What happens, when some part of your car or computer etc. wears down?
Simply. You visit your car or computer etc. mechanic to get that part replaced.
Some time ago medical doctors (human body mechanics) came in with the idea of replacing some faulty body parts – heart, liver… Obviously, everything is far more complicated in a living body case. Body has own immune system – powerful versatile safeguards, that can destroy literally anything (organic) inside the host body.
Immune system is so widespread, that it seems to be much easier to name body parts that aren’t parts of immune system than conversely
That’s fine – researchers developed subsidiary idea – to weaken the safeguard. Present official synthetic pharmaceuticals, surgery and radiation based medicine has all powerful tools to demolish everything they want.
Again, nothing seems to be impossible nowadays – even living with weak immune system. But – pssst! – the patient must be silent – don’t even dare speaking about quality of life.
But what to do, when body’s own safeguard (immune system) for some reason becomes faulty?
A group of medical researchers suggested a new idea – replace the immune system! Researchers from the University – institution, once created to spread lucent humanistic ideas.
So, hmm – nice idea. But wait a moment – what about existing immune system? It’s faulty, but still – it guards the body against all environmental germs and performs lots of other highly important for body survival tasks.
More about problems and ways of immune system replacement (for some reason they call it reboot) – in articles 1. Immune System Reboot Could Treat Autoimmune Disease and 2. Stem cell transplant can grow new immune system in certain mice, Stanford researchers find.
Read, if you like. For me it’s a sort of terrible nightmare of a psychedelic person… OK, these are creations of present pharmaceutical – medical conglomerate.
But I still have some (not so) simple questions. Look:
- Our toxic reality – researchers noticed influence of industrial chemicals on spreading of all sorts of chronic degenerative disorders
- Welcome – Autoimmune Epidemic – key world researchers agree that global spreading of autoimmune disorders is mainly caused by environmental pollution
- Immunotoxins – Autoimmunity – MS – it’s clarified how man-made chemicals can trigger Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and any other autoimmune disorder
My main question remains:
Can it be that scientists are working in growing isolation? Or is it some special kind of “scientific” confusion – when one group knows nothing about results of others? Isn’t it similar to Health and wellness problems of information overload?
What’s all this about? New flu pandemic? No, that’s autoimmune epidemic!
Book “The Autoimmune Epidemic: Bodies Gone Haywire in a World Out of Balance–and the Cutting-Edge Science that Promises Hope” (2008) by
Donna Jackson Nakazawa,
an autoimmune sufferer herself
Foreword to “The Autoimmune Epidemic”
by Douglas Kerr, M.D., Ph.D.:
- founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Transverse Myelitis (TM) Center, the only center in the world dedicated to developing new therapies for this paralyzing autoimmune disorder
- faculty neurologist and neuroscientist at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore Maryland, for the last decade evaluating and treating patients with autoimmune disorders of the nervous system
He explains:
- Increasingly, I see that more and more patients are being felled by this devastating disorder (Transverse Myelitis)
- Infants as young as five months old can get TM and some are left permanently paralyzed and dependent upon a ventilator to breathe. But this is supposed to be a rare disorder, reportedly affecting only one in a million people
- Prior to the 1950s, there were a grand total of four cases reported in the medical literature
- Currently, my colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and I hear about or treat hundreds of new cases every year
- In the multiple sclerosis clinic, where I also see patients, the number of cases likewise continues to climb
This really trustworthy expert is sharing his collected information:
- Autoimmune diseases have not always been this common. The prevalence of autoimmune diseases like systemic lupus erythematosus, or lupus, multiple sclerosis, and type 1 diabetes is on the rise
- In some cases, autoimmune diseases are three times more common now than they were several decades ago. These changes are not due to increased recognition of these disorders or altered diagnostic criteria
- Rather, more people are getting autoimmune disorders than ever before
Later he’s providing a short explanation about operation of immune system:
- The immune system … is charged with an amazingly complex task: to recognize and ignore all the cells and tissues within the body and – at the same time – to attack any and all “invaders”, foreign cells, viruses, bacteria, or fungi
- …wondrously complex immune system can successfully protect our bodies while recognizing and eliminating billions of distinct infections with which we come in contact. When functioning well, the immune system immediately recognizes a virus or bacteria that has gotten into our body and initiates a spirited and robust attack on the invader, allowing us to recover from a cold after only a few days
- But this precisely choreographed dance between the immune system and the tissues it is designed to protect goes badly awry in autoimmune diseases. In such diseases, the immune system mistakes friend for foe and begins to attack the very tissues it was designed to protect. The soldiers guarding the castle turn and attack it
He asks rhetoric questions and explains:
- But what triggers autoimmunity to occur? Throughout human history, our exposure to such myriad infectious agents has triggered an evolutionary arms race. Our immune system has evolved increasingly sophisticated countermeasures and recognition systems to combat the increasing diversity of the infectious agents with which we come in contact
- But this increasing sophistication comes with a cost: an increased chance of the system breaking down. We have evolved right to the edge of the immune system’s capacity…
- Now, over the last 40 years, something has been pushing that system over the edge. Something is causing the immune system to increasingly make mistakes in which the line becomes blurred, the immune system attacks the body itself, and autoimmune disease occurs
- In all likelihood, much of the reason for this often catastrophic mistake of the immune system comes from the countless environmental toxins to which we are currently exposed—toxins that interfere with the way the immune system communicates with the rest of the body
Some statistics (are you here?):
- The numbers are staggering: one in twelve Americans—and one in nine women—will develop an autoimmune disorder
- And since it is clear that not every patient with an autoimmune disease is correctly diagnosed, the prevalence is certainly higher than that…
…
Concerned about health in general or autoimmune disorder in particular? Lots of info in the book:
Final words:
- You will leave this book with no reservations about the veracity of the conclusions: put simply, there is no doubt that autoimmune diseases are on the rise and our increasing environmental exposure to toxins and chemicals is fueling this rise
- The research is sound
- The conclusions unassailable
Reading The Autoimmune Epidemic is a necessary first step Reading The Autoimmune Epidemic is a life-altering event
It needs to be
The other day, searching for health-related news, I came across such an article:
Pollution Can Change Your DNA in 3 Days, Study Suggests
As source was quite reliable – National Geographic News and I am interested in the subject (multiple sclerosis is autoimmune disorder), I started reading the article carefully:
- Breathing in polluted air may wreak havoc on our DNA, reprogramming genes in as few as three days and causing increased rates of cancer and other diseases
- The same damage may occur in city dwellers exposed to normal air, the researchers say
- …exposed workers’ DNA was damaged…
- Reduced-size gene groups … have also been found in the blood DNA of lung cancer patients
- You might not have to be a steelworker to sustain this kind of genetic damage…
- …the same damage can occur in city dwellers—the effects, however, take weeks or months to show up
- For instance, … previous research shows elderly people … had DNA damage…
What I am missing is consistency. Some aspects are well documented:
- almost all manufactured chemicals act as pollutants, showing up as xenobiotics, immunotoxins, neurotoxins etc.
- the only mentioned result from exposure to pollutants is lung cancer. They don’t mention autoimmune disorders and other pollution-related health problems at all – they mention only “other diseases”
- there is no explanation what happens when DNA has been changed
To my knowledge, the immune system is a full time body guard, recognizing and distinguishing between self and non-self. Next step is to destroy non-self. But what changed DNA really is – self or non-self?
It seems to me, immune system in such situations must be ‘confused’ – sometimes gets suppressed, sometimes overactive… And as degree of DNA change most probably depends on pollutant (pollutants cocktail), dose and exposure, result is rather unpredictable.
So number of autoimmune disorders (different ways of overactive immune system acting) is already approaching 100. And definitely multiple sclerosis (MS) is among many others.
What is immunotoxin
As immunotoxin is relatively new term, not everybody knows what exactly it means
Luckily, it’s definition is placed on Wikipedia:
An immunotoxin is a chemical that can cause immune system malfunction with exposure. When the immune system function is suppressed (immunosuppression) there is an increased susceptibility to infectious diseases and cancers. Polychlorinated-biphenyls (PCB), asbestos and herbicide DDT are known immunosuppressants. Immunotoxins can also cause autoimmune disease, where an overactive immune system attacks the bodies cells.
What substances are immunotoxic?
Researchers already did their job, so answer to this question is reasonably clarified
Good example of what scientists noticed is presented in article
Cancer and Immunological Effects
Because research testing for immunotoxicity has been limited, the number of substances known to be immunotoxic is relatively small, but may only represent the proverbial “tip of the iceberg”
Known or presumed developmental immunotoxins include:
- Organochlorine contaminants (such as PCBs, the pesticide chlordane, and the dioxin TCDD)
- Metals (such as chromium, cadmium, lead and mercury)
- The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon benzo[a]pyrene
- UV-B radiation
- Air pollutants (such as, ozone, nitrous oxides and environmental tobacco smoke)
Despite the fact that human data to support immune system effects are incomplete, the majority of researchers conclude that this is an important area for further research and critical evaluation of scientific evidence nonetheless
How immunotoxins affect immune system?
Answer to this question has been given in article
Immunotoxins as Teratogens:
The immune system is a frequent target organ of toxic insult following chronic or acute exposure to
- environmental chemicals
- therapeutic drugs
- abused drugs
- radiation
Interaction of the immune system with these xenobiotics [substances found in an organism that is not normally produced or expected to be present in it] may result in undesirable effects of three principal types:
- immunosuppression
- immune deregulations (autoimmunity)
- immunologic response to the xenobiotic (allergy).
Source: National Toxicology Program. 1986 Annual Plan, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services The health implications of these immune dysfunctions are increased risk of infectious diseases; development of neoplasia [pathological process that results in the formation and growth of a tumour]; autoimmune disorders and allergies Source: Berlin, A.; Dean , J., et al. Preface. Immunotoxicology. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987
Immunologically active agents can be divided into immunodepressants and immunostimulants, but a more appropriate term would be immunomodulators since both immunodepressants and immunostimulants can produce paradoxical immune effects.
In fact, exposure to an immunodepressive xenobiotic may first be manifested by a form of immune hyperactivity since downregulatory cells may be more sensitive than helper-inducer immunocytes. Source: Spreafico, F.; Merendino, A.; et al. Immunodepressive Drugs As Prototype Immunotoxicants. Immunotoxicology. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987. 193-207
* * *
Above explanation tells us that:
- immunotoxins literally are immune system de-regulators
- immunotoxins mainly act as immunosuppresants
- as immunotoxins mainly act:
- heavy metals
- environmental chemicals (including pesticides)
- pharmaceutical drugs
- radiation
- immunotoxins cause autoimmune disease, creating immune system overactivity
- immunotoxins mainly create autoimmune disorders and allergies
Enough data to identify an underlying cause for any autoimmune disease (including Multiple Sclerosis) and cancer
