Dr. Arturo M. Volpe

Two recent Wall Street Journal articles raised concerns about perchlorate pollution in our country. The December 2002 article can be found at www.ourstolenfuture.org/commentary/news/2002/2002-1227-WSJ-perchlorate.htm and the April 2003 article can be viewed at foi.missouri.edu/bushinfopolicies/epabans.html.

These articles discuss the fact that perchlorate may have reached toxic levels in the drinking water of 20 states and contaminated the Colorado River – a river that supplies drinking water for 15 million Californians and irrigates our country’s entire winter vegetable crop.

Perchlorate is used primarily in the defense industry and, according to the articles, the U.S. government has stalled efforts to determine the full extent of the problem. A large-scale study that could have provided conclusive evidence for this problem was delayed due to lack of funding.

Perchlorate is known to affect the human thyroid gland, causing hypothyroidism. This could, in part, explain why we are seeing such a dramatic increase in thyroid problems among adults as well as children. More importantly, perchlorate has been found to affect early fetal development when women are exposed early in their pregnancy.

Studies have shown perchlorate to potentially affect speech development, behavior and attentiveness in children. In rat studies, perchlorate was also found to cause reduced head circumference at birth. Although results from rat studies are not always applicable to humans, rats have been shown to be consistently more resistant to environmental chemicals than humans. For more on this see oaspub.epa.gov/eims/eimscomm.getfile?p_download_id=4605

These findings are of particular significance in light of another California study published this year that found autistic children have a smaller head circumference at birth followed by increased head growth during the first year of life (JAMA.2003 Jul 16;290(3):337-44).

Researchers concluded that smaller head size indicates that autism is likely to be genetic and not caused by later environmental factors such as vaccines.

However, it seems to me that reduced head circumference might be caused by exposure to chemicals such as perchlorate during early fetal development. This might also cause infants to become more susceptible to environmental insults, and vaccines could be among these -particularly when they contain mercury-based preservatives.

Tags: Thyroid issues
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The following carry beef and/or chicken and/or turkey, grown without hormones, steroids, animal byproducts or pesticides:

Cypress Area
Pam Brayton
281.259.9205
meatcoop@teambrayton.org
also sells honey and Frontier products

Spring area
Marilyn Coe
281.376.3592 home
281.449.6651 work

Willis, Texas
Camille Bock
936.344.6450
rosebock@flex.net

Kingwood Area
Jill Reuter
281.358.0251
jreuter55@cs.com

Huffman area
Linda Tonsing
281.324.1692
mltonsing@earthlink.net

Southeast Houston
Clare Wilkinson
281.489.4659
jcejwilkinson@cs.com

Crosby
GayleWright
281.328.3845
wright9@hal-pc.org

Tags: Natural Food Resources
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There is a farmer’s market every Saturday morning in the parking lot of Onion Creek coffeehouse in the Heights (Houston) that features local organic produce. On the first Saturday of every month, there is an organic market at Kraftsman Bakery on Montrose Boulevard near Richmond Avenue (next to the Black Labrador). The following co-ops have a variety of shopping options, with some even offering delivery to your home.

Central Houston
www.centralcityco-op.org

Tomball/Woodland Area
Camille Harris
Jubilee Organics
281.356.3427
jorganics@ev1.net

Cypress/Spring area
Marilyn Coe
281.507.1320

Sealy/Bellville area
Denise and Robert Mersmann
Mersmann Heritage Farm
1783 Peters San Felipe Road
979.885.3088
mersmannfarm@msn.com
free range eggs; wild honey
open year round, 7 days a week

Ozark Co-op variety of natural products, canned goods, baking needs, dry goods, foods, etc.
Regina Rowley
281.356.7441
homemaker84@ev1.net

Cypress/Waller area
Mary Shaw
ozarkcoop@yahoo.com
936.937.4077

New Waverly/Conroe area
Lynn Rogers and Kathy Vyvjala
Lynn 936.890.0094
Kathy 936.344.0514
kvyvjala@hotmail.com
also sells organic produce

Organic Food Websites

Ozark Cooperative Warehouse
www.ozarkcoop.com

Eat Wild
A clearinghouse for information about pasture-based farming
www.eatwild.com

Vital Choice
Wild Alaskan salmon and blueberries
www.vitalchoice.com

Jim Benedict, Spring Meadow Farms, 717.665.6004
Sells ground, non-roasted buckwheat. Most of the buckwheat available from stores is roasted and has a very strong taste. It is commonly used in combination with white flour to add its unique flavor. Used alone toasted buckwheat is too strong for most people. Non-roasted buckwheat has a mild taste and can be used on its own as a gluten-free flour replacement. Buckwheat flour is made from the seeds of a grass traditionally grown in the Far East. Even though buckwheat is not technically classified as a grain, it is higher in carbohydrate content and lower in protein than wheat or rice and should not be used as a staple.

Blanched Almond Flour from www.almondsonline.com
Although almond flour can be made at home using a food processor, it can be a challenge to obtain the right consistency. This company makes high-quality almond flour. They also do not handle any peanuts at their facility, thereby eliminating the possibility of cross-contamination for those allergic to peanuts.

Tags: Natural Food Resources
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A study published last month in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (33 (4): 449-454, August 2003) focused on protein status in children with autism. Researchers measured plasma amino acid levels of 36 children and found that all had multiple deficiencies.

This should come as no surprise and is the result of very poor diet, coupled with poor digestion and intestinal health. What is more troubling in this study is that 10 of the 36 children were on a casein-free/gluten-free (cfgf) diet, and those ten were found to have the most severe deficiencies.

This cannot be taken as an indictment of the cfgf diet and the dramatic improvement we often see in children on this diet tells us that we must be doing something right. On the other
hand this is a clear signal that, for instance, replacing milk with high-sugar fake foods like potato milk can be a recipe for disaster.
Read More »

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To help us navigate through a maze of modern diets and figure out which foods can be truly healing, it makes sense to take a look at our history on Earth.

After all, we have been around for a while. Remains from our earliest ancestors have been dated as far back as 4.4 million years and there has been little change in our genetic makeup for the past 300,000 years.

Today we know conclusively that early human ancestors developed primarily as hunters and scavengers of meat, although a variety of nuts, berries and roots also played a role in diet. Tools shaped from rock and used for hunting have been dated back 2.5 million years and we have evidence that 350,000 years ago our human ancestors were using fire for making weapons, cooking food and as a source of warmth and light.

From 1 million to 10,000 years ago the earth was covered by widespread glacial ice. Humans not only survived, they were able to thrive and colonize the entire Old World during this period largely thanks to fire, clothing and their ability to exploit vast quantities of game.

About 10,000 years ago, at the end of the Ice Age, humans began to congregate in larger numbers, eventually creating cities. A need was felt for a steady supply of food for an ever-growing population, and agriculture took hold. However, its introduction was very gradual and took thousands years to spread to the entire human population.

With agriculture and farming came the introduction of entire new food groups previously unknown to the human race, especially cereal grains and dairy products. This is a significant change, because the large quantity of starch contained in grains had never been a part of human diet. For millions of years, humans had either never eaten starch or eaten it only sporadically and in small amounts. Since starch is digested down to sugar it presented a new challenge for human metabolism.

Early on, humans cultivated a variety of grains with broad genetic variability and relatively low starch content. Some of these primitive grains contained gluten, while others contained many different proteins. Consumption of such a variety of grains reduced the risk of intolerance. Early breads such as those described in the Bible were made from a variety of sprouted grains that were both higher in protein and, by today’s standards, very low in starch content.

As bread making evolved and yeast came into use, people started to seek out and develop grains that contained only gluten. This was not for health reasons, but simply because yeast causes gluten to rise and produces a very appealing (and addictive) type of bread.

Dietary change continued to accelerate through the centuries with the development of selective agriculture and the discovery and large-scale production of new foods including sugar, which was first produced industrially two hundred years ago.

Although the societal evolution that accompanied this diet change took us to unprecedented cultural and technological achievements, the cost that we are paying is poor health for many.

(The anthropological data in this section is summarized mainly from the book “Life Without Bread” by C. Allan, PhD and Wolfgang Lutz, MD. Part II of this series on diet will appear in my October newsletter.)

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One thing we can say for sure about depression is that it is a modern epidemic, with rates of diagnoses soaring every year to new highs. Statistics show that in 1987 there were 14 million physician consultations for depression in the United States. In 2001, consultations totaled 25 million with 90% of patients leaving the doctor s office with a prescription for an antidepressant medication. In spite of this phenomenal growth, experts concur that depression in this country is significantly under-diagnosed.

The reasons for this epidemic are not immediately clear and are surely complex in nature. From my point of view, this epidemic should be seen in the context of many other epidemics of brain disorders, from ADHD and autism to Alzheimer s and Parkinson s diseases.

When we see that it is not a single condition becoming more prevalent, but a global increase in brain disorders, we may consider that all of this has something to do with our unprecedented exposure to environmental toxins, including heavy metals such as mercury and arsenic and a broad range of environmental chemicals. Many of these metals and chemicals are known to affect the brain; others disrupt hormonal processes and the disruption can lead to depression.

In conjunction with this exposure, our diet has continued to deteriorate in terms of what is available, what people choose to eat, and the quality of the food supply – much of which is grown on soil that is becoming progressively impoverished.

Depending on your opinion, pharmaceutical companies have either come to the rescue in a time of crisis or, as I tend to see it, they have profited enormously from this epidemic without offering an adequate solution. But do the drugs even work and are they truly safe as we have been told?

An article in The New York Times (August 7, 2003) questions the effectiveness of antidepressants, revealing that in many studies the drugs either do worse than a placebo or barely better. However, many of the negative conclusions are never shared with the public.

As an example, five consecutive studies for Prozac had to be performed in order to obtain the two required for FDA approval in which the drug outperformed a placebo. In the remaining three studies, apparently a sugar pill was more effective in curing depression!

Safety of these medications was not in question until a review article was published earlier this year in the British Medical Journal (BMJ 2003; 326:1282). The article was based on the results of nine separate studies and revealed that children and teenagers who were prescribed Paxil were more than three times as likely to have suicidal thoughts and behaviors than those on placebo.

Paxil is one of several drugs that are classified as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRI s, a category that also includes Prozac and Zoloft. Since all of these drugs have the same mechanism of action, it is likely that the other drugs will be shown to have the same effects.

Another review article published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry (2003 Feb; 64 (2): 123-33) raises a completely different safety concern. This article looked at long-term outcomes in severely depressed individuals treated with antidepressant medications.

Results were very negative. Researchers found that, in the long term, medications were likely to lead to one of several unfavorable outcomes: worsening depression, development of bipolar disorder, tolerance to the medication rendering it ineffective, and withdrawal syndromes following removal of the medication.

These conclusions are not at all surprising, because these medications only work by “tricking” the brain to keep serotonin and other neurotransmitters around a bit longer. None address the insufficient output of neurotransmitters, which is the root cause of depression. Since neurotransmitters are made from the protein in our diet, with a hand from a few vitamins and other nutrients, the only lasting solution is one that includes dietary and nutrient-based therapies.

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Texas has adopted two new laws protecting children and parents. The first bans school employees from recommending psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin or suggesting a diagnosis for students. The second prevents parents from being reported to state officials as neglectful solely because they refused to place a child on psychiatric drugs or refuse psychiatric or psychological treatment or testing. The new Texas laws are believed to be the strongest of their type in the nation in that they are broad and cover all psychiatric drugs and treatments.

Tags: ADD/ADHD
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