Chemical Causes of Diabetes 

The development of insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus
 is thought to be dependent on the interaction of
 environmental agents with the pancreatic beta cells.[i]
                                                 University of Calgary

 

     Medical science has discovered how sensitive the insulin receptor sites are to chemical poisoning. Metals such as cadmium, mercury, arsenic, lead, fluoride[ii] and possibly aluminum may play a role in the actual destruction of beta cells through stimulating an auto-immune reaction to them after they have bonded to these cells in the pancreas. It is because mercury[iii] and lead attach themselves at highly vulnerable junctures of proteins that they find their great capacity to provoke morphological changes in the body. Changes in pancreatic function are among the pathogenetic mechanisms observable during lead intoxication. [iv]

Lead exposure has been associated with an increased risk of hypertension, and is a well-established risk factor for kidney disease. Whether lead affects blood pressure indirectly through alterations in kidney function or via more direct effects on the vasculature or neurologic blood pressure control is unknown though. Researchers at Harvard Medical School state, “Our findings support the hypothesis that long-term low-level lead accumulation (estimated by tibia bone lead) is associated with an increased risk of declining renal function particularly among diabetics or hypertensives, populations already at risk for impaired renal function.” [v]

Cadmium [vi] is a widespread environmental pollutant that accumulates
 in the pancreas and exerts diabetogenic effects in animals. In a large
 cross-sectional study, urinary cadmium levels are significantly and dose-dependently associated with both impaired fasting glucose and diabetes. [vii]

Transsulfuration pathways in the body are fundamental for life. When mercury blocks thiol groups cellular proteins lose their reactive properties, lose their ability to carry out their routine function. Insulin has three sulfur-containing cross-linkages and the insulin receptor has a tyrosine kinase-containing sulfur bond, which are the preferred targets for binding by both mercury and lead. Should mercury attach to one of these three sulfur bonds it will interfere with the normal biological function of the insulin molecule. Mercury, many times more toxic than lead, is so dangerous exactly because it is collapsing/damaging critical sulfur-containing cross-linkages which change the geometry of both insulin receptor sites and insulin itself.

Commercials tell children that junk food is good food
 - the latest message from an industry that spends
 $10 billion a year marketing to children.
                                                 New York Times

Food is not considered junk just because of high fat or sugar content, there is a long list of poisonous chemicals used by the food industry that are striking people down. And there are many serious nutritional deficiencies in today’s food that diminish the bodies capacity to deal safely with these chemicals and heavy metals - with magnesium and selenium deficiencies at the top of the list.

For instance, according to Dr. Ellen Silbergeld, a researcher from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, the poultry industry’s practice of using arsenic compounds in its feed is something that has not been studied: “It’s an issue everybody is trying to pretend doesn’t exist.” [viii] Arsenic exposure is a risk factor [ix] for diabetes mellitus. [x] Inorganic arsenic is considered one of the prominent environmental causes of cancer mortality in the world. Chicken consumption may contribute significant amounts of arsenic to total arsenic exposure of the U.S. population according to the Journal Environmental Health Perspectives. [xi]

“Arsenic acts as a growth stimulant in chickens—develops the meat faster—and since then, the poultry industry has gone wild using this ingredient,” says Donald Herman, a Mississippi agricultural consultant and former Environmental Protection Agency researcher who has studied this use of arsenic for a decade. At mean levels of chicken consumption (60 g/person/day), people may ingest 1.38-5.24 micrograms/day of inorganic arsenic from chicken alone. At the 99th percentile of chicken consumption (350 g chicken/day), people may ingest 21.13-30.59 micrograms inorganic arsenic/day and 32.50-47.07 micrograms total arsenic/day from chicken. [xii] Arsenic is a human carcinogen linked to liver, lung, skin, kidney, bladder, and prostate cancers. It can also cause neurological, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and immune system abnormalities. The feeding of arsenic to chickens in the United States releases hundreds of tons of arsenic into the environment every year in the form of poultry manure, which is spread on fields as fertilizer.

Researchers from the Department of Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University [xiii] Hospital found, “The association between arsenic exposure and diabetes mellitus is a relatively new finding. Up to now, there are six epidemiologic reports linking diabetes mellitus with arsenic exposure from environmental and occupational sources. Two reports in Taiwan carried out in the blackfoot disease-hyperendemic villages, one cross-sectional and one prospective follow-up of the same cohort, indicate that arsenic exposure from drinking artesian well water is associated with prevalence and incidence of diabetes mellitus in a dose-responsive pattern.

The observation of the relation between arsenic exposure and diabetes mellitus is further supported by studies carried out in Sweden and Bangladesh. In Sweden, case-control analyses of death records of copper smelters and glass workers revealed a trend of increasing diabetes mellitus with increasing arsenic exposure from inhalation. In Bangladesh, prevalence of diabetes mellitus among arsenic-exposed subjects with keratosis was about five times higher than unexposed subjects.”

Wistar rats were made diabetic
 with a single injection of Alloxan. [xiv]

Another example is Alloxan. Studies show that Alloxan, the chemical that makes white flour look "clean and beautiful" destroys the beta cells of the pancreas.[xv]  Scientists have known of the alloxan-diabetes connection for years yet there seems to be a conspiracy that defends the integrity of the FDA, which allows dangerous chemicals that can cause diabetes to be used in drugs and food. "A growing body of research shows that pesticides and other contaminants are more prevalent in the foods we eat, in our bodies, and in the environment than we thought,” [xvi] all confirming the chemical nightmare in progress.

According to research conducted by Dr. H.J. Roberts, a diabetes specialist, a member of the ADA, and an authority on artificial sweeteners, aspartame:

1)   Leads to the precipitation of clinical diabetes.

2)  Causes poorer diabetic control in diabetics on insulin or oral drugs.

3) Leads to the aggravation of diabetic complications such as retinopathy, cataracts, neuropathy and gastroparesis.

4)  Causes convulsions.

Dr. Roberts said, "The loss of diabetic control, the intensification of hypoglycemia, the occurrence of presumed 'insulin reactions' (including convulsions) that proved to be aspartame reactions, and the precipitation, aggravation or simulation of diabetic complications (especially impaired vision and neuropathy) while using these products.” [xvii] The FDA's own toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross told Congress that without a shadow of a doubt, aspartame can cause brain tumors and brain cancer and violated the Delaney Amendment which forbids putting anything in food that is known to cause Cancer. It is a monstrous crime to poison the food and water supplies yet this is exactly what the FDA has been approving and undoubtedly they are, in large part, responsible for flaming the diabetic winds.

As the use of MSG and aspartame grows,
the incidence of obesity appears to be growing.

 MSG causes a very large insulin response after it is ingested since there are glutamate receptors in the pancreas. MSG opens calcium channels, thus constricting blood vessels – this may put diabetics with high blood pressure at risk by negating calcium channel blocker medication. In 1968, John W. Olney, M.D., a respected researcher at Washington University Medical School, St. Louis, Missouri, and member of the National Academy of Science, found that mice in his laboratory that were being used to replicate a 1957 study by Lucas and Newhouse, in which the administration of MSG had resulted in retinal damage, had become grotesquely obese. Since 1969, many scientists have confirmed Dr. Olney's findings of damage to the hypothalamus from MSG with resulting obesity. There is abundant literature demonstrating that MSG and aspartic acid cause hypothalmic lesions which, in turn, can cause gross obesity. Although there are a number of causes for obesity, there is no question that one of the main causes for the obesity epidemic is the ever increasing use of MSG and aspartame.

We know that the hypothalamus is very immature at birth. The damage to this structure of the brain by MSG leads to severe endocrine problems later in life, among them decreased thyroid hormone, increased tendency toward diabetes, and higher cortisone levels than normal. A child consuming a soup containing MSG plus a drink with NutraSweet will have a blood level of excitotoxins six times the blood level that destroys hypothalamus neurons in baby mice.

And we are just beginning to hear that a massive mistake has been made with genetically modified foods, which can only fan those diabetic winds. [xviii] Dr. Alpad Pusztai, for instance, has already shown that genetically-manipulated foods can, when fed to animals in reasonable amounts, cause very gradual organ and immune system damage. [xix] Another study, carried out by Dr Irina Ermakova at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology, at the Russian Academy of Sciences, found that more than half of the offspring of rats fed on modified soya died in the first three weeks of life, six times as many as those born to mothers with normal diets. [xx] Dr. Manuela Malatesta and colleagues in the Universities of Pavia and Urbino in Italy, showed that mice fed on GM soya experienced a slowdown in cellular metabolism and modifications to liver and pancreas.[xxi] Researchers are reviving fears that GM food damages human health and certainly would not be indicated for children or for people with diabetes.

Diabetes may in fact be a major side effect of
 antibiotics and other common pharmaceuticals.
                                             Dr Lisa Landymore-Lim
                         Independent scientist for Atomic Health Limited

Doctors are on notice that many drugs have toxic effects that can participate in destroying insulin creation and cell receptivity to it. In her 1994 book, Poisonous Prescriptions, Landymore-Lim's says that diabetes may in fact be a major side effect of pharmaceutical drugs. The book provides evidence from studies and hospital records. Diabetes, usually thought to be largely a genetic disorder, may actually have increased so much in the last 50 years due in large part to the proliferation in the use, and over-use, of medicines. In 2004 the American Diabetes Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists made a similar announcement warning people to be careful to watch for signs they are developing diabetes, obesity or high cholesterol if they are taking Abilify, Clozaril, Geodon, Risperdal, Seroquel or Zyprexa.[xxii] What medicines, food and water have increasingly in common are the chemical poisons they contain.

Researchers at the University of Liverpool recently released their studies that examined the toxic effects on nerve cells in the laboratory of using a combination of four common food additives - aspartame, monosodium glutamate (MSG) and the artificial colourings brilliant blue and quinoline yellow. The findings of their two-year study were published at the end of 2005 in the journal Toxicological Sciences. [xxiii] The Liverpool team reported that when mouse nerve cells were exposed to MSG and brilliant blue or aspartame and quinoline yellow in laboratory conditions, combined in concentrations that theoretically reflect the compound that enters the bloodstream after a typical children's snack and drink, the additives stopped the nerve cells growing and interfered with proper signaling systems. The mixtures of the additives had a much more potent effect on nerve cells than each additive on its own. The study reported that the effect on cells could be up to four times greater when brilliant blue and MSG were combined and up to seven times greater when quinoline yellow and aspartame were combined, than when the additives were applied on their own. What we can begin to conclude is that future research is going to show how all the toxic chemicals in the food, air, water and medicines we consume are combining to destroy our health. Any one poison discussed here in sufficient quantity can destroy cell physiology, the pancreas beta cells, and diminish cell receptivity to insulin.

We are depending more and more on processed foods, and with each year, the FDA approves more and more chemicals for use in foods.  With each year, the food industry is using more and more chemicals in their products.  These chemicals increase shelf life, kill bacteria, improve taste, replace fats, replace carbohydrates, and cause chronic diseases that eventually kill people. Junk food is really a cover up image for something quite a bit nastier than the image that junk congers. Junk foods are actually slow acting poisons because they come to us loaded with highly toxic chemicals. We can only imagine the worst when we think about FDA approval processes for in reality the FDA is poisoning the public. The FDA is the wellhead of most iatrogenic diseases and death. There is no excuse for an agency charged with protecting public health to have allowed the massive poisoning of the public via food, drugs and public water supplies.

The CDC says that diabetes is disabling, deadly and on the rise. The incidence of diabetes is skyrocketing not only in adults but in the juvenile population as well. Healthcare experts have called the alarming rise in diabetes and its related complications “an epidemic” that threatens to spiral out of control.

In 1997 15.7 millions adults in the United States were reported to have diabetes. [xxiv] By the year 2002, this number had already swelled to 18.0 million or 8.7% of all adults. [xxv] Diabetes and its complications now claim hundred of thousands of lives in the U.S. each year, incurring total expenses of over $130 billion in direct and indirect costs to the healthcare system. [xxvi] Worldwide, the number of people with adult-onset diabetes is predicted to explode in the next 10 years, doubling to an estimated 221 million people. [xxvii] By contrast only 43,171 people in the United States were diagnosed with AIDS and only 18,017 died. [xxviii]

Scientists have discovered a variant gene that leads to a sizable extra risk of Type 2 diabetes - 38 percent of Americans who have inherited a single copy of the gene have a 45 percent greater risk of Type 2, the estimated 7 percent who carry two copies are 141 percent more likely to develop the disease. What scientists are saying is that if all the variant genes in the population were erased, so would be 21 percent of diabetes cases. [xxix] Another way of expressing variations in genetic makeup is constitution. Some people are gifted with stronger constitutions (genes) than others and are more able to stand up to massive chemical assaults on their bodies. Genetic causes do not in anyway explain the explosive increases in diabetes but increasing concentrations of environmental poisons penetrating our bodies via our air, water, food and medicines can evoke breakdowns in genetic function.

The human race is facing an abyss, a massive breakdown in body chemistry. All indications suggest that the medical industrial complex will not squarely face the facts and the research and will not work in earnest to reduce the chemical exposures the masses are facing. Too much money is involved in manufacturing hundreds of millions of tons of chemicals each year and huge fortunes are made by the economic elite in the sale of toxins that are dragging large segments of the population to their sick beds and early graves. Our civilization is poisoning itself and the medical and dental communities participate with passion.