BPA & Brain Development

We already know bisphenol A (BPA) as an endocrine disruptor, carcinogen, and obesogen, but now it has been linked to altered brain and central nervous system (CNS) development prenatally.  BPA mimics estrogen and can be found in many everyday products, like the linings of metal cans, receipts, and even in our foods and drinks. BPA is banned in the European Union and Canada, but not the United States.

When neurons, or nerve cells, are growing, they rely on a local chloride levels to guide them to their correct location in the brain. Exposure to BPA disrupts this process.

"Over time, as the neurons mature, chloride is pumped out of the cells by a chloride transporter called KCC2. If chloride levels remain high, the neural circuits don’t form and connect properly."

In a new study by Dr. Wolfgang Liedtke and colleagues at Duke University found that;

"when exposing the neurons to minute amounts of BPA, the gene that makes KCC2 shut down, which kept chloride longer in the neurons. They suspect the BPA made a different type of protein -- known as MECP2 -- more abundant in neurons, which in turn bound to KCC2 and shut it down."

Credit: Michele Yeo, Duke Medicine

 
In Liedtke and colleague's study of rodent models, that was also "verified in human systems," both sexes were affected by BPA disruption, but females tended to be more susceptible to BPA's attack. Researchers proposed that this processes of BPA attack on cell development may hold clues on the development on autism and Rett syndrome. Fortunately, in rodents, the effects were reversible when treated with a drug that allowed the neurons to compensate for the excessive chloride levels. This study is just another reason for tougher regulation and bans on BPA in the US.

Sources

Time Magazine
CBS News
Duke Alert
Science Daily

Dietary Toxins and Eating Well

While I normally focus on toxins in personal care products and the environment, I've decided to take a look at toxins and harmful chemicals in the food we eat. This is a collaborative post with a wonderful blogger, Jessica David of Conveying Awareness with Jessica David.

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bwind3/2343142046/">Bradley Wind</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>

To begin with, let's short list of some chemicals that we need to avoid in the food we eat.

• Mercury in fish: The dangers of mercury exposure include fatigue, memory problems, mercury poisoning, and dangers to the developing fetus.
• Artificial dyes: These are a color followed by a number, for example, Red 3. These dyes have been linked to behavioral problems in children and cancer.
• Sodium nitrate: Found in processed foods like hot dogs, bacon and sausage, sodium nitrate gives these foods their red tint. Sodium nitrates leads to an increase of nitrosamines in your body, which can lead to cancer. 
• Bisphenol A ( BPA): Often found in the lining of canned foods and beverages. It is estrogenic and can also leach from plastic. BPA has been linked to diabetes and heart disease. 
• Polychlorinated biphenols (PCBs): These are industrial coolants that can be found in farm-raised fish and are known endocrine disruptors and carcinogens. 
• Dioxins: Dioxins are contaminants formed during combustion and industrial processes. For example, trash burning, forest fires, incineration, herbicide manufacturing, and paper pulp bleaching. Dioxins can also be found in farm-raised fish and in the fatty tissues of animals that have been exposed to dioxins. The risks of dioxin exposure include, reproductive & developmental problems, an increased risk of diabetes and heart disease, and cancer. 
• Hydrogenated oils: Oils are long, often branched chains of carbon and hydrogen that are liquid are room temperature. The branches are caused when there are carbon to carbon double bonds. Scientists can go into the lab and add hydrogen atoms to these double bonds to break them and make the molecule more stable. This is a hydrogenated oil. They are used to increase the shelf life of food products, but have been linked to diabetes and heart disease.
• Artificial sweeteners: Aspartame is probably the most famous artificial sweetener. It has been linked to headaches, dizziness and neuronal damage. Recently, another artificial sweetener, Splenda (sucralose) was linked to the release of cancer-causing chemicals when cooked & baked.
• GMOs: GMOs are genetically modified organisms. They are created when scientists take the genes from organism/species A and put them into unrelated organism/species B. We were told that GMOs would help alleviate the problem of world hunger, but instead, GMOs have largely been used to increase the consumption of pesticides (The Link Between GMOs and Pesticides). Studies on the safety of GMOs have largely come from the companies that produce GMOs, who have a vested interest in the outcome of those studies. While more independent scientific studies are needed on the safety of GMOs on humans, experiments from farmers show that animals prefer non-GMO food. One scientific study on rats, showed lifetime exposure to Roundup Ready GM corn lead to tumors, multiple organ damage and death. 
• Pesticides: Conventional farming relies heavily on pesticides. Pesticides have been linked to endocrine disruption, infertility, neurological damage and cancer. The most widely used pesticide, atrazine, has been extensively studied by Dr. Tyrone Hayes of UC Berkeley. He used to work for the company that made the pesticide, Syngenta, but when he tried to publish a paper on the negative effects of the product, they stopped him. Syngenta has been trying to stop him ever since. His website can be found here. Unfortunately, even organic foods are exposed to some pesticides through rain, runoff and the water table, though to a lesser extent than conventional produce.

Sources
Alternet
Care2
NIEHS

Now let's transition into how you can improve your diet to become your best you.

One of my passions is to share the benefits of eating the [real] rainbow daily and it's found in fruits and vegetables. I wasn't always like this though. It only occurred to me about 5 years ago the importance of eating more of nature's best so that I could heal some conditions that had plagued me for years. Though I have always been thin, I wasn't always healthy and I didn't know any better and guess what? I didn't care much about longevity in my 20s. It wasn't until I became a mom at age 31 that I decided to make some changes! It took another new mom to pull me aside and share with me how I could eat more fruits and vegetables and that it could be the first step in the right direction for reversing some damage done through nutrient poor food choices that I had made for many years. 

Fast forward a few years, I became a certified health coach. The seed to link arms with others in their wellness journeys was planted months after that talk with my friend. Learn more about my story here. So here I am encouraging you to strive for 5. Eat five different fruits and 5 different vegetables daily. Here are some tools to help you meet that goal. 
  
1) Download my free eGuide.  
2) Learn more about Traffic Light Eating from a L.E.A.N. perspective. 
3) Follow me on Pinterest. These boards are helpful: + Eating the Real Rainbow + Recipes Using Veggies + My recipes  
4) Join a CSA (farm-share co-op). For a listing in your area, visit Local Harvest. 
5) If it's right for you, take one of my L.E.A.N. Start online classes. 

In session three, we talk about ways to eat more of nature's best - fruits and vegetables! Info. 

In tip 2, it mentions the L.E.A.N. perspective. This is the 4 pillars of health: Lifestyle, Exercise, Attitude, and Nutrition and no matter the way you slice it (different words to describe the same concepts), we need all 4 components for our journey to wellness. World-renown pediatrician and author of nearly 40 books, Dr. Bill Sears (of the Sears Wellness Institute) teaches us that the most basic foundation of understanding nutrition is through the colors of a stoplight. Today's lesson is on the green light. The other two colors are summarized in tip two.

Green light foods are fruits and vegetables found closest to nature. If you're concerned about pesticides, other contaminants, and GMOs, purchase them organic or know your supplier. I teach that eating a variety of fruits and vegetables is key to wellness and the benefits outweigh the risks. Over time, as your pockets adjust, you will find that eating produce without *most contamination may serve you better and it will support small local farmers and their families. Knowing your supplier is key because you can support local farmers and their families that cannot afford the organic label. This also applies to getting whole food nutrients in a capsule. If the product doesn't carry the USDA Organic seal, you may also look for NSF International's seal - this means that what the product claims to have or not have in their product is the truth via NSFs third-party non-affiliated testing and certification. * Even USDA Organic foods have some contaminants. See this link for more info. 

I live in a food desert. The options for fresh, sustainable produce free of contaminants are low. There are no farmers' markets in my area so it is difficult for me to find a good variety of produce locally. I shop about twice a week to two or three stores to find the best quality of produce. It's important for me to eat a variety of produce and for specific crops, I almost always buy organic when I can (see EWG Dirty Dozen for more info, link is below). I'm thankful that there is a farm-share co-op drop off in my city. I am a subscriber to Abundant Harvest Organics and eventually, I hope to grow my own soon with a Tower Garden. 

If you want more information on which fruits and vegetables have the highest levels of contaminants, visit EWGs: The Dirty Dozen. If you'd like to know how many and what kinds of contaminants are on your produce, check out What's On My Food.  Choose, eat, and live well! =)

 

Jessica David is a Certified L.E.A.N. Health Coach and the owner and founder of Conveying Awareness providing nutrition tips via a plethora of resources. Jessica feels that through encouragement we can impart education with lasting results. She advocates for families to eat more fruits and vegetables. She lives in Ridgecrest, California with her husband and their son. Find her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and her blog.

Toxics and Healthcare Costs

Today, I'm in a really bad mood; a REALLY bad mood. So I thought I'd channel my emotions into a post about how toxic chemicals drive up health care costs and how the chemical industry continues to lie to the public.  As I stated in a previous post, our health care system, here in the U.S., is based on treatment, not prevention.

We already know that chemicals can lead to cancers, allergic reactions, act as irritants, and neurotoxins, and endocrine disruptors (chemicals that mimic or antagonize our body's hormone system).  According to a recent report from Safer Chemicals Healthy Families (SCHF):

• Leukemia, brain cancer, and other childhood cancers have increased by more than 20% since 1975.
• Breast cancer went up by 40% between 1973 and 1998. While breast cancer rates have declined since 2003, a woman’s lifetime risk of breast cancer is now 1 in 8, up from 1 in 10 in 1973.
• Asthma prevalence approximately doubled between 1980 and 1995 and has stayed at the elevated rate.
• Difficulty in conceiving and maintaining a pregnancy affected 40% more women in 2002 than in 1982. The incidence of reported difficulty has almost doubled in younger women ages 18–25.
• Since the early 1990s, reported cases of autism spectrum disorder have increased tenfold.

 Those are some pretty expensive conditions, aren't they? Also in the SCHF report:

• 133 million people in the U.S.— almost half of all Americans — are now living with chronic diseases and conditions, which now account for 70% of deaths and 75% of U.S. health care costs.

• Even if chemical policy reform leads to reductions in toxic chemical exposures that translate into just a 0.1% reduction in of health care costs, it would save the U.S. health care system an estimated $5 billion every year.

Unfortunately,  the companies that make these chemicals have the ear of many in Congress, through their lobbying dollars. They have been able to set up front groups, like the American Chemistry Council to widely promote their message and they have been able to convince the public that they need these chemicals to maintain their current level of comfort and lifestyle.

Let's look at bisphenol A (BPA), a synthetic estrogen, designed to be a pharmaceutical, it was replaced by diethylstibestrol (DES). BPA went on to become an ingredient in many plastics, including baby bottles until consumers demanded the estrogenic endocrine disruptor be taken out of several products. Well, BPA has been removed, but it has been replaced with bisphenol S (BPS). BPS degrades more slowly than BPS, so it remains in the "BPA-free" product longer and it's also estrogenic and toxic.

However, according to industry, BPA is safe and necessary for modern life. Take a look their website,
Facts About BPA and see what they have to say about products that are "BPA-free."

Myth: If I buy a BPA free product, is it safer?

Reality: Materials used in contact with food or beverages in the U.S. are evaluated for safety by the federal Food and Drug Administration. The FDA has recently stated that BPA, used to make polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins, is safe for currently approved uses in food containers and packaging.
“Free of” claims on food packaging have nothing to do with FDA’s safety determination.  “Free of” claims are frequently used for advertising purposes to signal the absence of a chemical or material. Note that the Federal Trade Commission has specifically cautioned that “free-of claims may deceive consumers by falsely suggesting that … the marketer has ‘‘improved’’ the product by removing the substance.” 
- See more at: http://www.factsaboutbpa.org/bpa-safety/myths-realities#sthash.tSfvhgCf.dpuf

Reality: Materials used in contact with food or beverages in the U.S. are evaluated for safety by the federal Food and Drug Administration. The FDA has recently stated that BPA, used to make polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins, is safe for currently approved uses in food containers and packaging.

“Free of” claims on food packaging have nothing to do with FDA’s safety determination. “Free of” claims are frequently used for advertising purposes to signal the absence of a chemical or material. Note that the Federal Trade Commission has specifically cautioned that “free-of claims may deceive consumers by falsely suggesting that … the marketer has ‘‘improved’’ the product by removing the substance.”

Interesting, since in this case, "BPA-free" means "replaced with BPS." Even more interesting is the "Contact Us" page that shows that the American Chemistry Council is behind the site. 
I for one and sick of industry having more influence than scientists and consumers. How about you?

Reality: Materials used in contact with food or beverages in the U.S. are evaluated for safety by the federal Food and Drug Administration. The FDA has recently stated that BPA, used to make polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins, is safe for currently approved uses in food containers and packaging.
“Free of” claims on food packaging have nothing to do with FDA’s safety determination.  “Free of” claims are frequently used for advertising purposes to signal the absence of a chemical or material. Note that the Federal Trade Commission has specifically cautioned that “free-of claims may deceive consumers by falsely suggesting that … the marketer has ‘‘improved’’ the product by removing the substance.” 
- See more at: http://www.factsaboutbpa.org/bpa-safety/myths-realities#sthash.tSfvhgCf.dpuf

Myth: If I buy a BPA free product, is it safer?

Myth: If I buy a BPA free product, is it safer?

Reality: Materials used in contact with food or beverages in the U.S. are evaluated for safety by the federal Food and Drug Administration. The FDA has recently stated that BPA, used to make polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins, is safe for currently approved uses in food containers and packaging.
“Free of” claims on food packaging have nothing to do with FDA’s safety determination.  “Free of” claims are frequently used for advertising purposes to signal the absence of a chemical or material. Note that the Federal Trade Commission has specifically cautioned that “free-of claims may deceive consumers by falsely suggesting that … the marketer has ‘‘improved’’ the product by removing the substance.” 
- See more at: http://www.factsaboutbpa.org/bpa-safety/myths-realities#sthash.tSfvhgCf.dpuf

Myth: If I buy a BPA free product, is it safer?

Are obesogens harming your weight loss plans?

Obesogens are endocrine disruptors; chemicals that disruptor our body's hormone systems. Obesogens disrupt the way our body regulates our weight. Resulting in decreased calories burned, increased fat cells and even changes in the way your body manages hunger. 

According to Dr. Oz, obesogens work by the following methods:

• "Encourage the body to store fat and re-program cells to become fat cells.
• Prompt the liver to become insulin resistant, which makes the pancreas pump out more insulin that turns energy into fat all over the body.
• Prevent leptin (a hormone that reduces appetite) from being released from your fat cells to tell your body you are full."

You'll find obesogens in the following places:

• flame retardants = found in furniture and electronics
• Bisphenol A(BPA) = plastics with recycling number 7 on the bottom, receipts, lining of cans
• phthalates= new car smell, fragrance in personal care products
• triclosan = antibacterial soaps and hand sanitizers
• polyvinylchloride (pvc) = shower curtains. Look for non pvc curtains.
• Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA) = teflon cookware. Try cast iron pans.
• high fructose corn syrup
• atrazine  = pesticide (atrazinelovers.com). Get a water filter to avoid this.
• microwave popcorn
• vinyl flooring, industrial strength plastic wrap, grocery store plastic wrap over meat. Ask for meet wrapped in brown paper.
• air fresheners. Try dried herbs and flowers.
• Polybrominated biphenyls (PCBs) = industrial chemicals that enter the food chain and enter our diet through fish and meat. Try Meatless Mondays.