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Traces of Rocket Fuel Found in Infant Formulas August 17, 2009

Posted by brainbalancer in Environmental Stress.
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Looking for a reason why your child has neuro-developmental disorders?  MedPage Today has this article (excerpted):

Government scientists say all 15 brands of powdered infant formula they tested contained some level of perchlorate, a chemical used in rocket fuel since World War II.

However, environmentalists and others have questioned the value of using the EPA’s calculations alone. One reason is that powdered formula containing perchlorate would be mixed with water, which might contain even more of the chemical.

In a series of 48 hypothetical models of daily exposure to perchlorate among infants, Dr. Schier and colleagues found that 54% would exceed the reference dose, assuming that water containing as little as 4 mcg/L of perchlorate was used to mix the formula.

“Further work is needed to clarify both the complex interrelationships among the thyroid, perchlorate, and iodide, as well as any potential public health risk with exceeding the perchlorate reference dose,” they said.

The chemical inhibits the transport of iodine into the thyroid, and thus may disrupt the production of thyroid hormone and stunt fetal and infant brain development, they said.

However, several ecological and cohort studies have failed to establish a connection between perchlorate-contaminated water and neonatal thyroid function or fetal growth, they said.

Dr. Schier and colleagues examined three samples each from 15 brands of powdered formula, including those based on cow’s milk (with and without lactose), soy products, and synthetic amino acids (known as elemental formula).

Taken together, the samples from cow milk-based formula with lactose had a significantly higher concentration of perchlorate than the rest (P<0.05).

“The findings of these studies are somewhat reassuring, although higher iodine intake in the population may have reduced perchlorate-mediated inhibition of iodide transport,” they said.

“This would likely lessen the possibility of perchlorate-induced thyroid dysfunction,” they said. “However, the complex relationships among iodine, perchlorate, and their effects on thyroid hormone production are still being elucidated.”Perchlorate Levels in CA

The Environmental Working Group has some additional information on this, including this chart:

The problem is, perchlorate can affect the unborn child as well.  Thyroid hormone is one of the most important hormones in guiding and directing the developmentl of the nervous system.  And given the seeming increase of ladies with thyroid disorders, you can appreciate the potential problem.

There are numerous articles on the web that verify the effects of a lack of thyroid hormone in neonates and later neuro-developmental disorders.   Here’s one entitled that’s worthy of note:

Impact of Neonatal Thyroid Hormone Insufficiency and Medical Morbidity on Infant Neurodevelopment and Attention Following Preterm Birth

more to come…

Allergies June 29, 2008

Posted by brainbalancer in Allergies, Environmental Stress, Epigenetics.
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Allergies are a large component of the Brain Balance Protocol.  Actually, it’s what led me to being interested in working with kids with neurobehavioral disorders.

Here’s an interesting article that came through a few days back about children and allergies.  From ScienceDaily.com:

          Stress During Childhood Increases Risk Of Allergies

ScienceDaily June 18, 2008 - Moving house or the separation of parents can significantly increase the risk of children developing allergies later on. These are the results from a long-term study correlating life-style, immune system development and allergies, led by the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Leipzig (UFZ), the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the “Institut für Umweltmedizinische Forschung” (IUF) in Duesseldorf.

The researchers had examined blood samples taken from 234 six-year old children and discovered increased blood concentrations of the stress-related peptide VIP (vasoactive intestinal polypeptide) in connection with moving house or the separation of parents. The neuropeptide VIP could take on a mediator role between stress events in life and the regulation of immune responses, researchers write in the scientific journal Pediatric Allergy and Immunology.

The fact that stress events can have an influence on the development of allergies has been known for a while. The mechanisms behind this however remained unexplained for a long time. In the study that has now been published, stress events were investigated for the first time during early childhood within a large epidemiological study using immune and stress markers.

Stress events during childhood are increasingly suspected of playing a role in the later development of asthma, allergic skin disorders, or allergic sensitisations. Dramatic life events like the death of a family member, serious illnesses of a family member or the separation of parents, but also harmless events like for example moving house are suspected of increasing the risk of allergies for the children affected.

The immune system obviously plays a mediator role between stress on the one hand and allergies on the other. Since these mechanisms had hardly been understood before, researchers attempted to identify stress-related factors showing an influence on the immune system, in the context of an epidemiological study (LISA). At the same time as the blood tests, researchers together with colleagues from the Institute for Social Medicine at the University of Lübeck also analysed the most diverse social factors in the children’s environment, in order to find out which factors are causing stress-related regulation deficiencies of the immune system.

With children, whose parents had separated over the last year, researchers found increased blood concentrations of the neuropeptide VIP (vasoactive intestinal polypeptide) as well as an increased concentration of immune markers, which are related to the occurrence of allergic reactions, like for example the cytokine IL-4. By comparison, serious diseases or the death of close relatives led to no remarkable changes. Likewise, the unemployment of parents was not associated with increased concentrations of the stress-related peptides in the children’s blood.

As tragic as these events are, they are obviously however of less significance for the stress reactions of children than for example a separation or the divorce of parents, UFZ researchers have concluded. As was already shown in an earlier publication from the same study, increased concentrations of the stress peptide VIP can also be proven in the blood of children after moving house (similar to the separation of parents). Preceding investigations in LISA showed that there is a relationship between an increased concentration of the neuropeptide VIP and allergic sensitisations among six-year old children. Even if the results were to be interpreted carefully, because of the comparatively small number of children affected, they nevertheless provide valuable indications as to what exactly happens to the body through stress.

The investigations are based on data from 6-year old children from the LISA study. LISA stands for “Lifestyle – Immune System – Allergy” and investigates the influences of life-styles on the immune system development in early childhood and the emergence of allergies.

In addition to the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Leipzig (UFZ), the Helmholtz Zentrum München, the German Research Center for Environmental Health, and the “Institut für Umweltmedizinische Forschung” (IUF) in Duesseldorf, other universities and clinics are also participating partners, including the Municipal Hospital “St. Georg” in Leipzig. For the LISA study over 3000 newborn children in the cities of Munich, Leipzig, Wesel and Bad Honnef were recruited between the end of 1997 and the beginning of 1999. Parents were repeatedly asked about various lifestyle-relöated factors and disease outcomes.

Furthermore, blood tests were carried out at different times. At the age of six a total of 565 children were examined in Leipzig, and for 234 participants, blood analyses regarding stress and immune parameters were carried out. Over the course of the 6-year study nearly one third of the families living in Leipzig were affected by unemployment. For approximately half of all families, severe illnesses were experienced by close family members. By comparison, cases of death among family members or the separation of parents only affected every sixth or tenth child.

Journal references:
  1. Herberth G, Weber A, Röder S, Elvers H-D, Krämer U, Schins R PF, Diez U, Borte M, Heinrich J, Schäfer T, Herbarth O, Lehmann I. Relation between stressful life events, neuropeptides and cytokines: an epidemiological study. Pediatric Allergy and Immunology, 2008 DOI: 10.1111/j.1399-3038.2008.00727.x
  2. Herberth et al. The stress of relocation and neuropeptides: An epidemiological study in children. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 2007; 63 (4): 451 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychores.2007.06.012
  3. Herberth et al. Association of neuropeptides with Th1/Th2 balance and allergic sensitization in children. Clinical & Experimental Allergy, 2006; 36 (11): 1408 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2222.2006.02576.x
Adapted from materials provided by Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres.

 

Warning: Using a mobile phone while pregnant can seriously damage your baby May 23, 2008

Posted by brainbalancer in Environmental Stress.
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Another bomb on behavior from The (UK) Independent.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/warning-using-a-mobile-phone-while-pregnant-can-seriously-damage-your-baby-830352.html

Study of 13,000 children exposes link between use of handsets and later behavioural problems

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Sunday, 18 May 2008

Women who use mobile phones when pregnant are more likely to give birth to children with behavioural problems, according to authoritative research.

 

A giant study, which surveyed more than 13,000 children, found that using the handsets just two or three times a day was enough to raise the risk of their babies developing hyperactivity and difficulties with conduct, emotions and relationships by the time they reached school age. And it adds that the likelihood is even greater if the children themselves used the phones before the age of seven.

The results of the study, the first of its kind, have taken the top scientists who conducted it by surprise. But they follow warnings against both pregnant women and children using mobiles by the official Russian radiation watchdog body, which believes that the peril they pose “is not much lower than the risk to children’s health from tobacco or alcohol”.

The research – at the universities of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Aarhus, Denmark – is to be published in the July issue of the journal Epidemiology and will carry particular weight because one of its authors has been sceptical that mobile phones pose a risk to health.

UCLA’s Professor Leeka Kheifets – who serves on a key committee of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, the body that sets the guidelines for exposure to mobile phones – wrote three and a half years ago that the results of studies on people who used them “to date give no consistent evidence of a causal relationship between exposure to radiofrequency fields and any adverse health effect”.

The scientists questioned the mothers of 13,159 children born in Denmark in the late 1990s about their use of the phones in pregnancy, and their children’s use of them and behaviour up to the age of seven. As they gave birth before mobiles became universal, about half of the mothers had used them infrequently or not at all, enabling comparisons to be made.

They found that mothers who did use the handsets were 54 per cent more likely to have children with behavioural problems and that the likelihood increased with the amount of potential exposure to the radiation. And when the children also later used the phones they were, overall, 80 per cent more likely to suffer from difficulties with behaviour. They were 25 per cent more at risk from emotional problems, 34 per cent more likely to suffer from difficulties relating to their peers, 35 per cent more likely to be hyperactive, and 49 per cent more prone to problems with conduct.

The scientists say that the results were “unexpected”, and that they knew of no biological mechanisms that could cause them. But when they tried to explain them by accounting for other possible causes – such as smoking during pregnancy, family psychiatric history or socio-economic status – they found that, far from disappearing, the association with mobile phone use got even stronger.

They add that there might be other possible explanations that they did not examine – such as that mothers who used the phones frequently might pay less attention to their children – and stress that the results “should be interpreted with caution” and checked by further studies. But they conclude that “if they are real they would have major public health implications”.

Professor Sam Milham, of the blue-chip Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and the University of Washington School of Public Health – one of the pioneers of research in the field – said last week that he had no doubt that the results were real. He pointed out that recent Canadian research on pregnant rats exposed to similar radiation had found structural changes in their offspring’s brains.

The Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection says that use of the phones by both pregnant women and children should be “limited”. It concludes that children who talk on the handsets are likely to suffer from “disruption of memory, decline of attention, diminishing learning and cognitive abilities, increased irritability” in the short term, and that longer-term hazards include “depressive syndrome” and “degeneration of the nervous structures of the brain”.