Corn as Poison: an Experiment in Neurotoxicity

When I had learned to avoid foods that showed any signs of mold or blight, and to reduce my umbilical hernia after eating carbs and fats, I turned again to trying new foods. At a favorite neighborhood restaurant that was not too expensive, but that served dishes that I could eat with minimal symptoms, I noticed that I could not eat salads that had dressing.

I began to suspect that one of the causes of my illness was table oil. I remembered then having met a woman in a nearby county who told me the story of her experiences with corn. She had been ill for a couple of years some time ago, and had found that any kind of corn product caused her to be ill. She had tried corn oil, corn syrup, cornstarch, and so on, and found that any and all of them could sicken her. She had experienced headache and difficulty with equilibrium and had been told that she had migraine. She accepted this, but to me her symptoms sounded as if she might have had a case of pesticide poisoning.

As I paid attention to oils, I noticed now that I had problems with peripheral nerve pain and tingling when I ate foods that contained vegetable oils, soy, corn, or canola, and when I ate derivatives of those foods, such as soy lecithin. I wondered in passing if the culprit was corn oil, but suspect that if it was, it was not the only one. After a bit, it seemed that canola oil might be to blame, so for time I would ask for no canola oil when I ate out. The dishes served were often missing sauces and other added sources of flavor and, more importantly, they didn’t necessarily ease my symptoms.

I decided to experiment with oils. I went on a strict Vega diet and allowed my weight to return to the recent low. Then I went to a regular supermarket and bought familiar brands of canola oil, safflower oil, and corn oil. One morning, I took 1T of canola oil. I felt a mild soreness in the throat but otherwise felt nothing. I waited. Still nothing. The next day, I heated the oil to smoking, let it cool, and took 1T of burnt canola oil. Still nothing. A few days later, I repeated the process for safflower oil with similar results.

Some days later, I took 1T of corn oil in the morning. After noting no increase in symptoms, I took one more tablespoon of burnt oil in the afternoon. That evening, I noticed that I was feeling poorly.  I had a bad night. After a recovery period of more than a week, I repeated the experiment by taking ¼ cup of corn oil in the morning. Bingo. I experienced a flare of the symptoms that had first been diagnosed as chronic fatigue syndrome, and then as myalgic encephalomyelitis, and then as chronic Lyme disease. I never want to repeat the experiment again. Here are the results, by time of day, beginning on the morning of 4/3/13:

8:00 am        drank 16 oz of tea made from a blend of black and green tea leaves\

9:24 am        took ¼ cup conventional corn oil

9:25 am        sore throat

9: 50 am       unmistakable flare with increased tingling in my feet, sinking energy, difficulty concentrating, general fatigue, heart discomfort, stomach twinges, and difficulty breathing

10:08 am       muscle aches and tremor

10:09 am       brain fog; could no longer work and laid down on the couch

10:12 am       got up to eat turkey beet risotto per the Vega diet

10:15 am       irritable

10:33 am       laid down again

11:04 am       muscle fasciculations (involuntary twitches)

11:50 am       symptoms began to ease

12:16 am       took a fat and alcohol challenge to the liver in the form of an ice cream sundae with a jigger of rum followed by a meal of butter and crackers (an imprecise challenge, as I later learned)

12:54 am       worse

1:00 pm        hellish state with paranoia

1:40 pm        begin tea flush with 3 16 ounce servings

5:10 pm        took vitamin and protein antidote in the form of a 12 oz drink of water with powders from Energy Revitalization System and alpha ENF

5:50 pm        dinner meal per Vega diet

6:46 pm        distended belly; unable to reduce hernia

7:47 pm        nausea

4/4/13         took spicy Ethiopian lunch challenge; worse again; some brain fog

4/5/13         low again; took wine, dairy, and charred foods to challenge liver; brain fog worse

4/6/13         bad morning; took an olive oil antidote, which eased catabolism of fat depots, added to abdominal fat, and reduced symptoms

Proof is what it takes to convince. I didn’t need more proof. I had been assured in the past that the effects of corn were mediate by allergy. I could no longer believe that (though I do have some food allergies; more on that later.) I felt obliged to accept what was a very inconvenient and very unpleasant reality. Corn, the food that my great-grandfather and his ancestors had adopted generations ago from Native American agronomists, had become a late modern poison. I now had taken three steps to the creation of a cure, but had a lot of thinking to do about this most recent one.

Next Time: Biocide Poisoning: A New Diagnosis

For more information on the present state of corn, you can watch Aaron Woolf’s and Deborah Koons Garcia’s .