Why Isn’t Everyone Sick?

If the modern food supply has become a radical experiment in chemistry, and nearly everyone is eating food that contains biocides, and the emerging epidemics are due to chronic biocide poisoning, why isn’t everyone sick?

That is an important question.

Those of us who suffer with an emerging environmental disease can tell how complex and confusing it can be to detect the causes of our signs and symptoms. The causal model of any given case can best be described as a web (for more on causal webs, see Dr. Mervyn Susser’s book Causal Thinking in the Health Sciences.) I was a medical detective before I was a patient, and it took me years to work out the causes of my illness, which has been variously labeled as chronic fatigue syndrome, myalgic encephalomyelitis, CFIDS, chronic Lyme disease, and so on.

So why is it so complicated? And why isn’t everyone sick?

The answer lies mainly in four nodes of the causal web that joins foodborne biocides to chronic illness. They are:

1 .

Every time you eat, you take in a dynamic, changeable cocktail of foodborne toxins. This cocktail is augmented or offset by pollutants you inhale, by toxins you absorb through your skin, and by poisons you take intentionally, such as alcohol or tobacco.

Even when foodborne toxins disable you, you may remain unaware of the problem. For one thing, you or your doctor may not think it possible and may therefore misinterpret  signs and symptoms. Also,  symptoms and signs may be obscured by the delay between a meal and its consequences; by the effects of foodborne toxins stored in and released from body fat; and by the effects of any byproducts of detoxification that are toxic in their own right.

2 .

The gut is one of the black boxes of modern medicine. It’s dark, low in oxygen, inaccessible, complex, and poorly known. Inside is a key player in your detoxification and digestion of food: your gut flora, or microbiome. You get your gut flora from your parents and by eating dirt and clay as a toddler. Safely grown food can replenish it, and you can keep it safe by avoiding biocides and casual use of antibiotics.

If your parents’ microbiomes were weak, or you grew up in an obsessively clean home, or you’ve taken antibiotics, or you’ve consumed natural or artificial biocides, your microbiome may be weak. If so, it may not detoxify or digest food as it should or make the essential nutrients you need to sustain a sanguine mood, a clear mind, and a healthy sevenfold body.

If you consume biocides, and they weaken your microbiome, they may damage your gut. This leads to a second wave of problems such as food allergies (for which biocides act as adjuvants) and overgrowth of yeast and other harmful organisms. These problems may persist even after you go on a biocide-free diet that cleanses your system and take probiotics to replenish your microbiome.

The old word for feces is night soil. This reminds us that what lives in your gut is continuous with the soil of your habitat, and can be no healthier. In the long run, the only way to keep a healthy microbiome is to heal your habitat, which is the taproot of your microbiome. The good news is you can accelerate healing and cure by actively supporting habitat restoration and wilderness preservation. If you are bed-bound, you can do this online.

3 .

Your liver constantly produces a dynamic and ever-changing array of enzymes that detoxify your blood. Reductionists have studied these enzymes in distracting detail. Some industries hope to use these details to create captive markets for new drugs (see the film Extraordinary Measures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_measures). Fortunately, they do not have responsibility for our healing and cure; we do. We are in a position, therefore, to be grateful for our genes and to make the best of our unique gifts for living.

When toxins make it past your gut flora, and overwhelm the detoxification systems of your liver and kidneys, you develop signs and symptoms of illness. To find out if this is the cause of your chronic illness, you can try a biocide-free diet for a year with the help of natural farmers and savvy doctors, and then replenish your microbiome. Then you can see for yourself whether you have suffered from ongoing poisoning.

It is not enough to restrict your diet to foods that are certified as organic. First of all, “natural” pesticides and herbicides are allowed in the cultivation and distribution of organic foods. Secondly, up to 5% of the ingredients in organic food may be contaminated. And, most people, including those who serve organic food in restaurants, don’t know that honey, seeds, and flowers may contain dangerous levels of neonicotinoid poisons—the ones that are killing the bees and birds.

This means that it is up to you to find safe food. This will be easiest if you have access to a farmer’s market where you can speak directly with farmers who are certified as natural and whose common sense and integrity you trust. (Don’t forget that it is safer to eat ugly foods with a few bugs that to eat poison.) Mistrust anyone who responds to your questions with biobabble.

4

The immune system can greatly complicate your ability to detect biocides in food. One reason for this is that biocides are adjuvants that trigger immune responses. Early in life, your immune system learned to recognize foods and not respond to them. This learning may be undone you change your diet, your gut flora weakens, or biocides induce food intolerances and allergies. Moreover, biocides that overwhelm your gut flora will attack your gut wall and cause “leaky bowel.” If the biocides also overwhelm your liver enzymes, foods and biocides enter your bloodstream and cause whole-body illness with vague or mysterious symptoms like rashes.

Because almost all US dairy and wheat products contain biocides, and because whole grains tend to be allergenic, many people sickened by dairy or wheat may conclude that they have sensitivities to foods. On the rare occasions when I can access clean dairy and wheat, I have no problems tolerating them; I infer from this that that many biocide-related symptoms may be readily reversed with safe eats.

In summary, some people are not sickened by biocides in food because they: eat a diet low in biocides, as when they live in a place like New Mexico that has relatively safe soil and low levels of other toxins; have a robust microbiome able to digest and detoxify a wide variety of poisons; have a liver that keeps up with toxin intake; or have an immune history that favors food tolerance.

This list of factors is far from complete, but touches on key factors that may protect some lucky folks from foodborne environmental illnesses.