The Gut Microbiota Is Connected To The Brain, Autism, And Vaccinations
Dr. Mercola recently had an article about Round Up and its many effects on the body, specifically gut bacteria:
" Your gut bacteria are a key component of glyphosate’s mechanism of harm, as microbes have the pathway used by glyphosate to kill weeds
• Glyphosate causes extreme disruption of microbes’ functions and lifecycles. What’s worse, glyphosate preferentially affects beneficial bacteria, allowing pathogens to overgrow."
Pathogens to overgrow. For many of the children with an autism diagnosis, pathogens and infections are a constant battle. In recent years, children are also receiving diagnoses of PANDAS or PANS, both with and without autism. Connections? Causation? A new lab has opened to actually test for these microbes:
" This perplexing neurologic condition is believed to be associated with an autoimmune response triggered by commonly occurring infections which result in a patient’s antibodies targeting neurologic receptors in the body.."
Interesting and makes sense based on much of what is being learned about infections and how they can cause neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases. But is that the entire equation? Quite possibly not:
June 5, 2013 -- "Gut Bacteria Play Key Role In Vaccination"
"The bacteria that live in the human gut may play an important role in immune response to vaccines and infection by wild-type enteric organisms, according to two recent studies resulting from a collaborative effort between the University of Maryland School of Medicine Institute for Genome Sciences and the Center for Vaccine Development.....This research provides a window into how vaccines and resistance to enteric pathogens work. It also helps scientists understand more about how the "good" bacteria in the body affect human health, a growing area of research known as the human microbiome.....The scientists found that more diversity in the gut microbiota may enable more robust immune responses to the vaccine....."These studies were performed to evaluate the hypothesis that the gut microbiota composition may impact the response to vaccination or exposure to enteric pathogens in humans and non-human primates."
It appears that this research is looking at "robust vaccine responses" and the gut, but also "vaccines and resistance to enteric pathogens." It all seems very related.
What about these hypotheses:
-- Can pesticide exposure cause the gut microbiota to become pathogenic, primed to disease?
-- Can vaccination during well baby visits, with a fragile microbiota, one with numerous antibiotics and not enough probiotics, cause reression into autism?
-- Can live viruses, especially MMR or other multi viral vaccines, disrupt the gut microbiota and cause severe GI issues, such as Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Enterocolitis, Crohn's, and regression into autism?
-- Can vaccines with thimerosal, the vaccine mercury, cause the immune system to fail, thus allowing pathogen infiltration producing a dysfunctional microbiota and regression into autism?
-- Can a dysfunctional gut microbiota eventually cause autoimmune disease?
-- Can PANDAS and PANS also be affected by a pathogenic microbiota?
I think those are accurate questions and show how upstream insults can cause downstream immune dysfunction and disease.
Now some of you may be skeptical and say how can the issues of the gut effect the brain and cause the behaviors that are seen with some of these diagnoses like autism or possibly PANDAS/PANS?
This is a good excerpt from the article, "Getting To The Guts Of Autism", which describes this connection well:
"A new arm of autism research has begun to explore the possibility that problems in the gut microbiome—an entire ecosystem of bacteria residing within the digestive tract that is responsible for extracting energy from food—could actually play a role in exacerbating or even causing behaviors and symptoms associated with autism.
...In recent years, scientists have theorized that the influence of gut flora extends far beyond simple digestion. Gut bacteria have been suspected as accomplices in the hardening of arteries leading to heart disease, in the establishment of autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, and in the development of insulin resistance in the onset of diabetes.
“One of the things [gut bugs] do is produce proteins or enzymes that break things down. If you are missing some of these microbes, then you are missing some of the breakdown capacity,” Dhurjati said.
...The effects of incomplete digestion can not only inhibit the body’s ability to absorb vital nutrients, but potentially result in the build up of toxins that could later travel through the bloodstream to the brain, he said. This is just one of a number of potential pathways outlined by his theory.
...“We need to be able to absorb our nutrients in order to run our cells and to run our brain cells. Without certain basic nutrients, you don’t make enough neurotransmitters and you don’t produce enough energy to really run your brain properly,” said Martha Herbert, a pediatric neuroscientist at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, an assistant professor of neurology at the Harvard Medical School, and author of the 2012 book The Autism Revolution.
The buzz around this potential connection has spurred her to start collecting diapers from infants at high risk for autism in order to begin her own investigation.....
,,,His theory supposes that incomplete digestion could lead to impaired removal of toxic heavy metals and could change the dynamic of gut bug populations. Surges in particular bacteria could cause gut inflammation, which could lead to tears in the barrier separating the intestine from the bloodstream. Once that barrier has been breached, toxins could hitch a ride directly to the brain. His paper goes on to reveal a complex web of chain reactions like these that could function as pathways from the gut to the brain."
This merging of Neurology and Gastroenterology is wonderful but let's not stop there. Immunology must be included!
Teresa Conrick is Contributing Editor to Age of Autism.
Benedetta, I feel the same. Sometimes I have to do a quick check,question my interpretations, then find they aren't interpretations at all, we are the ones dealing with the facts , the spin has made it to much higher levels. To suggest Monsanto taking the fall, isn't wacky at all, we've seen companies invent subsidiary businesses that don't exist in reality to take the fall in the case of lawsuits. These subsidiaries somehow cushion the bigger one from legal damage.
Posted by: barbara j | June 13, 2013 at 11:15 AM
I think that I might be some wacko, because I think the conspirators of top Monsanto guys and NIH (whose budget dwarfs that of all military forces in the United States).
One thing about these chemical companies should know - your company can and will be eventually wiped out money wise if you don't provide a safe product. They have all kinds of tricks to get past this, but it still is devastating even if they use that old trick of separating off these companies into another company - independent from the rest of the company.
But I wonder if Monsanto top guys have been paid a National Treasure to take the blame for all the endocrine problems that people where going to lay at the vaccine door at NIH and CDC.
Monsanto has to know that they are going to get caught with GMO food making us all sick -- it is just a given.
Better a company go under, or part of a company; than two federal agencies.
Guys; There are bad problems in every family in this area - they are dropping dead or in jail because of drugs - from self medication.
Posted by: Benedetta | June 12, 2013 at 07:45 PM
"What about these hypotheses:
-- Can vaccination during well baby visits, with a fragile microbiota, one with numerous antibiotics and not enough probiotics, cause reression into autism?"
Please allow me to modify this one a little
Can "vaccination" help cause "middle ear and other chronic infections" which leads to NUMEROUS courses of anti-biotics, which cause the destruction of good gut bacteria leading to DOZENS of dysbiosis related problems to include autism?
We should KNOW anti-biotics are a futile, nonproductive and VERY DANGEROUS way to treat middle ear infections. Apparently the Medical Industry has not gotten the word.
http://healthyprotocols.com/Doctor%20Lon%20Jones%20MD.htm
Posted by: Lou | June 12, 2013 at 06:01 PM
I read with interest the Discover article, not sure I got it all "right" however the mere mention of 47% of us being susceptible put the genetic idea in perspective. As in humans genes could protect us from some combinations of toxins and disease,some have genes that don't allow for that protection. Not by faulty genes, by relatively common genes. So what have we done, allowed a trigger here, a trigger there, some synergy?? I watched this .. we added in the last few years another trigger..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUd9rRSLY4A&feature=youtu.be
Posted by: barbara j | June 12, 2013 at 04:31 PM
horse becomes foundered; many reasons are listed. The horse over ate, or the mare gave birth and she retained her palcenta
Well why did the horse over eat?
Why did the placenta not come on out at birth?
Because they both are controlled by the hypothalamus, and something damage there.
Wonder what - with all the worm medicine and vaccines they give them now a days.
So, in humans; Why is there an over growth of yeast in some of our guts?
Because the hypothalamus is not regulating blood sugar the way it should and making it a more perfect environment for the yeast to grow.
And so that is the way it goes with a lot of it.
We have a tendency - to not go back far enough.
And as for pesticides and all that - which is the more likely;For us it was the vaccines. It was the vaccines. It was the vaccines.
It taught our immune systems to react in an allergric way - not in the typical way an immune system reacts when it is fighting off infections.
Case in point: My daughter had an infected tooth. This caused a flare up of the wrong side of the immune system in an allergric way -- as in arthrisis of some kind. Her legs hurt, and she is very stiff. Even her fingers are swollen and stiff.
It was for her the vaccines -- because she has had cause and effect many times.
Posted by: Benedetta | June 12, 2013 at 01:33 PM
Also, herbicides and pesticides have long been known to directly affect the brain. They act by disrupting mitochondrial aerobic metabolism. Mitochondria may have been incorporated into the cells of multi-cellular organisms as a primeval (and symbiotic) infection. They are bacteria-like.
In PubMed lookup: herbicide colliculus, pesticide colliculus, methyl bromide collicul*.
Note, I believe the disorders of language and general awareness may result from injury of the inferior colliculi in the midbrain auditory pathway.
See also article abstracts by John B. Cavanagh, for example: Cavanagh JB. Selective vulnerability in acute energy deprivation syndromes. Neuropathol Appl Neurobiol. 1993 Dec;19(6):461-70.
See also recent reports of interest:
Sribanditmongkol P et al. Pathological and toxicological findings in glyphosate-surfactant herbicide fatality: a case report. Am J Forensic Med Pathol. 2012 Sep;33(3):234-7.
da Costa Mdo D et al. [Neuroimaging abnormalities in parkinsonism: study of five cases]. Arq Neuropsiquiatr. 2003 Jun;61(2B):381-6. In Portuguese with English abstract and MRI images.
Barbosa ER, et al. Parkinsonism after glycine-derivate exposure.Mov Disord. 2001 May;16(3):565-8.
Posted by: Eileen Nicole Simon | June 12, 2013 at 09:39 AM
"This merging of Neurology and Gastroenterology is wonderful but let's not stop there. Immunology must be included!"
In 2007 .. Discover magazine published "Autism: It's Not Just In The Head" by Jill Neimark.
http://tinyurl.com/2pbkoz
In that article .. Dr. Martha Hebert stated:
"I no longer see autism as a disorder of the brain but as a disorder that affects the brain. It also affects the immune system and the gut ... at least some of autism probably comes from a metabolic encephalopathy .. a system wide process that affects the brain, just like cirrhosis of the liver affects the brain".
"This merging of Neurology and Gastroenterology is wonderful but let's not stop there. Immunology must be included!"
It is encouraging to read of new .. more powerful technology .. that allows us to see things that were never before visible to the curious trained eye of a dedicated researcher. Perhaps the day will soon arrive when the promising expectations of that Discover article will finally bear fruit .. and .. this nightmare can be stopped before the next generations suffers that same.
Posted by: Bob Moffitt | June 12, 2013 at 06:49 AM