Roundup, Could Be Linked To Parkinson’s, Cancer And Other Health Issues

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Heavy use of the world's most popular herbicide, Roundup, could be linked to a range of health problems and diseases, including Parkinson's, infertility and cancers, according to a new study.

The peer-reviewed report, published last week in the scientific journal Entropy, said evidence indicates that residues of "glyphosate," the chief ingredient in Roundup weed killer, which is sprayed over millions of acres of crops, has been found in food.

Those residues enhance the damaging effects of other food-borne chemical residues and toxins in the environment to disrupt normal body functions and induce disease, according to the report, authored by Stephanie Seneff, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Anthony Samsel, a retired science consultant from Arthur D. Little, Inc. Samsel is a former private environmental government contractor as well as a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body," the study says.

We "have hit upon something very important that needs to be taken seriously and further investigated," Seneff said.

Environmentalists, consumer groups and plant scientists from several countries have warned that heavy use of glyphosate is causing problems for plants, people and animals.

The EPA is conducting a standard registration review of glyphosate and has set a deadline of 2015 for determining if glyphosate use should be limited. The study is among many comments submitted to the agency.

Monsanto is the developer of both Roundup herbicide and a suite of crops that are genetically altered to withstand being sprayed with the Roundup weed killer.

These biotech crops, including corn, soybeans, canola and sugarbeets, are planted on millions of acres in the United States annually. Farmers like them because they can spray Roundup weed killer directly on the crops to kill weeds in the fields without harming the crops.

Roundup is also popularly used on lawns, gardens and golf courses.

Monsanto and other leading industry experts have said for years that glyphosate is proven safe, and has a less damaging impact on the environment than other commonly used chemicals.

Jerry Steiner, Monsanto's executive vice president of sustainability, reiterated that in a recent interview when questioned about the study.

"We are very confident in the long track record that glyphosate has. It has been very, very extensively studied," he said.

Of the more than two dozen top herbicides on the market, glyphosate is the most popular. In 2007, as much as 185 million pounds of glyphosate was used by U.S. farmers, double the amount used six years ago, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data.

Source:

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Nutrient in Red Meat & Energy Drinks Linked with Heart Disease

By: Eddie Levin

Drop that hamburger, put down the can of Monster Energy and back away from the body building pills. A nutrient found in red meat and added to energy drinks and supplements may crank up people’s risk of heart disease, a new study suggests. Bacteria in the gut digest the nutrient, L-carnitine, and help turn it into an artery-hardening chemical — particularly in meat eaters, researchers report April 7 in Nature Medicine.

The high amounts of saturated fat and cholesterol in red meat have long been blamed for increasing people's risk of heart disease. But now, new research points a finger at another culprit in meat that may be more closely tied to this leading killer.

In a series of experiments in people and mice, scientists for the first time demonstrated that carnitine from foods as well as from supplements influenced cardiovascular risk.

The findings show that bacteria living in the human digestive tract metabolize carnitine — a naturally-occurring compound in red meat —into trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO), a metabolite previously linked in a 2011 study to the promotion of atherosclerosis in humans. Additionally, the study shows that a diet high in carnitine promotes the growth of bacteria that metabolize carnitine, compounding the problem.

“The bacteria living in our digestive tracts are dictated by our long-term dietary patterns,” said Dr. Stanley Hazen, lead researcher. “A diet high in carnitine actually shifts our gut microbe composition to those that like carnitine, making meat eaters even more susceptible to forming TMAO and its artery-clogging effects. Meanwhile, vegans and vegetarians have a significantly reduced capacity to synthesize TMAO from carnitine, which may explain the cardiovascular health benefits of these diets.”

Carnitine is naturally occurring in beef, venison, lamb, mutton, duck, pork and other red meats. It is also used as a dietary supplement and a common ingredient in energy drinks.

Scientists have long known that eating red meat jacks up a person’s chances of developing heart disease, but reliable biomarkers — blood-borne indicators of disease or health — have been hard to find. One way physicians gauge risk is with blood tests for cholesterol, a greasy molecule in meat and other foods, which gums up arteries. But tests for cholesterol and other molecules don’t wholly explain meat’s link to heart disease, Hazen says. “Cholesterol, saturated fat and salt only account for a tiny little piece of the risk.”

Volunteers — a mix of omnivores, vegetarians and vegans — ate steak and L-carnitine capsules, and then researchers measured TMAO levels in the blood. Only meat eaters could make TMAO from L-carnitine, Hazen’s team found, and they needed their gut bacteria to do it. TMAO production shut down when researchers wiped out volunteers’ intestinal microbes with antibiotics.

L-carnitine passed right through the guts of long-term vegans and vegetarians, leaving their blood practically TMAO-free. When researchers examined volunteers’ stool, they found different groups of bacteria in people who did and didn’t eat meat.

Hazen’s group also found that blood levels of TMAO and L-carnitine could predict heart disease risk, which they learned by collecting blood samples from 2,595 patients and tracking their health for three years.

The findings are new and exciting but need to be confirmed, says cardiovascular researcher Ishwarlal Jialal of the University of California, Davis Medical Center. Molecules proposed as biomarkers for heart disease often look promising in initial studies but fizzle out clinically. “We’ve been down this road so many times before.”

But one message is clear, Jialal says: “L-carnitine is not good for you. It’s not good as a supplement and it’s not good in red meat. That’s one thing you can take to the bank.”

Reference:

www.meatpoultry.com

www.sciencenews.org

http://worldtruth.tv