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The premise that hunger makes food look more appealing is a widely held belief.
Prior research studies have suggested that the hunger hormone ghrelin, which your body produces when it's hungry, might act in your brain to trigger this behavior.
New studies suggest that ghrelin might also work in your brain to make you keep eating "pleasurable" foods when you're already full.
Scientists previously have linked increased levels of ghrelin to intensifying the rewarding or pleasurable feelings that can be obtained from cocaine or alcohol.
Researchers observed how long mice would continue to poke their noses into a hole in order to receive a pellet of high-fat food. Animals that didn't receive ghrelin gave up much sooner than the ones that did receive ghrelin.
Humans and mice share the same type of brain-cell connections and hormones, as well as similar architectures in the "pleasure centers" of the brain.
Breast cancer rates dropped by half in tandem with the discontinuation of hormone replacement therapy, according to a study published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The study was reported in the Telegraph in the United Kingdom.
The Telegraph said:
"Dr Prithwish De, of the Canadian Cancer Society, and colleagues, found that use of HRT dropped from 12.7 per cent in 2002 to 4.9 per cent in 2004.
During the same period breast cancer rates dropped by 9.6 per cent even though the same number of women were having mammography tests.
Between 2004 and 2006 use of HRT remained stable at around five per cent of women aged 50 to 59 but breast cancer rates began to increase again.
Dr De wrote: 'The results support the hypothesised link between the use of hormone replacement therapy and invasive breast cancer incidence and indicate that the sharp decline in breast cancer incidence in 2002 is likely explained by the concurrent decline in the use of hormone replacement therapy among Canadian women.'"
The study's authors said these numbers support existing evidence of the link between HRT and breast cancer.
By Ron Rosedale, M.D.
It is amazing how the little twists and turns of researchers can have such a profound impact on what we generally come to realize as “scientific truth.” Let me share a recent fascinating example of how this impacted one of the most powerful hormones in your body.
The Ob mouse is a strain of mouse that has a genetic mutation that makes it obese and unhealthy. It has been used for many years as a model of obesity to do research on, though the reason that it was obese had eluded scientists.
This changed when, in 1994, Jeffrey Friedman discovered that this mouse lacked a previously unknown hormone called leptin, and when it was injected with leptin it became thin, vibrant, and very healthy within weeks. This made headlines around the world, "the cure for obesity found" and pharmaceutical companies started tripping over themselves with trillion dollar signs in their eyes to be the first to genetically manufacture leptin on a large-scale.
This did not last long. When people were tested for leptin, it was found that, unlike the Ob mouse, they did not lack leptin; on the contrary almost all overweight and obese people have excess leptin.
These people were "leptin resistant" and giving extra leptin did little good.
The financial disappointment was extreme and scientists working for pharmaceutical companies said that leptin wasn't important anymore since they could not find a drug to control it, and therefore the industry couldn't make money on it. To make big money in medicine one needs a patent and this generally means remedies which are not commonly or easily available -- that are not natural.
This illustrates two extremely unfortunate principles in modern medicine; only those therapies that will make lots of money (generally for the pharmaceutical industry or hospitals), ever get pursued and then taught to physicians (since most of medical education after medical school takes place by drug reps), and these therapies, almost by definition, will be unnatural.
This inhibition of extremely important knowledge is not only unfortunate, it is deadly, and is exemplified by how few people, including doctors, know anything about leptin, though I would consider it to be the most important chemical in your body that will determine your health and lifespan.
Two Hormones that are Vital for Optimal Health
Each and every one of us is a combination of lives within lives. We are made up of trillions of individual living cells that each must maintain itself. Even more significantly, the cells must communicate and interact with each other to form a republic of cells that we call our individual self.
Our health and life depends on how accurately instructions are conveyed to our cells so that they can act in harmony. It is the communication among the individual cells that will determine our health and our life.
The communication takes place by hormones. Arguably therefore, the most important molecules in your body that ultimately will decide your health and life are hormones.
Many would say that genes and chromosomes are the most important molecules, however once born your genes pretty much just sit there; hormones tell them what to do. Certainly, the most important message that our cells receive is how and what to do with energy, and therefore life cannot take place without that.
The two most important hormones that deliver messages about energy and metabolism are insulin and leptin.
Metabolism can roughly be defined as the chemistry that turns food into life, and therefore insulin and leptin are critical to health and disease. Both insulin and leptin work together to control the quality of your metabolism (and, to a significant extent, the rate of metabolism).
Insulin works mostly at the individual cell level, telling the vast majority of cells whether to burn or store fat or sugar and whether to utilize that energy for maintenance and repair or reproduction. This is extremely important as we shall see, for on an individual cell level turning on maintenance and repair equates to increased longevity, and turning up cellular reproduction can increase your risk of cancer.
Leptin, on the other hand, controls the energy storage and utilization of the entire republic of cells allowing the body to communicate with the brain about how much energy (fat) the republic has stored, and whether it needs more, or should burn some off, and whether it is an advantageous time nutritionally-speaking for the republic --you-- to reproduce or not.
What Exactly is Leptin?
Leptin is a very powerful and influential hormone produced by fat cells that has totally changed the way that science (real science, outside of medicine) looks at fat, nutrition, and metabolism in general.
Prior to leptin's discovery, fat was viewed as strictly an ugly energy storage depot that most everyone was trying to get rid of. After it was discovered that fat produced the hormone leptin (and subsequently it was discovered that fat produced other very significant hormones), fat became an endocrine organ like the ovaries, pancreas and pituitary, influencing the rest of the body and, in particular, the brain.
Leptin, as far as science currently knows, is the most powerful regulator that tells your brain what to do about life's two main biological goals: eating and reproduction. Your fat, by way of leptin, tells your brain whether you should be hungry, eat and make more fat, whether you should reproduce and make babies, or (partly by controlling insulin) whether to "hunker down" and work overtime to maintain and repair yourself.
I believe I could now make a very convincing and scientifically accurate statement that that rather than your brain being in control of the rest of your body, your brain is, in fact, subservient to your fat -- and leptin.
In short, leptin is the way that your fat stores speak to your brain to let your brain know how much energy is available and, very importantly, what to do with it. Therefore, leptin may be "on top of the food chain" in metabolic importance and relevance to disease.
How Leptin Regulates Your Weight
It has been known for many years that fat stores are highly regulated. It appeared that when one tried to lose weight the body would try to gain it back. This commonly results in "yo-yo" dieting and in scientific circles one talks about the "set point" of weight. It has long been theorized that there must be a hormone that determines this.
Science points now to leptin as being that hormone.
In our ancestral history, it was advantageous to store some fat to call upon during times of famine. However, it was equally disadvantageous to be too fat. For most of our evolutionary history, it was necessary to run, to obtain prey and perhaps most importantly, to avoid being prey. If a lion was chasing a group of people it would most likely catch and eliminate from the gene pool the slowest runner and the one who could not make it up the tree -- the fattest one.
Thus, fat storage had to be highly regulated and this is done, as is any regulation, through hormones, the most significant being leptin.
If a person is getting too fat, the extra fat produces more leptin which is supposed to tell the brain that there is too much fat stored, more should not be stored, and the excess should be burned.
Signals are therefore sent to an area of the brain in the hypothalamus (the arcuate nucleus) to stop being hungry, to stop eating, to stop storing fat and to start burning some extra fat off.
Controlling hunger is a major (though not the only) way that leptin controls energy storage. Hunger is a very powerful, ancient, and deep-seated drive that, if stimulated long enough, will make you eat and store more energy. Asking somebody to not eat, to voluntarily restrict calories even though they are hungry, is asking the near impossible. The only way to eat less in the long-term is to not be hungry, and the only way to do this is to control the hormones that regulate hunger, the primary one being leptin.
How Leptin Resistance Leads to Disease
More recently, it has been found that leptin not only changes brain chemistry, but can also "rewire" the very important areas of the brain that control hunger and metabolism. I'm not aware of any other chemical in the body that has been shown to accomplish this "mind bending" event.
This has really caught the attention of the scientific community. Further studies have now shown that leptin, or more correctly the inability of the body to properly hear leptin’s signals, in other words leptin resistance, plays significant if not primary roles in heart disease, obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis, autoimmune diseases, reproductive disorders, and perhaps the rate of aging itself.
It helps to control the brain areas that regulate thyroid levels and the sympathetic nervous system which also has huge impacts on blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis and aging. Leptin's stimulatory effect on the sympathetic nervous system also helps determine the adrenal stress response including cortisol levels.
Leptin May Be Even More Critical Than Insulin
The importance of insulin in health and disease is becoming well-known. Aside from its obvious role in diabetes, it plays a very significant role in hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.
I was one of the first to speak publicly to doctors about insulin’s critical role in health well over a decade ago (see the transcribed talk Insulin and its Metabolic Effects) and I am even more convinced now.
However leptin may even supersede insulin in importance, for new research is revealing that in the long run glucose and therefore insulin levels may be largely determined by leptin.
It had been previously believed that the insulin sensitivity of muscle and fat tissues were the most important factor in determining whether one would become diabetic or not. Elegant new studies are showing that the brain and liver are most important in regulating a person’s blood sugar levels especially in type 2 or insulin resistant diabetes.
It should be noted again that leptin plays a vital role in regulating your brain’s hypothalamic activity which in turn regulates much of a person’s "autonomic" functions; those functions that you don't necessarily think about but which determines much of your life (and health) such as body temperature, heart rate, hunger, the stress response, fat burning or storage, reproductive behavior, and newly discovered roles in bone growth and blood sugar levels.
Another very recent study reveals leptin's importance in directly regulating how much sugar that the liver manufactures via gluconeogenesis.
Many chronic diseases are now linked to excess inflammation such as heart disease and diabetes. High leptin levels are very pro-inflammatory, and leptin also helps to mediate the manufacture of other very potent inflammatory chemicals from fat cells that also play a significant role in the progression of heart disease and diabetes. It has long been known that obesity greatly increased risk for many chronic diseases including heart disease and diabetes, but no one really knew why.
Leptin appears to be the missing link.
Could Leptin Also Affect How Fast You Age?
Leptin will not only determine how much fat you have, but also where that fat is put. When you are leptin resistant you put that fat mostly in your belly, your viscera, causing the so-called "apple shape" that is linked to much disease. Some of that fat permeates the liver, impeding the liver's ability to listen to insulin, and further hastening diabetes.
Leptin plays a far more important role in your health than, for instance, cholesterol, yet how many doctors measure leptin levels in their patients, know their own level, even know that it can be easily measured, or even what it would mean?
Leptin appears to play a significant role in obesity, heart disease, osteoporosis, autoimmune diseases, inflammatory diseases and cancer. These are the so-called "chronic diseases of aging".
Could it perhaps affect the rate of aging itself?
The Biology of Aging
Scientists who study the biology of aging are beginning to look at that question. There are two endeavors, two drives that life has been programmed, since its inception, to succeed at and to succumb to. These are to eat and to reproduce.
If every one of our ancestors had not succeeded in eating and reproducing we would not be here, and this paper would be moot. All of your morphological characteristics from your hair to your toenails are designed to help you succeed at those two activities. That is what nature wants us to do. Nature's purpose is not necessarily to have you live a long and healthy life, but to perpetuate the instructions, the genes that tell how to perpetuate life.
Even so-called "paleolithic" diets, though undoubtedly far better than what is generally eaten today, were not necessarily designed by nature to help us live a long and healthy life but, at best, to maximize reproduction. Nature appears to not care much about what happens to us after we have had a sufficient chance to reproduce. That is why we die.
But there are clues as to how to live a long and healthy life. And that brings us once again to fat--and leptin.
It takes energy to make babies; lots of it. Energy was and always will be a coveted commodity. Nature, and evolution, hates wasting it. It makes no sense to try and make babies when it appears that there's not enough energy available to successfully accomplish that goal.
Instead, it seems that virtually all living forms can "switch gears" and direct energy away from reproduction and towards mechanism that will allow it to "hunker down" for the long haul and thus be able to reproduce at a future more nutritionally opportune time. In other words nature will then let you live longer to accomplish its primary directive of reproduction.
It does this by up regulating maintenance and repair genes that increase production of intracellular antioxidant systems, heat shock proteins (that help maintain protein shape), and DNA repair enzymes. This is what happens when you restrict calories (without starvation) in animals, and that has been shown convincingly for 70 years to greatly extend the life span of many dozens of species. Thus, there is a powerful link between reproduction, energy stores, and longevity.
Genetic studies in simple organisms have shown that that link is at least partially mediated by insulin (which in simple organisms also functions as a growth hormone), and that when insulin signals are kept low, indicating scarce energy availability, maximal lifespan can be extended--- a lot; several hundred percent in worms and flies.
Glucose is an ancient fuel used even before there was oxygen in the atmosphere, for life can burn glucose without oxygen; it is an anaerobic fuel. The use of fat as fuel came later, after life in the form of plants soaked the earth in oxygen, for you cannot burn fat without oxygen.
The primary source of energy stores in people by far is fat, as many unfortunately are all too aware of. The primary signal that indicates how much fat is stored is leptin, and it is also leptin that allows for reproduction, or not.
It has long been known that women with very little body fat, such as marathon runners, stop ovulating. There is not enough leptin being produced to permit it. Paradoxically, the first pharmaceutical use of leptin was recently approved to give to skinny women to allow them to reproduce.
Leptin’s Role in Improving Your Metabolism
Leptin also is instrumental in regulating body temperature, partly by controlling the rate of metabolism via its regulation of the thyroid.
Metabolic rate and temperature has long been connected with longevity. Almost all mechanisms that extend lifespan in many different organisms result in lower temperature. Flowers are refrigerated at the florist to extend their lifespan. Restricting calories in animals also results in lower temperature, reduced thyroid levels, and longer life.
It should be noted that reduced thyroid levels in this case are not synonymous with hypothyroidism. Here, the body is choosing to lower thyroid hormones because the increased efficiency of energy use and hormonal signaling (including perhaps thyroid) is allowing this to happen.
Anything will dissolve faster in hot water than cold water. Extra heat will dissolve, disrupt and disorganize. This is not what I try to do to make someone healthy. It is commonly advised to "increase metabolism" and increase "thermogenesis" for health and weight loss.
Yet how many of you would put a brand of gasoline in your car that advertised that it would make your engine run hotter? What would that do to the life of your car? It is not an increase in metabolism that I am after; it is improved metabolic quality.
That will be determined at the quality of your leptin signaling.
If it is poor, if you are insulin and leptin resistant, your metabolism is unhealthy and high in what I call "metabolic friction". If you then increase its rate you will likely accelerate your demise. To increase the quality of your metabolism you must be able to properly listen to insulin and especially to leptin.
If your fasting blood serum level of leptin is elevated you are likely leptin resistant and you will not be healthy unless you correct it.
How Do You Become Leptin Resistant?
This is the subject of much research. I believe people become leptin-resistant by the same general mechanism that people become insulin-resistant; by overexposure to high levels of the hormone.
High blood glucose levels cause repeated surges in insulin, and this causes one's cells to become "insulin-resistant" which leads to further high levels of insulin and diabetes. It is much the same as being in a smelly room for a period of time. Soon, you stop being able to smell it, because the signal no longer gets through.
I believe the same happens with leptin. It has been shown that as sugar gets metabolized in fat cells, fat releases surges in leptin, and I believe that those surges result in leptin-resistance just as it results in insulin-resistance.
The only known way to reestablish proper leptin (and insulin) signaling is to prevent those surges, and the only known way to do that is via diet and supplements.
As such, these can have a more profound effect on your health than any other known modality of medical treatment.
When leptin signaling is restored, your brain can finally hear the message that perhaps should have been delivered decades ago; high leptin levels can now scream to your brain that you have too much fat and that you better start burning some off for your life is in danger.
Your brain will finally allow you access into your pantry that you have been storing your fat in. Your cells will be fed the food from that fat and they will be satisfied. They will not know whether that food came from your belly fat or from your mouth; nor will they care. They will be receiving energy that they need and will not have to ask for more. You will not be hungry.
This also makes counting calories irrelevant, for the calories that you put into your mouth today are not necessarily what your cells will be eating; that will be determined primarily by leptin. Whether or not you put food into your mouth, your cells will be eating, and if they cannot eat fat they must eat sugar.
Since little sugar is stored, that sugar will be had by making you crave it, or by turning the protein in your muscle and bone into sugar. This contributes in a major way to weakness and osteoporosis. Whether or not this lean tissue wasting happens is determined by your capacity, or incapacity, to burn fat, and that is determined by your ability to listen to leptin.
A strategic diet that emphasizes good fats and avoids blood sugar spikes coupled with targeted supplements (as recommended in my Rosedale Diet and Dr. Mercola’s Take Control of Your Health), will enhance insulin and leptin sensitivity so that you can once again hear their music, allowing your life to be the symphony it was meant to be.
Mice lacking the insulin receptor substrate are more resistant to aging than normal mice, according to University College London researchers.
The finding further confirms the link between insulin signaling pathways and aging, and may have implications on aging in humans.
In the study, mice were engineered to lack either insulin receptor substrate IRS-1 or IRS-2, both proteins that are activated by the hormone insulin, which regulates glucose and fat metabolism. Compared with normal mice, the mice lacking IRS-1 had:
Many consumers have long known their favorite lotions and sunscreens contained parabens, or synthetic chemicals used as preservatives. But with more and more products being touted as “paraben-free," many are now wondering, "What, exactly, are parabens, and are they dangerous?"
Parabens, which inhibit the growth of bacteria, yeast, and molds, have been used in personal-care products like shampoos, conditioners, deodorants, and sunscreens for years, allowing these products to survive for months, or years, during shipping and on store shelves.
Studies have now shown that parabens mimic the activity of the hormone estrogen, which is associated with certain forms of breast cancer.
Organic Consumers Association September 4, 2007
There are two prevailing theories about the origins of SARS-CoV-2. The first is that SARS-CoV-2 emerged naturally and jumped from wildlife to humans, with or without an intermediary host. The other is that the virus was being kept and/or studied in a lab, from which it escaped.
Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, is one of the most ardent supporters of the natural origins theory. He told The Associated Press in November 2020 that SARS-CoV-2 could have passed from a wildlife poacher to a trader who brought it to Wuhan.1 Daszak also organized the publication of a scientific statement, published in The Lancet and signed by 26 additional scientists, condemning such inquiries as “conspiracy theory.”2
Daszak, however, is part of the World Health Organization team that investigated the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and has a long history of close ties to the Chinese laboratory in question — the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), from where it appears increasingly likely that the virus emerged.
The video above, “Deception in America Episode One: The Tale of Peter Daszak,” presents a succinct history of his involvement, as well as that of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and who has also long backed dangerous coronavirus research, including that conducted by EcoHealth Alliance. According to the film:3
“From the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, said to have begun some time in December of 2019, the battle to control the narrative has been fought ferociously by global organizations, CEOs, billionaires and the programs at the center of the Wuhan Institute of Virology controversy … Despite his attempts to shift the blame to anyone else but himself and his team, all roads eventually lead back to Daszak.”
EcoHealth Alliance is a nonprofit organization that receives millions in funding every year from NIAID, and then gives it to WIV. In fact, the film reveals that, since 2002, EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak have received over 32 grants worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from NIH, with most coming from NIAID:4
“Over the years, Peter Daszak and the Ecohealth Alliance have received $5,764,128 from the Fogarty International Center and $7,875,012 from the NIAID, for a grand total of $13,639,140.”
EcoHealth Alliance also has contracts with other government departments worth millions of dollars. The following contracts are among them:5
There are many others as well. According to USASpending.gov, EcoHealth Alliance has 36 contracts with various government agencies.6 Over the years, the organization has been awarded $61.5 million, with DOD chief among its funders, giving them a total of $41.9 million. Overall, 91% of EcoHealth Alliance’s funding comes from government grants.7
Daszak has extensive connections, including having worked for the Center of Infection and Immunity at Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, alongside colleague Jeffrey Sachs, the former director of The Earth Institute at Columbia.8 Sachs, also an adviser to the United Nations, spearheaded the Millennium Villages project, which was an attempt to reduce extreme poverty in Africa, supporting a shift to self-sufficiency.
While the project claimed to be a success, an evaluation in 2012 revealed its goals were unrealistic and serious questions were raised about the project’s ability to create long-lasting impact, along with its cost-effectiveness.9
Sachs also wrote a number of articles in support of China, stating, for instance, that “the U.S., not China, is the real threat to international law,”10 and was named chair of the Lancet Commission on COVID-19. He then named Daszak as one of the commissioners.
“Peter Daszak’s constant involvement with people like Jeffrey Sachs and the World Economic Forum suggests that he could be another one of those types of men who are so disconnected with reality that they will do anything to shape the world, not realizing what they are doing,” the film noted.11
In fact, in a Tweet from May 10, 2011, EcoHealth Alliance wrote, “Q for the crowd: is western style democracy, a la USA, compatible with sustainability? Or is eastern style (a la China) better?”12 As further noted by the film:13
“Peter Daszak’s Ecohealth Alliance receives far more in funding from the U.S. government, including grants from the Department of Defense, among others. He is also closely associated with Jeffrey Sachs via Columbia, who frequently appears alongside George Soros in talks and seminars.
Daszak is very well connected to many globalist enterprises and their organizers. His own organization touts the sustainable development goal model, originally devised by Jeffrey Sachs.
So, when Peter Daszak deflects and says his team and their research that are directly involved the Wuhan Virology Lab has nothing to do with the SARS coronavirus outbreak in 2019, it follows a pattern that the organizations he surrounds himself with do, wherein they blame a lack of funding, or other outside factors. It is never his fault.”
Gain-of-function (GOF) research refers to studies that have the potential to enhance the ability of pathogens to cause disease, including enhancing either their pathogenicity or transmissibility.14 Such research is by its very nature controversial, since there are clear risks should the information be misused or the pathogens escape (or are maliciously released).
Jonathan Latham, Ph.D., a molecular biologist and virologist and Allison Wilson, Ph.D., a geneticist, are among those who believe gain-of-function research performed at WIV played "an essential causative role in the pandemic."15 However, Daszak continues to say emerging infectious diseases come from climate change and ecological drivers, ignoring the gain-of-function research that he and his organization are directly involved with.
For instance, as reported by Alexis Baden-Mayer, political director for the Organic Consumers Association, EcoHealth Alliance lists WIV and the Wuhan University School of Public Health as subcontractors under a $3.7-million NIH grant16 titled, “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
EcoHealth Alliance also used a sub-grant17 from the University of California at Davis to fund a gain-of-function experiment by Shi Zhengli, Ph.D., the director of WIV’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, also known as “bat woman,” and colleague Ralph Baric from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, involving the use of genetic engineering to create a “new bat SARS-like virus ... that can jump directly from its bat hosts to humans.” According to Baden-Mayer (see hyperlinked article above):
“The work, ‘A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence,’18 published in Nature in 2015 during the NIH’s moratorium19 on gain-of-function research, was grandfathered in because it was initiated before the moratorium … and because the request by Shi and Baric to continue their research during the moratorium was approved by the NIH.
As a condition of publication, Nature, like most scientific journals, requires20 authors to submit new DNA and RNA sequences to GenBank, the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information Database. Yet the new SARS-like virus Shi and Baric created wasn’t deposited21 in GenBank until May 2020.”
Daszak and WHO officials continue to state that safety guidelines make it very unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 could have escaped from a lab, but a paper published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists22 revealed in 2012 that it’s a matter of when, not if, a potential pandemic pathogen (PPP) escapes.
At the time, they noted that there were at least 42 facilities engaged in research on live PPPs, “and the actual number is likely higher.” Using a conservative estimate that the probability for escape from a lab in a year is 0.3%, they found:
“[This] translates to an 80 percent likelihood of escape from at least one of the 42 labs every 12.8 years, a time interval smaller than those that have separated influenza pandemics in the 20th century. This level of risk is clearly unacceptable.”
In fact, biosecurity breaches in high containment biological labs in the U.S. and around the world have occurred with surprising frequency,23 and as the film noted:24
“It is hardly reassuring that despite increased policy demands for rigorous biosecurity procedures, potentially high-consequence breaches occur nearly daily. In 2010, 244 unintended releases of bioweapon candidate ‘select agents’ were reported. Being practical, the question is not if such escapes will result in a major civilian outbreak, but what the pathogen will be and how well it can be contained, if it can be contained at all.”
WHO’s investigative commission, tasked with identifying the origin of SARS-CoV-2, announced the Wuhan Institute of Virology and two other biosafety level 4 laboratories in Wuhan, China, had nothing to do with the COVID-19 outbreak in February 2021. Since then, WIV deleted mentions of its collaboration with the NIAID/NIH and other U.S. research partners from its website.25 It also deleted descriptions of gain-of-function research on the SARS virus.
Several members of the U.S. Congress have now vowed to launch their own investigation to explore the lab accident theory. The Energy and Commerce Committee has also requested extensive records from both the NIH and EcoHealth Alliance detailing research and collaborations with WIV.26
If SARS-CoV-2 did, in fact, come from a lab, it shows clearly that gain-of-function research is the real threat and reason for locking down the healthy and highlights the disturbing truth that any such pathogen manufactured to infect humans can be designated as a biological weapon, even if it was created with non-nefarious intentions.
With each passing year, more people are affected by seasonal allergies. In the quest to identify the mechanism behind the growing number of people experiencing allergies, scientists have identified several factors that play an important role. One of these is air pollution.1,2
According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America,3 more than 50 million Americans have experienced a variety of types of allergies each year, and that number only continues to rise. The annual cost exceeds $18 billion for allergic rhinitis and $25 billion for food allergies.
The most common types of seasonal allergies are reactions to tree, grass and weed pollen. Allergic rhinitis, which is also called hay fever, affects 5.2 million children and 19.2 million adults. Although these numbers are staggering, scientists expect them to continue to rise as increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) have affected plant growth and pollen production.
The most common symptoms of allergic rhinitis include sneezing, stuffy, runny nose, watery and itchy eyes and itching in your nose, throat or mouth. A sizable number of allergy sufferers experience noticeable brain fog as well. Food and seasonal allergies are your body's reactions to particles it considers foreign.
The first time your body meets a protein allergen, plasma cells release immunoglobulin E (IgE).4 This attaches to the surface of mast cells, which are found in great numbers in your surface tissue such as skin and nasal mucus membranes. Mast cells release important chemical mediators, one of which is histamine.
The next time your body encounters this allergen, your mast cells become activated within minutes and release a powerful cocktail of histamines, leukotrienes and prostaglandins. This triggers the cascade of symptoms that you associate with allergies.
One of the major components of air pollution is carbon dioxide. According to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions,5 carbon dioxide makes up 76% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Trees and other plants use carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. You might think rising levels of carbon dioxide may be good for plant life, but like most things, plants need a balance.
Gilles Oliver is an engineer from the National Aerobiological Surveillance Network, which tracks pollen throughout France. He spoke with a reporter from Vice France about the interaction between CO2 and plant life, saying,6 “But when the proportion of this CO2 in the air increases, plants grow faster and produce more pollen.”
An increase in pollen production raises your exposure to pollen, and thus produces more severe seasonal allergies. Changes in temperature and CO2 have also extended the frost-free season and thus lengthened pollen season.7 However, the pollen being produced by these plants may be contributing to the collapse of the bee population.
Scientists have found that increases in CO2 produce more pollen, but the pollen has lower protein levels.8 When bees harvest from flowers they first drink the nectar and then collect the pollen. Nectar is high in carbohydrates, while pollen offers long-term nutrition and provides the bees’ only natural source of protein.
When scientists compared flowers from Canada Goldenrod collected from 1842 to the present, they found the percentage of protein dropped by 33%.9 Over the same number of years, CO2 levels have risen by 30%. This increased the carbohydrates in the pollen making it essentially junk food for bees.10
The researchers confirmed the CO2 change in the environment played a role in dropping protein levels through testing published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.11
More than 100 past studies have demonstrated the change in atmospheric carbon dioxide reduces the nutritional value of plants, but this study was the first to examine the effects on bees. Mathilde Renard, an agricultural engineer at the Environmental Department of the Paris City Hall, also spoke with the Vice France reporter about the rising pollen counts in Paris.12
She attributes some of the urban pollen to the city's planting efforts. One of the main strategies Paris is now using is to diversify the species to reduce the pollen concentration for each plant, in the hope of reducing citizens’ allergic response.
Other gardening choices that affect pollen count include preferentially planting male trees.13 Female trees shed more seeds and fruit, which need to be cleaned, but male trees tend to produce more allergic pollen. Some city planners have also chosen species based on their aesthetic value. For instance, birch trees are pretty, but birch tree pollen is one of the largest allergic triggers in the northern hemisphere.14
Oliver attributes the increase in allergies in France to air pollution, saying,15 “It does two things. If you have allergies, it weakens your respiratory tract so you can get ill more easily. It also breaks up the pollen particles in the air, which allows them to penetrate deeper in our respiratory systems.”
The effect of air pollution on your body is insidious. The World Health Organization16 determined 92% of the global population is breathing polluted air. Most people associate air pollution with respiratory conditions since it has a significant impact on your pulmonary health.
However, while the damage to your lungs is significant, it's important to remember air pollution affects more than your pulmonary system. For example, a study17 published in Environmental Health found a link between living close to busy roads and developing non-Alzheimer’s dementia and Parkinson's disease.
According to the WHO, by 2016 air pollution was already responsible for respiratory diseases that killed 543,000 children aged 5 years and younger every year.18 Air pollution is also responsible for asthma in 14% of children around the globe. In April 2019, London launched an ultra-low emissions zone in central London in an attempt to reduce emissions by 45%.19
Researchers found that children living in these areas had a reduction in lung capacity by about 5% when pollution rose above legal levels.20 Dr. Ben Barrett commented on studies evaluating the effect air pollution has on pulmonary health in children, saying:21
“Air pollution has been found to restrict lung growth in children. Low lung function in childhood can persist into adulthood and is often associated with other health problems including chronic obstructive lung disease in later life.”
As Oliver commented, air pollution increases the ability of pollen to penetrate your lungs. This can happen through several mechanisms.22 These include the facilitation of pollen release, stimulating the IgE-mediated response and enhancing the expression of allergens within pollen grains.
Grains of pollen do not only carry allergens, but can also elicit allergic responses in individuals who are sensitized. Pollen grains are too large to penetrate deep into the respiratory tract, so symptoms observed with patients who are allergic to pollen are more likely due to particles that are smaller than pollen grains. According to researchers:23
“Interestingly, air pollutants bind to these particles and exacerbate allergic disorders. Moreover, pollen grains release biologically active lipids, which activate immune cells in vitro.”
Researchers postulate that the interaction between air pollution and pollen grains outside the body may increase the amount of allergen released into the environment. This may happen through a variety of mechanisms that researchers have been studying in the lab and with human participants.24
They found that allergic reactions to grass pollen are greater in cities than in rural areas. Several types of air pollutants act “as adjuvants through binding to allergens and stimulating IgE synthesis, resulting in exacerbation of asthma symptoms.”25
The number of people experiencing food allergies is also on the rise. One paper26 published by Yale University27 proposed the rising number may be the result of an exaggerated activation of the system that protects you against eating toxic foods. As many as 8% of children28 have a potentially deadly response to the major eight food allergens, often referred to as the “Big 8.”29
These include milk, eggs, wheat, soybeans, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts and peanuts. Your body uses multiple sensory mechanisms to monitor what you eat, including chemosensory processes in the gut. The Yale University scientists argue that the body has a food quality control system in which an allergic response plays a significant role.
One prevailing theory for this rise in food allergies is living in a too-clean environment. This is also called the hygiene hypothesis, which some scientists have expanded to include processed foods, dishwashing detergent and other environmental chemicals.
In a paper30 written in Clinical and Experimental Immunology, the researchers argue these factors also play a role in disrupting your internal food quality control system.
There is a difference between a food sensitivity, intolerance and a food allergy.31 A true allergy is mediated by the immune system and triggered by a reaction to proteins found in your food or drink. Food intolerances are also called food sensitivities. These are usually an unpleasant gastrointestinal reaction, but the reaction is not mediated by your immune system.
Although most food allergies develop in childhood, it's not unheard of for adults to develop a food allergy. Data32 gathered from October 2015 to September 2016 suggest 10.8% of adults are allergic to food. Scientists believe this contradicts the long-held belief that most allergies develop in childhood.
In a survey of 40,443 adults, 38.3% had food allergies that sent them to the emergency room and 48% had at least one triggered after the age of 18. Your gut microbiome is vital to the functioning of your immune system, which mediates an allergic response to food. You'll find suggestions on how to optimize your gut microbiome in “How Your Gut Health Impacts Your Disease Risk.”
One physiological biomarker tied to the risk of seasonal and food allergies is vitamin D. Researchers have found there is both experimental and clinical evidence that vitamin D is linked to allergic rhinitis.33
One double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial34 evaluated the combined effect of vitamin D supplementation with an antihistamine medication. The study found that the people who received vitamin D and the medication had a significant decrease in their symptoms as compared to those who only received the medication.
The researchers measured vitamin D levels after eight weeks, finding those who received the supplement had a mean serum level of 24 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL) and the level in the group who did not get vitamin D supplementation was 15 ng/mL.
It is important to note that the researchers did not use the supplement as a basis for concluding the vitamin D had a positive effect, but rather the serum level of vitamin D. The rising level of food allergies also corresponds to the increasing number of people with vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D plays a significant role in the regulation of IgE, important in the development of food allergies.
The link between vitamin D deficiency, which has almost doubled in just over 10 years in the U.S.,35 and poor regulation of IgE responses, may be a significant factor. Both play a role in the development, severity and course of allergic diseases and may help explain, at least in part, why so many adults are developing food allergies.
Vitamin D deficiency has become so widespread it's been called a pandemic by a Harvard Medical School researcher.36 The short list of health benefits attributed to vitamin D optimization include improving your immune system, strengthening muscles, bones and teeth and improving your cardiovascular health.
I recommend you get your vitamin D level tested twice each year — once when the level is likely to be at its lowest (midwinter) and once when it’s at its highest (midsummer). Grassroots Health offers vitamin D testing through its D*Action Study and has an online vitamin D calculator you can use to estimate your vitamin D requirements.
To read more about the interaction between vitamin D deficiency and allergies, how to optimize your vitamin D and the synergy between vitamin D3, magnesium, calcium and vitamin K2, see “Vitamin D Deficiency Can Lead to Increased Allergies.”
