First things first

To start, I was advised by a very smart person a little while ago to start this. I have not really been one to follow suit with everyone else, but every chance I have to advise people of new findings on some of the issues we face as consumers, I will try to take advantage of it. This blog was made and will consist mostly of issues with food safety, modern health conditions that may be able to be prevented, and without getting to involved in the political side of it, current "health care". I guess I must say that I am not a licensed medical physician. Nor do I intend on presenting myself in that manner. The information contained here is based upon devout research through institutions of higher learning, current and past publications and personal experience. So let the games begin.



I will give a brief synopsis on why I am presenting this to the public. You see, around 7 years ago my family was introduced to a few health conditions we never heard of, never even knew how to pronounce, but would become overly informed with what we thought was reasonable information. Around the beginning of the new millennium, my younger brother was not feeling great and went to the doctors office to find out why, like millions of Americans do everyday. Turns out he needed to have some tests run and would later find out he had Ulcerative Colitis. Hmmm. That was the first exact thing I said to myself when I heard this. The next thing I thought was what the hell is that, what will he have to do.etc. He would need to take a few prescriptions and he went on to finish his last year in high school. He seemed to do quite well as he finished top of his class and went on to a big school in the same state. I thought nothing of it and made sure he was ok by asking him periodically. Fast forward to next year. I was working regularly, going to college, exercising quite often, and doing what most people in their twenties do. By the end of that year, I started becoming pretty tired. Not the kind of tired what I was used to after working, studying,exercising and being lazy. This was new to me. I would only feel like working then watching some tv. Then I did not really feel like working so much but made myself anyway. Finally I had similar symptoms that my brother had.Long story short I went through the same rounds of tests and would end up on the same prescriptions. The final word was never really determined, first there was no clear diagnosis, next I would be advised I had Colitis, then Crohn's disease then back to Colitis. After going to 4 different offices, I finally was advised I had a blend called Crohn's-Colitis. These two conditions are very similar but have differences also. I never heard of any of these prior to this. After much research on my own, I decided I was not going to just take the conventional expertise I was just given. I read that I would take this and this for a long time or I may need surgery or I will do this or that. I have never been the type to take everything I heard and trust everything. I was the "think for yourself, question authority" type about everything. I would find out many famous people had this, many political leaders, many people I worked with even. Hmmm.



I decided to go on with my life and take care of myself better, watch what I ate better, don't drink so much, try to rest more. I did that for a while and with some coaxing from my peers, still stayed out late and took in the young single life style. In the middle of all that, I still took as best care of myself as I could. A few years went by and I did what I wanted to. I then began to have some problems. I came down with an infection that kept me in the hospital for one holiday and my birthday. I decided to look even further into what and why these conditions happen to people, mainly young people, even children. I found a few things by an author that presumed it was due to all of the processed and the synthetics used on natural foods like vegetables and fish, poultry and meats. Basically, the theory was that too much boxed foods,and too much conventional "healthy" foods. So essentially, if it was not organic, it could have contributed to these conditions and more. Now, I think there is a lot of truth in that but it still had some things missing for my stubborn mind.



I later would find a few articles that were pretty interesting by a physician on the west coast would had been dealing with a pretty tough bout of Crohn's. I would then contact her and she gave me some doctors that were out of the country that were writing these articles going against conventional approaches to these two problems. I found another article and website constructed by a young tennis player in Seattle that gave me the same information as the doctor I emailed previously. I kept finding more of these articles that were never presented to me, never brought up by any doctor I saw, never really talked about. The main thing that drew me to these articles, was the fact that most of the studies and research done involved brief but compelling stats.



The information basically was stating that most of the conventional practices done for these conditions may be incorrect. The conventional practices basically state that these stem from an unknown origin,have no definite cure,and may come from an environmental source with a genetic alteration. The new information I found stated that these both may come from an infection of a strain of bacteria not publicly spoken about. The strain of bacteria is named paratuberculosis or for the scientists, Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis. This is commonly referred to by many involved in studying this as MAP. Basically this bacteria is found in dairy herds of cattle and beef livestock and has shown to be an infection in farms and is called Johne's disease(say YO-NEEZ). This also has been detected in deer, elk,bison and many other ruminants like goats. This bacteria has also been cultured and detected in municipal water supplies. After reading the last sentence, you may find it interesting how it gets into the water. Ok it works like this, cattle are infected by spreading it to each other by shedding the bacteria in excretion(a typical cow may shed billions of bacteria in one day). Or they can transfer it by birth to the calf. However, the calf may not show signs of infection until it reaches maturity. Now comes the good part. These cattle are mainly kept in small quarters, rarely far enough away from each other to not get each others fecal excretions on each other. Now if the cows udders have this excretion on them guess what it goes into. Right. Milk. The same milk you just had at breakfast, the same milk you just poured in your latte while reading this. The same milk that you just gave a nice tall glass to your child. Yes and it keeps getting better. You see there is controversy as to if this is a zoonotic agent. For those of you who have killed the majority of your brain cells, zoonotic means passing the species barrier. Studies have shown that this strain has been found in retail dairy products after they have been pasteurized. The strain has been shown to survive the current methods of standards to protect the consumer from agents like these. I will take it one step further and advise how it gets into retail beef. Most times if a farmer finds he has an infected cow, he can try to test by regular farm methods, and send off to labs. He can allow the cow to continue to produce milk. He can cull (euthanize)the animal. Or he can make a profit by sending the cow to a slaughterhouse and get a return on a cow that may not be able to produce milk anymore. To get graphic, when a cow is slaughtered, its lymph nodes are ground up and are contained in almost all ground beef. If you know anything about how lymph nodes work, they contain any type of infection in mammals. Now how does it survive and get into water supplies? This strain of bacteria can survive pretty much any environment for years. So after soil contains the bacteria, if near supply stations, erosion and other natural processes carry it into the water plant. Now pasteurization does not kill it, which they do not do to conventional water supplies, mainly they only apply chlorine and sodium fluoride.



So the next big question is how does this apply to Colitis and Crohn's. MAP has been found in patients lab work tests. It has been shown in tissue samples from digestive tract. It has even been shown in breast milk. The FDA does not have any standards against these strains and nor does the USDA. The 2 agencies named control the standards for dairy and retail beef supplies.Now of the above mentioned we have several ways that this bacteria can reach a consumer. Does it mean that everyone will develop problems from that bacteria, no. But does it mean that everyone should not be protected from H1N1, TB,HPV,E coli,Salmonella, Measles.etc..because they may or may not have problems from those?



That would bring in the precautionary principle. I have placed the link here for reference and explanation from better sources than me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

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