GMOs: The Walking Dead of the Food Industry

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This Is What’s REALLY In A McDonald’s Hamburger

From livefreelivenatural.com:

Posted on May 14, 2014 by Cecil Iscoo

Have you ever wondered what you are really eating when you sit down to a McDonald’s hamburger?

The following video illustrates that you are getting more than what McDonald’s advertises when you eat one of their hamburgers.

Aside from the enormous amounts of grease contained in a McDonald’s hamburger, the advertised ingredients are no better for you.

According to McDonald’s own website, this is the list of ingredients for their popular McDouble, the sandwich that you see in the above video.

Regular Bun:

Ingredients: Enriched Flour (Bleached Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup and/or Sugar, Yeast, Soybean Oil and/or Canola Oil, Contains 2% or Less: Salt, Wheat Gluten, Calcium Sulfate, Calcium Carbonate, Ammonium Sulfate, Ammonium Chloride, Dough Conditioners (May Contain One or More of: Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, DATEM, Ascorbic Acid, Azodicarbonamide, Mono and Diglycerides, Ethoxylated Monoglycerides, Monocalcium Phosphate, Enzymes, Guar Gum, Calcium Peroxide), Sorbic Acid (Preservative), Calcium Propionate and/or Sodium Propionate (Preservatives), Soy Lecithin.

This is a list of side effects caused by the ingredients of just the bun alone:

- Ammonium sulfate is a chemical byproduct of steel-making and synthetic fiber production. It was the most common source of lawn fertilizer nitrogen until price increases starting in 2004 reduced its availability.

- Bleached White Flour: It has been shown that alloxan is a byproduct of the flour bleaching process, the process they use to make flour look so “clean” and — well, white. No, they are technically not adding alloxan to the flour — although you will read this bit of misinformation on the Internet. But, they are doing chemical treatments to the grain that result in the formation of alloxan in the flour. Alloxan, or C₄ H₂O₄N_2, is a product of the decomposition of uric acid. It is a poison that is used to produce diabetes in healthy experimental animals (primarily rats and mice), so that researchers can then study diabetes “treatments” in the lab. Alloxan causes diabetes because it spins up enormous amounts of free radicals in pancreatic beta cells, thus destroying them.

High Fructose Corn Syrup contains contaminants including mercury that are not regulated or measured by the FDA.

 

Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate: possible side effect is food intolerance.

 

Azodicarbonamide (Banned in the EU, Singapore, and Australia) is used in the food industry as a food additive, a flour bleaching agent and improving agent. Azodicarbonamide actually relaxes the dough so that when it is divided in large-scale bakeries under pressure, it still retains a good character.  It has been known to cause allergic reactions in those sensitive to other azo compounds, such as food dyes. The consumption of azodicarbonamide may also heighten an allergic reaction to other ingredients in a food. The principal use of azodicarbonamide is in the production of foamed plastics as an additive. 

 

In the UK, the Health and Safety Executive has identified azodicarbonamide as a respiratory sensitizer (a possible cause of asthma) and has determined that these products should be labeled with the words “may cause sensitization by inhalation.”

 

Guar Gum is banned by the FDA in large amounts due to reports of the substance swelling and obstructing the intestines and esophagus.

 

Sorbic Acid: According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the chemical is a strong irritant and—in large enough quantities—has the potential to cause severe damage to the tissues of the eyes, skin and respiratory tract.

 

PASTEURIZED PROCESS AMERICAN CHEESE

Ingredients: Milk, Cream, Water, Cheese Culture, Sodium Citrate, Contains 2% or Less of: Salt, Citric Acid, Sodium Phosphate, Sorbic Acid (Preservative), Lactic Acid, Acetic Acid, Enzymes, Sodium Pyrophosphate, Natural Flavor (Dairy Source), Color Added, Soy Lecithin (Added for Slice Separation).

KETCHUP

Ingredients: Tomato Concentrate from Red Ripe Tomatoes, Distilled Vinegar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Water, Salt, Natural Flavors (Plant Source).

PICKLE SLICES

Ingredients: Cucumbers, Water, Distilled Vinegar, Salt, Calcium Chloride, Alum, Potassium Sorbate (Preservative), Natural Flavors (Plant Source), Polysorbate 80, Extractives of Turmeric (Color).

ONIONS

MUSTARD

Ingredients: Distilled Vinegar, Water, Mustard Seed, Salt, Turmeric, Paprika, Spice Extractive.

100% BEEF PATTY 

Ingredients: 100% Pure USDA Inspected Beef; No Fillers, No Extenders.
Prepared with Grill Seasoning (Salt, Black Pepper).

- See more at: http://livefreelivenatural.com/really-mcdonalds-hamburger/#sthash.r8f34MQZ.dpuf

Chemicals in soap can cause male infertility, claim scientists

From The Independent:

Scientists find that sperm cells are affected by chemicals in household products

STEVE CONNOR 

 

 

Monday 12 May 2014

Chemicals in common household products such as toothpaste, soap and plastic toys have a direct impact on human sperm which could help explain rising levels of male infertility, scientists have found.

One in three “non-toxic” chemicals used in the manufacture of everyday items significantly affected the potency of sperm cells, which may account for the high incidence of unexplained infertility in the human population, the researchers said.

It is the first time that a study has found a direct effect of the many ubiquitous man‑made chemicals in the environment on a vital function of human sperm. The findings will raise further concerns about the hidden toxicity of chemicals deemed safe by toxicology tests.

But the researchers believe they have developed a new way of testing the impact of household chemicals on human sperm which will allow regulatory authorities in Europe to decide whether to ban or impose restrictions on their use in certain products.

The study was part of wider research into so-called “endocrine‑disrupting” chemicals that for several years have been linked with declining sperm counts and widespread male infertility.

In some cases, these chemicals are thought to mimic female sex hormones – oestrogens – and in other cases act as anti-androgens, the male sex hormones, thereby interfering with the male reproductive system.

However, the scientists found that one in three common household chemicals found in products such as sun screens, detergents and plastics directly sabotaged the human sperm’s swimming behaviour and caused them to prematurely release the critical enzymes needed to penetrate and fertilise the egg cell – which would render the sperm infertile.

They also found that the concentrations needed to trigger these adverse reactions were similar to the very low levels commonly found within the human body. In addition, they showed for the first time that there was a “cocktail effect”, when a number of chemicals worked together to amplify their individual effects.

“For the first time, we have shown a direct link between exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals from industrial products and adverse effects on human sperm function,” Professor Niels Skakkebaek, of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark, said.

“In my opinion, our findings are clearly of concern as some endocrine-disrupting chemicals are possibly more dangerous than previously thought. However, it remains to be seen from forthcoming clinical studies whether our findings may explain reduced couple fertility which is very common in modern societies,” Professor Skakkebaek told The Independent.

Professor Skakkebaek has pioneered the scientific investigation of rising male infertility. In 1991, he produced the first evidence showing that human sperm counts had fallen by nearly 50 per cent in less than 50 years – low sperm counts are a major cause of male infertility.

Some years later, scientists found that some common chemicals have an “oestrogenic” or “antiandrogenic” effect on the male reproductive system, which could be particularly important in the development of male foetuses in the womb during the critical first six months when the reproductive tissues form.

However, the latest research, published in EMBO reports and carried out with Timo Strünker of the Centre of Advanced European Studies and Research in Bonn, Germany, found that 30 out of 96 common household chemicals had a direct effect on the “catsper” protein which controls the sperm cell’s motility, or swimming agility, and its ability to enter the egg cell to trigger fertilisation.

“We have found a completely novel way in which endocrine-disrupting chemicals may affect human reproduction by direct interaction with human sperm,” Professor Skakkebaek said.

Relatively low concentrations of the chemicals – which previously were thought to be too low to cause an effect – triggered the catsper reaction in test-tube studies.

“In human body fluids, one does not find one of a few particular chemicals, but rather complex chemical cocktails with many different endocrine-disrupting chemicals at very low concentrations. We tried to mimic this situation in our experiments,” Dr Strünker said. “When mixed together the cocktail, despite the extremely low concentration of its ingredients, evoked large and sizeable responses in sperm. Thus, in complex mixtures [the chemicals] co-operate to interfere with sperm function. This has not been shown before.”

People ingest these chemicals every day either by consuming food and drink contaminated with them or by absorbing them through the skin in personal-care products such as sunscreens and soaps.

Professor Richard Sharpe, a senior scientist at the Medical Research Council Human Reproductive Sciences Unit in Edinburgh, said: “This study appears to open up a new dimension of potential effects of common lifestyle or environmental chemicals on male fertility.”

New Study: FDA-Approved Levels of Aspartame Distort Brain Function, Kill Brain Cells

From NutritionalAnarchy:

 Melissa Melton

 Features, Learn

 May 3rd, 2014

As reported before, aspartame has been shown time and again in studies (the ones not commissioned by the industry) to be bad for you.

Now yet another new study, this one published in the journal Redox Biology, has concluded what lots of other research over the past decades has repeatedly shown — aspartame, the popular sweetener in over 6,000 grocery store items, including everything from soup mixes to carbonated beverages to chewing gum — can essentially program your brain cells to kill themselves.

Key study findings include:

• Aspartame administration alters the functional activity in the brain by elevating the antioxidant levels.
• Chronic aspartame consumption altered the neuronal function and neurodegeneration in brain.
• Observed changes may be due to the methanol or its metabolite.
• Long-term FDA approved daily acceptable intake (40 mg/kg bwt) aspartame administration distorted the brain function and generated apoptosis in brain regions.

Apoptosis is defined as, “the process of programmed cell death in multicellular organisms. Biochemical events lead to characteristic cell changes and death.”

So even at the FDA acceptable levels, consuming this chemical is just not good for you, no matter what the mega food corporations and their lobbies say.

Aspartame (otherwise known by its brand names NutraSweet and Equal) is one of the most widely used artificial sweeteners in foods today. It breaks down into three components: 50 percent phenylalanine, 40 percent aspartic acid, and 10 percent methanol (yummy). It comes from genetically modified (GM) E. coli bacteria, and by “comes from”, I mean aspartame is GM bacteria poop (super yummy). Aspartic acid is an excitotoxin, methanol is the wood alcohol used in antifreeze, and too much of the amino acid phenylalanine in the brain can decrease serotonin levels over time, leading to chemical imbalances that can actually induce mood disorders and depression.

Dr. Mercola has noted that aspartame actually accounts for over 75 percent of adverse food additive reactions reported to the FDA, including:

“Headaches/migraines, dizziness, seizures, nausea, numbness, muscle spasms, weight gain, rashes, depression, fatigue, irritability, tachycardia, insomnia, vision problems, hearing loss, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, loss of taste, tinnitus, vertigo, memory loss, and joint pain.”

In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) even lists aspartame as a “chemical with substantial evidence of developmental neurotoxicity” on its database of developmental neurotoxicants.

It’s the methanol released during aspartame’s metabolism, in this particular case, which these researchers say is helping to generate free radicals that lead to cell damage and death:

This study provides a scientific evidence to conclude that aspartame is toxic to the body system and particularly in brain it increase the free radicals and triggers the apoptosis. Aspartame consumption in a long-term basis may affect the brain. It may be due to its metabolite methanol Aspartame may act as a chemical stressor as indicated by the corticosteroid level. (source)

But I guess we should just keep on consuming it, right?

When I typed “FDA Aspartame” into Google’s search engine to get the FDA’s official take on how safe and wonderful this chemical is for everyone to eat all the time, ironically, the first thing that popped up was a file on the FDA.gov website about aspartame’s toxicity that lists off at least 50 horrible side effects people have experienced from eating and drinking this stuff.

The document, Docket # 02P-0317 Recall Aspartame as a Neurotoxic Drug: File#4: Reported Aspartame Toxicity Reactions by Mark Gold of the Aspartame Toxicity Information Center, also notes that the FDA admittedly stopped recording aspartame toxicity reactions back in 1995, so its figures on exactly who is being negatively affected by aspartame and how aren’t just sketchy, they’re apparently nonexistent:

 The FDA and NutraSweet have claimed that the number of reported adverse reactions have declined substantially since the mid-1980s (Pauli 1995, Butchko 1994). In addition, the FDA recently claimed that the number of reported toxicity reactions for 1995 was only 11 (WSJ 1996)! It is important to realize that during the mid-1970s the FDA was investigating wrong-doings of the aspartame manufacturer and stated the facts exactly as they found them:

 ”[The manufacturer] lied and they didn’t submit the real nature of their observations because had they done that it is more than likely that a great number of these studies would have been rejected simply for adequacy. What Searle did, they took great pains to camouflage these shortcomings of the study. As I say filter and just present to the FDA what they wished the FDA to know and they did other terrible things for instance animals would develop tumors while they were under study. Well they would remove these tumors from the animals.” [FDA Toxicologist and Task Force member, Dr. Andrian Gross (Wilson 1985)]

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, a number of key government and FDA officials left their jobs to work with companies related to the aspartame industry (GAO 1986). This included key FDA officials such as the head of the FDA Bureau of Foods becoming a Vice President of the National Drink Association and the FDA Commissioner becoming a high-paid consultant for the manufacturer’s PR firm, Burston Marsteller (Gordon 1987). After this period of time, there was no scientific evidence and no amount of serious toxicity reports that could get the FDA to seriously consider funding independent, properly-conducted (e.g., chronic exposure) research. That appearance of the FDA being under the total control of the manufacturer, Monsanto, continues to this day.

I include these comments about the FDA to demonstrate why no independent scientist familiar with the aspartame issue takes statements from the FDA such as “11 reported reactions in 1995″ seriously.  There are many people, including myself who have received that many toxicity reaction reports in a single day during 1995. The reality is that independent organizations have noted that aspartame toxicity reaction reports given to them have *increased* every year since the late 1980s (Stoddard 1995).  It is also important to note that in mid-1995, the FDA admited that it had stopped recording aspartame toxicity reactions (Food 1995).  That may have something to do with why the numbers that the FDA reported to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ 1996) were so small! (source)

Why does aspartame continue to be approved and allowed in food after food after drink after gum after food?

That might be a good question for our current FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods, Michael Taylor, who used to be Vice President of Public Policy and a lawyer for Monsanto. He might have some special insight, considering thatMonsanto purchased G.D. Searle, the chemical company that held the patent to aspartame, back in 1985.

Chinese Thunder God Herb Works as Well as Pain Therapy

From Bloomberg:

By Bloomberg News  Apr 15, 2014 7:00 AM ET  

Photographer: Gary Cosby Jr./The Decatur Daily via AP Photo

Thunder god vine could become a new approach to treating rheumatoid arthritis because... Read More

A centuries-old Chinese medical herb known as “thunder god vine” eased the pain and swelling of rheumatoid arthritis as effectively as the commonly prescribed methotrexate, a study showed.

In a trial of 207 patients in China, those who took extracts of the herb showed slightly more improvement than those on methotrexate alone; combining the two boosted efficacy significantly over methotrexate alone. The study appears in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseasespublished by BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal.

While traditional Chinese medicine has been practiced for hundreds of years, research into its benefits compared with today’s standard therapies has been limited. Thunder god vine could become a new approach to treating rheumatoid arthritis because not all patients respond to methotrexate and modern biologic treatments, such as Amgen Inc.’s Enbrel, are expensive, the researchers wrote in the report.

“While the herb has been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis in China for many centuries, there wasn’t clinical evidence of its efficacy compared with current standard medical treatments,” said lead author Xuan Zhang, a doctor at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital’s Department of Rheumatology. “The results were very clear because on many indicators it performed slightly better than methotrexate.”

Measuring Pain

The researchers used a standard measurement based on a 50 percent improvement in the number of tender or swollen joints, along with criteria including pain and disability. The proportion of those achieving the standard after 24 weeks of the trial was 77 percent among those treated with both drugs, 55 percent among those on the herbal extract, and 46.5 percent for those on methotrexate.

There was little difference between the frequency or type of side effects in the three groups, although the number of women who developed irregular periods was slightly higher in those treated with the extract, identified by the name Tripterygium wilfordii Hook F, according to the report.

Extracts from the herb had been found in the 1980s to have an antifertility effect, although other studies showed that the effects were usually reversible and more common in women entering menopause, the authors wrote.

Doctors in China tend to recommend the herbal extract, usually taken in capsule form, as mainly suitable for older patients above the age of 50, Zhang, a professor of medicine at the teaching hospital in Beijing, said in a telephone interview. That is also the same patient group that tends to get afflicted with joint pain, he said.

Thunder god vine extract has also been investigated for its potential to treat autoimmune diseases and some cancers. A drug made from the plant wiped out pancreatic tumors in mice, researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Masonic Cancer Center said in a study published in October 2012.

Affordable Treatment

Tripterygium wilfordii Hook F may be an affordable alternative treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, researchers said.

A month’s worth of the herbal extract costs about 80 yuan ($12.90) a month, while treatments with methotrexate, which has to be used in combination with biological or chemical reagents, costs at least three times more, said Peking Union’s Zhang. Amgen Inc.’s Enbrel, which is usually injected weekly, costs $3,221 per prescription and Abbvie Inc. (ABBV)’s Humira, which is usually injected every other week, costs about $3,650 per prescription, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“This would have significance for how we should consider and study fundamental treatments for rheumatoid arthritis in the future,” he said. The research group is continuing to study the three treatment groups beyond 24 weeks for the longer term effects, Zhang said.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Daryl Loo in Beijing at dloo7@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anjali Cordeiro at acordeiro2@bloomberg.net Angela Zimm

Watch This Video & You’ll Never Eat McDonald’s French Fries Again

From collective-evolution.com:

April 13, 2014 by Arjun Walia. 39 Comments.

 

78

Michael Pollan is an author, activist, journalist and professor of journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He mainly focuses on the industrial food chain with regards to his research. He emphasizes how cooking is one of the simplest and most important steps people can take to improve their family’s health, build communities, help fix our broken food system and perhaps most importantly, break our growing dependence on corporations. Michael Pollan is a food activist and you can find out more about him and his work by clicking here.

In the video below he illustrates how McDonald’s insists on using Russet Burbank Potatoes, a potato in America that is unusually long and difficult to grow. They further insist that their potatoes have no blemishes at all, which is hard because these potatoes commonly suffer from what is referred to as Net Necrosis, which causes unwanted spots and lines on the potatoes. If they have this, McDonald’s won’t buy them and the only way to eliminate this is through the use of a pesticide called methamidophos (Monitor) “that is so toxic that the farmers who grow these potatoes in Idaho won’t venture outside and into their fields for five days after they spray.”

When McDonald’s is ready to harvest their potatoes, they have to put them in giant atmospheric controlled sheds the size of football stadiums because they are not eatable for six weeks. “They have to off gas all the chemicals in them.”

I’ll let you watch the video for more information, you should have a hard time eating McDonald’s after this, but that’s not a bad thing.

Cancer rates continue to rise,and study after study continues to surface every year showing how pesticides, GMOs and a number of other things we choose to surround ourselves with on a daily basis are indeed harmful to human health. It’s time for us to wake up and fully acknowledge it, it’s time to make better choices in our lives, it’s time to put two and two together and make connections.

Fast foods chains are no different from drugs. They are extremely addicting and extremely harmful. They should not exist and this video just adds to the long, continually growing list of why.

Rebranding a Toxin: Aspartame

From NaturalSociety.com:

by Christina Sarich
April 10th, 2014
Updated 04/10/2014 at 1:00 am

Follow them: @naturalsociety on Twitter | NaturalSociety on Facebook

Natural Society has been talking about the dangers of Aspartame for quite some time now. It is a dangerous artificial sweetener found in many of the foods we consume every day, including soft drinks, chewing gum, breakfast cereals, and jams. Now, it’s important to know that aspartame may be disguised as a new name in your favorite foods – aminosweet.

Used as a sugar substitute and often marketed as Nutrasweet and Equal, aspartame is an excitotoxin that destroys the brain and body. Its use has been a controversial subject since the 1980s when the CEO of Searle, Donald Rumsfeld, pushed for it’s approval to be sold on the market. Now, its name is being changed, with FDA approval, to try to dupe millions into purchasing and consuming this toxin once again.

Aspartame, even renamed Amino Sweet, is not safe. This substance is made using genetically modified bacteria in the US, but according to a Monsanto source, the UK market does not have to eat genetically modified bacteria excrement. Many ‘low-calorie’ foods contain GMO aspartame, however, even overseas. Aspartame may cause blindness, cancer, and brain tumors.

Just as a reminder of who is pushing this excrement – quite literally – on the consumers of the United states, it was Mr. Rumsfeld who went on to become George W. Bush’s secretary of Defense, and crony-Capitalist agenda-pusher. This one substance has continually been shown to cause harm to human health, so why is the FDA renaming it instead of banning it completely from the food supply? There is considerable evidence that artificial sweeteners cause cancer, including aspartame specifically – so why not name it something more appropriate at least? ‘Sickeningly Sweet’ might be more appropriate.

Even saccharin eventually had to be made with a label, mandated by Congress, that says, “Use of this product may be hazardous to your health. This product contains saccharin, which has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals”. The FDA’s own toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross told Congress that without a shadow of a doubt, aspartame can cause brain tumors and brain cancer and that it violated the Delaney Amendment. Aside from cancers and tumors, top researchers have linked aspartame with the following symptoms and diseases:

• Headaches
• Memory loss
• Seizures
• Vision Loss
• Coma
• ADD
• Lupus
• Fibromyalgia
• Muscular Dystrophy
• Alzheimer’s
• Chrnoic Fatigue
• Diabetes
• Depression

Aspartame is Dangerous

European scientists have been telling us about the dangers of aspartame since 2005. Why on earth is it still allowed in our food? Partly? Because a politically biased FDA, then swayed by Rumsfeld’s corporation, said that the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)’s decision about aspartame was not conclusive enough to prove that it was a dangerous substance, and that there was no “further review [on an] earlier scientific opinion on the safety of aspartame or [reason] to revise the Acceptable Daily Intake.”

The problem, and what more research concluded, is that aspartame breaks down into something calledPhenylalanine, among other things. This can cause a disorder known as Phenylketonuria.

“. . .one in 15,000 people in the world has a genetic disorder called Phenylketonuria. Their bodycan’t metabolize synthesizde phenylalanine. As it builds up in the body, it causes all sorts of bad things to happen, such as mental retardation, seizures, and other brain damage. People suffering from Phenylketonuria (or PKU) are called phenylketonurics. They need to constantly monitor their protein intake. They are also warned about consumption of products containing aspartame – hence the warning on labels – ‘Phenylketonurics – contains phenylalanine.”

Not only that, but aspartame is also chemically addictive to the body, even though it damages it profoundly – just like other drugs. This is why food makers want to put it in their products – so you will buy more of them.

Aspartame, or Amino Sweet – its all the same toxic substance. Watch out for it on food labels. Eat honey, apple sauce, raw, non-GMO sugar, and other REAL food sweeteners instead. You deserve to live a sweet life without being a sucker.

Additional Sources:

NCBI

The Spice That Prevents Fluoride From Destroying Your Brain

From GreenMedInfo:

Posted on: 

Monday, April 7th 2014 at 4:15 pm

Written By: 

Sayer Ji

Fluoride is found everywhere today, from antibiotics to drinking water, no stick pans to toothpaste, making exposure inevitable. All the more reason why new research proving this common spice can prevent fluoride damage is so promising!
Fluoride's neurotoxicity has been the subject of academic debate for decades, and now a matter of increasingly impassioned controversy among the general public, as well. From 'conspiracy theories' about it being first used in drinking water in Russian and Nazi concentration camps to chemically lobotomize captives, to its now well-known IQ lowering properties, to its ability to enhance thecalcification of the pineal gland – the traditional 'seat of the soul' – many around the world, and increasingly in the heavily fluoridated regions of the United States, are starting to organize at the local and statewide level to oust this ubiquitous toxicant from municipal drinking water.
Now, a new study published in the Pharmacognosy Magazine titled, "Curcumin attenuates neurotoxicity induced by fluoride: An in vivo evidence," adds experimental support to the suspicion that fluoride is indeed a brain-damaging substance, also revealing that a natural spice-derived protective agent against the various health effects associated with this compound is available.
The study was authored by researchers from the Department of Zoology, University College of Science, M.L. Sukhadia University, Udaipur, India, who have spent the past decade investigating the mechanisms through which fluoride induces severe neurodegenerative changes in the mammalian brain, particularly in cells of the hippocampus and cerebral cortex.[i] [ii]
The study opens by describing the historical backdrop for concern about fluoride's significant and wide ranging toxicity:

"Fluoride (F) is probably the first inorganic ion which drew attention of the scientific world for its toxic effects and now the F toxicity through drinking water is well-recognized as a global problem. Health effect reports on F exposure also include various cancers, adverse reproductive activities, cardiovascular, and neurological diseases.[1,2]"

The study focused on fluoride induced neurotoxicity, identifying excitoxicity (stimulation of the neuron to the point of death) and oxidative stress as the two main drivers of neurodegeneration.  It has been observed that subjects with the condition known as fluorosis, a mottling of tooth enamel caused by excessive exposure to fluoride during tooth development, also have neurodegenerative changes associated with a form of oxidative stress known as lipid peroxidation (rancidity). Excess lipid peroxidation in the brain can lead to a decrease in total brain phospholipid content. Owing to these well-known mechanisms of fluoride associated neurotoxicity and neurodegeneration, the researchers identified the primary polyphenol in the spice turmeric -- known as curcumin – as an ideal agent worth testing as a neuroprotective substance.  Previous research on curcumin indicates that it is capable of activing as an antioxidant in 3 distinct ways by protecting against: 1) singlet oxygen 2) hyrodxyl radicals and 3) superoxide radical damage. Also, curcumin appears to raise endogenous glutathione production in the brain, a major antioxidant defense system.

In order to assess the neurotoxic effects of fluoride and prove curcumin's protective role against it, researchers randomly divided up mice into four groups, for 30 days:

1. Control (no fluoride)
2. Fluoride (120 ppm): fluoride was given in distilled water drinking water without restriction.
3. Fluoride (120 ppm/30 mg/kg body weight) + Curcumin: Oral dose of curcumin dissolved in olive oil along with fluoride in drinking water
4. Curcumin: (30 mg/kg body weight)

In order to ascertain the effect of treatment, the researchers measured the malondialdehyde (MDA) content in the brains of the different treated mice. MDA is a well-known marker of oxidative stress/damage.

As was expected, the fluoride (F) only treatment group showed significantly elevated MDA levels vs. the non-fluoride treated control. The F + Curcumin group saw reduced MDA levels vs. the fluoride only group, demonstrating curcumin's neuroprotective activity against fluoride associated neurotoxicity.

The study concluded,

"Our study thus demonstrate that daily single dose of 120 ppm F result in highly significant increases in the LPO [lipid peroxidation, i.e. brain rancidity] as well as neurodegenerative changes in neuron cell bodies of selected hippocampal regions. Supplementation with curcumin significantly reduce the toxic effect of F to near normal level by augmenting the antioxidant defense through its scavenging property and provide an evidence of having therapeutic role against oxidative stress mediated neurodegeneration."

Discussion

This is far from the first study to demonstrate curcumin's remarkable brain-saving properties. From the perspective of the primary research alone, there are over two hundred peer-reviewed published studies indicating that curcumin is a neuroprotective agent. On our own turmeric database we have 115 articles proving this statement: Turmeric Protects The Brain.  We have also featured studies on turmeric's ability to protect and restore the brain:

• How Turmeric Can Save the Aging Brain From Dementia and Premature Death
• Turmeric Produces 'Remarkable' Recovery in Alzheimer's Patients

Considering the many chemical insults we face on a daily basis in the post-industrial world, turmeric may very well be the world's most important herb, with over 600 evidence-based healthapplications.

For more information, please review the following content:

• The Turmeric Drink that Can Revolutionize Your Health
• Research: Curcumin Is A Triple Negative Breast Killer   
• Science Confirms Turmeric As Effective As 14 Drugs

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[i] Bhatnagar M, Rao P, Saxena A, Bhatnagar R, Meena P, Barbar S. Biochemical changes in brain and other tissues of young adult female mice from fluoride in their drinking water. Fluoride. 2006;39:280–4. [Ref list]

[ii] Bhatnagar M, Sukhwal P, Suhalka P, Jain A, Joshi C, Sharma D. Effects of fluoride in drinking water on NADPH-diaphorase neurons in the forebrain of mice: A possible mechanism of fluoride neurotoxicity. Fluoride. 2011;44:195–9. [Ref list]