Mac and Cheese and Real Food Cheeses Have Hidden Hormone Disruptors and Carcinogens
(Natural Blaze) Phthalates are a class of chemicals used as plasticizers to make plastic more flexible and as solvents in cosmetics, personal care, soaps, perfumes and office products like ink, adhesives and rubber. Theoretically, shampoo could give you a double dose of phthalates – one in the bottle and one in the fragrance. If you drank a bottled water before stepping in to the shower, you’ve had a third dose of chemical.
The most troubling thing about them besides the fact that they are everywhere is that they are infamous for attacking the reproductive system and lungs in animal studies. If you are having hormonal problems, you will definitely want to cut back on your exposure. Some of them are known to cause cancer!
A new analysis by the Coalition for Safer Food Processing & Packaging published this week found high concentrations of phthalates in the cheese powder of macaroni and cheese – hidden. Totally unlisted in the ingredients.
The study checked 30 different cheese products including whole food cheese. While natural cheeses had the least amount of chemicals, 29 of the 30 products contained phthalates!
Unsurprisingly, processed cheese products contained the most chemicals. Surprisingly, some of the products with chemicals were organic. Nine of the products were from Kraft Heinz and the Coalition is petitioning them to find the source, but they claim the levels are lower than scientific standards.
According to KDVR, the chemicals aren’t intentionally added, but make their way into processed foods by the manufacturing process.
Mike Belliveau, executive director of the Environmental Health Strategy Center, one of the groups in the coalition said that diet is a major route of exposure and that,
They are used in the plastic tubing, the plastic gloves, the gaskets all along the food supply chain.
High levels of phthalates are linked to infertility and get stored into fat cells. Some of them cause neurodevelopmental issues in children who were exposed in the womb.
A source of phthalates is in the fat of the animal since they are stored in fat. A Belgium lab found 13 different kinds of phthalates in the fatty ingredients.
10 of the products tested were boxed macaroni and cheese powders
5 were sliced cheese
The last 15 products were natural cheese products like block cheese, shredded, string and cottage cheese
From KDVR,
When looking at the fat alone, the powdered cheese mix had a concentration of phthalates more than 4 times that of the natural cheeses, and more than 1.5 times the amount in processed cheeses. To approximate a more realistic serving, the survey calculated levels of phthalates based on the fat content of each product. When doing so, the level of phthalate in a package of powdered cheese was about twice the level in the natural cheeses, and similar to sliced cheese.
The impact of low-level exposure isn’t fully known but recent animal studies have caused consumers to once again wonder why these chemicals weren’t fully tested before reaching food and drink supplies, and why we only find out about 3 decades after the damage is done.
Prescription for medical marijuana from family practice clinic
(Natural Blaze) With so many studies coming out on the numerous ways medical cannabis can treat health ailments, some of us may have become slightly numb to the wonders being revealed about this beneficial plant. But a new study published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes (JAIDS) might change that.
Researchers have found that THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, can help prevent HIV from becoming AIDS. According to the abstract, published online by the National Institutes of Health:
“Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) play a crucial role in host antiviral immune response through secretion of type I interferon. Interferon alpha (IFNα), a type I IFN, is critical for mounting the initial response to viral pathogens. A consequence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1 (HIV) infection is a decrease in both pDC number and function, but prolonged pDC activity has been linked with progression from HIV infection to the development of AIDS. Patients with HIV in the United States routinely use cannabinoid-based therapies to combat the side effects of HIV infection and antiretroviral therapy. However, cannabinoids, including Δ-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), are well-characterized immunosuppressants. Here, we report that THC suppressed secretion of IFNα by pDC from both healthy and HIV+ donors through a mechanism involving impaired phosphorylation of interferon regulatory factor 7. These results suggest that THC can suppress pDC function during the early host antiviral response by dampening pDC activation.”
Much of that is Greek to those of us not in the medical field, but the results suggest something stunning. HIV patients taking cannabis have likely helped prevent their condition from turning into full-blown AIDS. This will open the door for medical cannabis to be used for the dual purpose of treating side effects and preventing disease progression.
According to HIV.gov, “More than 1.1 million people in the U.S. are living with HIV today, and 1 in 7 of them don’t know it.” Although many thousands become newly infected every year, the rate declined 18 percent from 2008 to 2014.
Since the 1980s, over 1.2 million people have been diagnosed with AIDS, with 18,303 diagnosed with AIDS in 2015. 6,721 deaths were directly attributed to HIV in 2014.
Although HIV and AIDS cases are declining, they remain a significant problem. Now we find that the cannabis plant may have yet another miraculous benefit in the form of suppressing a deadly disease.
The AIDS epidemic began in the 1980s as Ronald Reagan ramped up the drug war. Doubling down on the failure and injustice of prohibition, Reagan and this fellow drug warriors stifled research into medical cannabis and denied the people the healing powers of this ancient medicinal plant.
Thankfully, most states in the U.S. now recognize the power of medical cannabis and aren’t paying much attention to the ramblings of Reefer Madness politicians like Jeff Sessions. Medical research into cannabis is continuing to grow exponentially, adding to the body of factual knowledge and leaving prohibitionists nowhere to hide.
Justin Gardner is a peaceful free-thinker with a background in the biological sciences. He is interested in bringing rationality back into the national discourse, and independent journalism as a challenge to the status quo. This article first appeared at The Free Thought Project.
(Natural Blaze – Jim Miller) My name is Jim Meehan, MD. I am an ophthalmologist and former associate editor of the Journal of Ocular Immunology and Inflammation. During my work with the journal I reviewed two papers seeking publication of research reporting an association between the MMR vaccine and retinal vasculitis in children. The research framed a compelling case for the association of recent vaccination with Merck’s MMR vaccine and a type of bleeding in the back of children’s eyes that to this day is considered a cardinal sign for traumatic child abuse.
Despite my support for the publication of the research, I was not surprised when the papers were rejected.
Retinal hemorrhaging can be caused by a vasculitic reaction, an inflammatory reaction in the blood vessels of the retina. The inflammation can be so pronounced that it results in leaking and bleeding of the blood vessels of the retina. This bleeding can be seen on funduscopic examination of the retina (the back of the eye). The pattern of bleeding can appear as “dot-blot hemorrhages,” which, when it’s seen in a child, is taught to be pathognomonic, or a cardinal sign, of child abuse, called Shaken-Baby-Syndrome (SBS). Interestingly, I don’t recall ever being taught to consider adult abuse when I see it in a patient with similar retinal findings. No, in an adult the most common causes are diabetes mellitus, hypertension, vascular occlusive disease, or autoimmune disease.
Nevertheless, there is a large body of compelling ophthalmologic research that supports retinal hemorrhages in a child as a cardinal sign of abuse. Believe me, I’ve read and considered all of it. There’s just this gnawing doubt that we’ve missed something and made up a great story that seems to neatly explain everything. Accept for me and my experience it doesn’t. And like any good scientist I won’t consider the “science settled.”
I was in my ophthalmology residency training at the time I edited for the journal. At that time, I was still well indoctrinated in the medical orthodoxy of vaccines and vaccine safety. Nevertheless, personal experiences as a first year ophthalmology resident physician had made me skeptical of child abuse as the only possible cause of the retinal bleeding in the babies brought to the ER by their parents.
I was consulted on several cases presumed to be child abuse that presented themselves to the Barnes-Jewish Hospital ER. In these cases I examined the child, their retinas, and interviewed the parents. I never encountered a case in which there was any combination of evidence or testimony that made me think child abuse was a probable cause. However, the “babies with dot-blot hemorrhages are victims of child abuse” is the dogma that the medical orthodoxy teaches, therefore, a diagnosis of retinal hemorrhages in an infant is almost guaranteed to result in a parent or caregiver being presumed guilty.
I clearly recall one such case of retinal hemorrhages presumed to be SBS, in which I argued against the diagnosis because there were no other injuries. Specifically, there were no bruises where the child would have allegedly been held and shaken.
I had a strong background in mechanical engineering taught to me by one of the best engineering schools on the planet, the United States Military Academy at West Point. To my mind, it was beyond improbable that a child could be shaken hard enough to induce shear forces in the vascular layers of the retinal and there NOT be other injuries or evidence on physical exam. My attending physician, a pediatric ophthalmologist and department head, treated me like I had to be an idiot to consider any other diagnosis. Therefore, the diagnosis stood.
I can only assume that charges of child abuse were filed, CPS was called, and a family was broken, because that is what happens when retinal hemorrhages are observed in children.
A few years ago I was drawn back into the vaccine safety controversy when the news of the #CDCwhistleblower, William Thompson, PhD, hit the major media. Dr. Thompson, a lead CDC scientist on THE seminal study published in the Journal of Pediatrics in 2004 investigating the safety of Merck’s MMR vaccine and its association with autism, came forward and admitted the study was fraudulent. Out of his guilt and shame, Dr. Thompson admitted that the he and his fellow CDC coauthors secretly colluded to change the study analysis plan, manipulate data sets, destroy documents, and publish a fraudulent paper that hid the fact that the CDC’s own investigation found strong associations between Merck’s MMR vaccine and autism.
For an excellent presentation on the CDC whistleblower story and the fraud at the CDC, please watch the documentary Vaxxed: From Coverup to Catastrophe.
I remembered those studies from 14 years prior and the fact that at least two unrelated independent research centers had found an association of retinal hemorrhages in children with Merck’s MMR vaccine. I started asking the questions that any good physician and scientist asks in these situations; the questions that have to be asked if we are going to find the truth. The more questions I asked the more I was opposed by blind orthodoxy, unbelievable rationalizations, and unreasonable arguments. You know, the kind of stuff that allowed experiments on Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz, the Tuskegee airmen, tobacco smokers, and patients treated with dangerously addictive and destructive drugs like OxyCodone, Xanax, Soma, and Adderall.
I learned that I wasn’t the only one to ever question both the medical orthodoxy and the mechanism of injury in SBS:
Despite the powerful medical orthodoxy that teaches otherwise, I am convinced that many cases of retinal hemorrhaging in babies are not caused by the unlikely, arguably improbable, mechanisms of shaking, but by the far more insidious generalized vascular inflammation that occurs when the physiology of a susceptible child’s blood vessels reacts to a vaccine. In fact, on 5/16/2017 Merck added two vasculitic diseases of childhood as adverse events to the package insert for the MMR vaccine(3). So, now we have more evidence that the FDA and Merck both acknowledge that the MMR vaccine can cause exactly the kind of vasculitic pathology capable of producing retinal and brain hemorrhages.
We should also consider how the elements and admission of parental frustration that can sometimes be elicited in these cases. Consider the symptoms of the bleeding vasculitis causing an inconsolable, screaming child, in such pain from the cerebral swelling. A scenarios that might drive any parent to the point of exhaustion and frustration.
I believe that the clinical research studies that a medical journal decided not to publish so many years ago, might have actually been pointing to an important truth. Unfortunately, because that truth was not “the“ truth fully accepted by the medical orthodoxy, the research got passed over. Instead of new science and observations that challenged long held beliefs, we simply had another example of how, because we considered the “science settled,” we continued, repeatedly, for years, to misdiagnose, fail to identify possible, perhaps more probable, causes and sent innocent parents to jail. Now, we need to stop, slow down, reinvestigate, reconsider, open our minds and make sure we haven’t missed identifying potential underlying causes, figure out how to prevent them, and if the problem is vaccine injury, hold the vaccine manufacturers accountable for the injuries they’re products have caused.
Except that with vaccines we can’t hold the manufacturers accountable. Because we made the horrible mistake in 1986 to give vaccine manufacturers, whose products were even then causing so much injury, immunity to product liability lawsuits. Which is the reason that in early 2000 a young ophthalmology resident was reading research suggesting that Merck’s MMR vaccine was associated with retinal hemorrhages at the same time scientists at the CDC were committing fraud to hide the association of the very same vaccine with autism.
In conclusion, I believe what doctors are being taught about what is supposed to be one of the most characteristic signs of child abuse, retinal “dot-blot” hemorrhages in a child, is not such “settled science” that we can afford to stop considering other possible causes and diagnoses. What if retinal hemorrhages in a child aren’t so pathognomonic for child abuse? What if it’s also a sign of vaccine injury but we don’t know because we aren’t considering, asking, or looking? What if we aren’t asking the right questions and conducting the right research because you can’t get your research funded if it doesn’t advance the pharmaceutical industry’s agenda? It’s time that doctors, scientists, and concerned people everywhere reopen the case against vaccines and demand absolute transparency, gold standard clinical testing, and scientific oversight that is neither dependent on, nor corrupted by, Big Pharma’s money.
