irritation is caused both directly by biting of the mites and by lipolytic enzymes used to digest sebum, their main food source."

Demodex Is Not Lice, but Lice Can Occur on Eyelashes

Demodex may be mites, not lice, but lice can make a home on the eyelashes too, and can be similarly treated with nontoxic, natural methods. A case study in Experimental and Therapeutic Medicine describes how a patient's inflammatory condition was initially confused with blepharitis and not diagnosed as lice:²²

"Phthiriasis palpebrarum is a rare type of eyelid infestation. In the present study, a 63-year-old woman presented with a case of phthiriasis palpebrarum, which was initially misdiagnosed as anterior blepharitis.

The patient had a 2-month history of repeated episodes of itching and burning sensations and moderate pain in both eyes that were not improved by antibiotic and corticosteroid eye drops.

Slit lamp examination revealed lice and nits anchored to the eyelashes. All eyelashes were removed from the base along with lice and nits. The patient recovered fully within 2 weeks with no further management, and no evidence of lice or nits was found at the follow up.

In conclusion, the findings of the present study suggests that patients presenting with itching of the eyelids and with clinical findings resembling seborrhea accumulation on the eyelashes should be carefully examined by prolonged observation with a slit lamp."

Lice Can Be Removed With Natural Treatments

People who read my newsletters know that I've talked about lice becoming a growing problem because some lice strains have developed resistance to the harsh chemicals used to treat them. That's why I recommend natural treatments that are just as effective as their harsher counterparts.

If you or your children contract lice, which are more commonly found on the head, the following treatments have proven effective.

How to Prevent and Remove Demodex From Eyelashes

Hygiene is the key to preventing Demodex, according to the experts. That's why the mites are seen on users who neglect washing around their eyes and eyelashes. For the record, Demodex is also seen in those without eyelash extensions and in men, for the same reason: lack of appropriate hygiene, which then allows the mites to multiply.²³

The best Demodex prevention is a daily routine of washing around the eyes with warm, soapy water to break up oils that fuel the mites, says Dr. Gregory J. Nixon, associate dean for clinical services at The Ohio State University College of Optometry.²⁴

To treat a Demodex buildup, medical professionals recommend a tea tree oil mixture, a versatile and well-regarded natural product that is available over the counter. Patients can treat themselves at home, according to research published in Clinical Optometry:²⁵

"Patients with Demodex are typically prescribed an eyelid cleanser that contains tea tree oil twice daily in order to eradicate the Demodex mites. They are instructed to cleanse the lids and lashes, as well as smear the lid cleanser onto the eyelash roots of both the upper and lower eyelid margin.

Complete coverage of the eyelash base by the tea tree oil lid cleanser is necessary to be effective so that mites are unable to lay eggs and hatch more Demodex mites. Patients should be instructed to use the wipes on their eyelashes, forehead, eyebrows, and cheeks as the mites live in all of those areas …

… Studies have demonstrated that as low as 5% concentration (when applied to the lids twice daily) and as high as 50% concentration (when applied once weekly) of tea tree oil are effective at reducing Demodex infestation when applied to the lids and base of the eyelash follicle.

A 38% concentration of terpinen-4-ol has been shown to reduce Demodex effectively over a period of 4 weeks."

Tea tree oil should be diluted before use and caution should be used when applying it to sensitive areas around your eyes and eyelids. A holistic health care practitioner who is familiar with essential oils can guide you in its safe usage for Demodex.

The popularity of eyelash extensions will likely not go away. Like hair extensions, they are simply part of today's beauty and glamour landscape. Luckily, wearers can reduce their risk of contracting Demodex mites with simple hygiene.

"Everybody knows to brush their teeth twice a day and don't even think about it," says Nixon. "We know in the eye care field that your eyes are no different. A lot of patients don't necessarily comprehend that."²⁶

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