Posted by Larry Hoover on October 17, 2003, at 10:10:07
In reply to Re: Larry H. Credentials/Education » Larry Hoover, posted by David Smith on October 14, 2003, at 3:02:05
> "I'm not an M.D., I'm an environmental toxicologist."
>
> Oh wise one, I too have a question.<humbly bowing his head>
> Is it likely there is an environmental cause for the increase in mental illness?
Certainly. Diet is environment, for example.
We consume a hugely distorted ratio of fatty acids today, when compared with any other time in the history of man. Since the advent of industrial farming techniques and the food processing industry, we obtain far more omega-6 fatty acids than was even possible before now. And, in addition, sources of omega-3 have been removed from the food chain. Estimates of the historical omega-6:omega-3 ratio lie between 1 and 4, whereas today's diet provides a ration of somewhere between 15 and 50. Industrial farming and food processing also introduce reduced amounts of essential nutrients (vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, etc.) into the food-chain. If you don't provide the body's machinery with the raw materials it needs, how can it work well?
Even the advent of grain production has been associated with e.g. schizophrenia rates. There are substances in e.g. wheat that people are intolerant of, and exposure leads to mental changes, including hallucinations.
My field of study has focused on endocrine disruption. In a nutshell, there are man-made toxicants which bind to hormone receptors, and influence bodily function. The influence can be antagonistic (blocking the excitation provided by normal hormone exposure), agonistic (acting as if there was normal hormone exposure), reverse agonistic (activating the receptor, but inducing the opposite effect to normal hormone exposure), or combinations of all these processes. There are also different forms of each process, and to complicate things further, different tissues have different receptor types within the same class, and may respond differently to the same stimulus. An example is tamoxifen blocking estrogen receptors in breast tissue, but not blocking estrogen receptors in the uterus.
We have identified thousands of endocrine disrupting chemicals, and they're in every breath you take, and every swallow of food or water.
At first, I reacted with horror when I discovered some new toxicant, and its route of exposure in humans. Plastics (plasticizers), Oh no! <plastic avoidance in effect> And so on. Soon, I came to realize that there wasn't much I could do about exposure. Not really. Manage what I could, and leave the rest to God. Ya know?
We're all guinea-pigs, in a massive uncontrolled experiment.
An example. People freak out at the possibility that fish oil has contaminants in it. Well, it does. And so does anything you eat. We've just looked at fish oil more closely than some other products, like hamburger. You don't want to know what's in your hamburger. Ignorance is bliss.
The bottom line is that people who use fish oil have better health outcomes than those who don't. Better heart health, better blood pressure, better triglyceride levels, better mood, etc. And that's *despite* the contaminant burden.
> Or is it just good marketing on the part of the pharmaceutical industry?
I'm not a pharmaceutical company basher. There are huge problems with the way things work today, but profit-driven medical practise was not invented by them. They merely reflect our own cultural failings.
Pharmaceutical companies are reacting to perceived need. We need mental health care. How we provide it, is the issue. Drugs may be a readily-available treatment, cheap to manage (e.g. "Here's your drug, now go away."), but I don't blame the drugs for anything. Nor do I blame their providers. "I have seen the enemy, and it is us."
> Many thanks for your valuable insight.
>
> daveGood questions, Dave. Keep them coming.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:268268
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20031003/msgs/270190.html