Despite popular opinion wheat consumption may not be beneficial to health. These two published articles make a strong argument against perceiving wheat intolerance as simply a matter of allergy/genetic intolerance in a minority subset of the human population, but rather as a species-specific intolerance, applicable to all.
Part 1: The Dark Side of Wheat: New Perspectives on Celiac Disease & Wheat Intolerance
Part 2: Opening Pandora’s Bread Box: The Critical Role of Wheat Lectin in Human Disease.
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Below are peer-reviewed studies connecting wheat consumption with over 160+ diseases.
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"What is unique about the Wheat lectin (WGA glycoprotein) is that it can do direct damage to the majority of tissues in the human body without requiring a specific set of genetic susceptibilities and/or immune-mediated articulations. This may explain why chronic inflammatory and degenerative conditions are endemic to wheat-consuming populations even when overt allergies or intolerances to wheat gluten appear exceedingly rare. The future fate of wheat consumption, and by implication our health, may depend largely on whether or not the toxic qualities of WGA come to light in the general population.
Nature engineers, within all species, a set of defenses against predation, though not all are as obvious as the thorns on a rose or the horns on a rhinoceros. Plants do not have the cell-mediated immunity of higher life forms, like ants, nor do they have the antibody driven, secondary immune systems of vertebrates with jaws. They must rely on a much simpler, innate immunity. It is for this reason that seeds of the grass family, e.g. rice, wheat, spelt, rye, have exceptionally high levels of defensive glycoproteins known as lectins. Cooking, sprouting, fermentation and digestion are the traditional ways in which man, for instance, deals with the various anti-nutrients found within this family of plants, but lectins are, by design, particularly resistant to degradation through a wide range of pH and temperatures.
WGA lectin is an exceptionally tough adversary as it is formed by the same disulfide bonds that make vulcanized rubber and human hair so strong, flexible and durable. Like man-made pesticides, lectins are extremely small, resistant to break-down by living systems, and tend to accumulate and become incorporated into tissues where they interfere with normal biological processes. Indeed, WGA lectin is so powerful as an insecticide that biotech firms have used recombinant DNA technology to create genetically modified WGA-enhanced plants. We can only hope that these virtually unregulated biotech companies, who are in the business of playing God with the genetic infrastructure of Life, will realize the potential harm to humans that such genetic modifications can cause." Read More: Opening Pandora’s Bread Box: The Critical Role of Wheat Lectin in Human Disease.
Dispersants are said to "accelerate the biodegradation" of hydrocarbons released into the Gulf by breaking the oil up into smaller particles. While this may be true, there has been little evidence presented to unequivocally verify these claims. Contrary evidence also exists (as listed in the studies below) which shows that dispersants inhibit the microbial biodegradation of certain lesser soluble hydrocarbons, while also accelerating the absorption of hydrocarbons into plant and animal life.
Here are some additional concerns:
1) Dispersants like the Corexit 9500 used in the Gulf are composed of chemicals which have been shown to have significant toxicity to a wide range of animal, plant and microbial life. The question is: "how does the dispersant effect the populations of naturally occuring oil-consuming bacteria?"
In a report published in 1999 by the Alaskan Department of Environmental Conservation entitled: "Biodegradation of Dispersed Oil Using COREXIT 9500" the dispersant was shown to inhibit the biodegradation of less soluble hydrocarons by marine bacteria, while accelerating the breakdown of the more soluble hydrocarbons. The authors state:
"Thus, while adding dispersant may increase microbial oil degradation activity as a whole, this increase may be restricted to only some components of the crude oil, resulting in selective enrichment of other components in the residual oil. This could result in either an increase or a decrease in the toxicity of the residual oil." (pg. 2)
"Radiorespirometry data suggest that addition of dispersant may inhibit mineralization of relatively insoluble substrates (e.g.,
hexadecane and phenanthrene; see Figures 1, 2 and 3), perhaps due to microbial preference for
the more bioavailable substrates." (pg. 24)
"We found that dispersant addition to oil increased total CO2 evolution from our defined consortium, but not as much as dispersant alone (Figure 5A), and hydrocarbon degraders were elevated much more than hexadecane
degraders or phenanthrene degraders (Figure 7)." (pg. 24)
"Our data suggest that addition of dispersant to oil increases total carbon mineralized, and numbers of hydrocarbon degraders. This suggests that dispersant increases oil biodegradation, but total C [carbon] mineralization data and hydrocarbon degrader data are together insufficient to evaluate whether this observed increase in oil degradation is consistent across chemical classes of compounds contained in the oil. Our data indicate that dispersant may inhibit biodegradation of some components of the crude oil. At this point no data currently exist allowing evaluation of the effects of Corexit 9500 on biodegradation of the more acutely and chronically toxic components of crude oil. Following dispersant use, if the residual oil is selectively enriched in components of greater toxicity than those components biodegraded, the toxicity of the resulting oil residue (on an oil mass basis) may be increased." (pg. 25)
Perchlorate is an environmental pollutant primarily associated with releases by defense contractors, military operations and aerospace programs, as it is a key ingredient in rocket fuel. It is now found in virtually all humans tested, and it is continually making its way up the food chain through ground and drinking water, into feed and edible plants, animals products, milk and breast milk - contaminating conventional and organically grown food, alike.
What does it do? Perchlorate has been used as a "medicine" in this country to "treat" hyperthyroidism since the 1950's despite the fact some patients may develop aplastic anemia (bone marrow destruction) as a result. Perchlorate interferes with iodide uptake at the sodium-iodide symporter in the thyroid gland which unfortunately has a 30-fold higher affinity for perchlorate than iodide. Without adequate iodide hypothyroidism ensues. Could this pollutant have anything to do with the geometric expansion of hypothyroidism diagnoses in this country?
If it were not for the perfect fit between pharmaceutical medicine, e.g. Synthroid (levothyroxine) and pollution-caused hypothyroidism, this question might get some traction in the medical community and we could start solving the underlying problem: a military-industrial establishment and medical-industrial establishment that thrive on death and disease.
