THE ECK INSTITUTE BULLETIN

LEAD IN FOOD, BLUE-GREEN ALGAE, TOXIC FERTILIZER AND MORE

This bulletin is a collection of recent nutrition news stories.

LEAD IN THE ORGANIC GARDEN

C.W. lives in Chicago and considers nutrition her avocation. For 16 years she ate vegetables and grapes from her organic garden. She has always been in excellent health. Friends tell her she looks ten years younger than her age.

Last summer, C.W. began experiencing insomnia, falling hair, fatigue, forgetfulness, difficulty remembering words, and began transposing words when writing. Alarmed, she asked her physician for a hair analysis. The test revealed elevated lead and aluminum.

C.W.'s physician was of little help in finding the source of the lead. C.W. does not dye her hair, and had no known exposure to either lead or aluminum. Her entire family ate the organic vegetables, but C.W. was the only one to eat the concord grapes that grew on the fence between hers and the neighbors' property.

The mystery was solved when one day C.W. remembered the peeling paint on her neighbor's garage. The paint had been allowed to slowly peel off for the past 16 years. Heavy rains would at times flood her garden with water that runs off from the neighbor's property.

A soil sample from her organic garden revealed 60 times the normal lead content (306 parts per million). A test of the neighbor's soil revealed 264 times the normal lead level! (The soil test did not include aluminum).

C.W. has stopped eating out of her garden. She is on a supplement program to help eliminate the lead and is slowly regaining her health. C.W. has consulted with many others, and states that lead in home gardens from old paint is a more common problem than is acknowledged.

BLUE-GREEN ALGAE

Many readers are familiar with blue-green algae. Many people experience increased energy on this product. However, several hair analysis practitioners found they had to take their clients off this product in order to balance their body chemistry. A paper from the Internet may provide the reason why.

All foods contain toxins in small quantities. Some people can handle them, while others cannot. Mark Thorson has written "An Anatoxin-A Primer". Mr. Thorson writes that blue-green algae produces a potent neurotoxin called anatoxin-a. Its properties are comparable to a synthetic anatoxin-a derived from L-cocaine. He cites scientific references to support this.

Anatoxin-a is a neuromuscular blocking agent that interferes with the activity of acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is a calming neurotransmitter. Therefore, he says, the algae has a stimulatory effect somewhat like cocaine. One could imagine that for tired slow oxidizers such a product would be very appealing.

A POTENT STIMULANT

According to the article, blue-green algae can contain up to 1% of its weight in Anatoxin-a. The toxin is between three and 50 times more potent than nicotine, and 20 times more potent than acetylcholine.

Sales information from Cell Tech describes the energy boost people feel on the product. Comments are similar to complaints the FDA has received. Stimulatory effects such as an inability to sleep are followed by a crash when one goes off the product.

Mr. Thorson said he contacted Celltech. They test for shellfish toxins and several others, but not for anatoxin-a.

The message is not that algae is poisonous. However, neither is it or anything else the 'perfect food' that some would have us believe. Foods and food supplements can have complex effects. What nourishes one can indeed be toxic for another.

TOXIC METALS IN YOUR FERTILIZER

It sounds unbelievable, but 33 states have approved the disposal of toxic

metals by adding them to fertilizers. Toxic metals are expensive to dispose of. The federal EPA in conjunction with federal and state agricultural departments hatched a plan to ease the disposal problem by returning heavy metals to the earth in fertilizers. Unfortunately, these fertilizer products are being used by organic as well as commercial farmers.

Hair analysis helped uncover this scheme. A group of farmers and their families became seriously ill in the small town of Quincy, Washington. The families experienced symptoms ranging from skin rashes and emphysema to fatal cancer. Many readers are familiar with the attitude about chemicals that "a little bit can't hurt". The logic is that the cost of waste disposal must be balanced against the amount of illness a toxin will cause, and a compromise is then struck.

The problem with this kind of thinking are several. The main one is that measuring the costs of such a policy are extremely difficult. The effects of the poison may be subtle or delayed. The effects may show up only in children born to mothers who were exposed. This is the case with most toxic metals, which accumulate slowly and are passed easily from mother to child.

The benefits to the companies are visible and easily calculated. But who knows the costs and horror of such policies? The cost is spread over thousands of people who for the most part cannot even trace the source of their bad health, birth defects, learning disabled and violent children and other problems that result from eating the contaminated food. This story was given to us by Dr. David Vaughn of Seattle, Washington. It will be exposed on television, hopefully this month.

Other than growing you own food, ways to defend against toxic metals in food are: 1) keep your chemistry balanced. This will enhance your body's ability to excrete toxic metals, and 2) maintain your intake of healthful minerals. If given a choice, your body will tend to absorb the good minerals instead of the toxic ones.

One can enhance mineral nutrition by the use of condiments containing kelp or dulse, good quality sea salt, and drinking mineralized water. Either use a good spring or mineral water or add minerals to distilled or reverse osmosis water.

THE DEAD DOCTORS DONπT LIE TAPE

Many readers have heard a popular cassette tape entitled "Dead Doctors Don't Lie". The tape is used to sell colloidal minerals. However, the tape contains some false and misleading statements.

An excellent rebuttal to the Dead Doctors tape appears in the current issue of the Townsend Newsletter, reprinted from the Internet. It is found on pages 126-128 of the Townsend Newsletter, February/March 1997 issue.

THE ECK INSTITUTE BULLETIN VOLUME 13 MARCH 1997 NUMBER 3

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