This post discusses the importance of eating organic for chronic illness.
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Table of Contents
What does eating organic mean?
When you have a chronic illness like MCAS it pays to know what organic means because not all food labeling is intuitive. Organic or biological foods are produced by methods complying with the standards of organic farming. Standards vary worldwide, but organic farming features practices that cycle resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. Generally, that means that chemical pesticides and herbicides are avoided in food production. However, as you will see below, that doesn’t always apply to all stages of food production.
What is MCAS?
Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) is a chronic condition that affects all organ systems. MCAS is serious and disabling and people with MCAS experience often significant and debilitating symptoms daily, including anaphylaxis, which can be fatal.
MCAS is often found in combination with other chronic conditions such as Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS).
Frequently healthcare providers do not know about MCAS, and the tests for MCAS are problematic because they are not uniformly reliable. MCAS can be difficult to manage. Treatments include blocking mast cell mediators with anti-histamines and mast cell stabilizers, as well as avoiding triggers.
Check out this post on how to manage MCAS.
Why organic is a vital part of eating healthily
I learned last week in the Gut and Brain Class at Frequency Fixx that glyphosate is the main chemical herbicide used on crops. Unfortunately, our bodies detoxify glyphosate through the same pathways needed by the liver to detox other toxins. If that pathway is bogged down, our body has to hold onto those toxins.
In our current toxic world, our bodies are very likely to be bogged down, so your detox needs help, not slow down. Eating organic relieves our bodies of one major source of toxins. We need toxins going out, not new ones coming in.
As I discuss in this post, toxicity is one of the main causes of MCAS. And this post discusses the importance of detoxification when you have MCAS.
What is glyphosate?
Glyphosate, commonly known as Roundup is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide and crop desiccant. It is an organophosphorus compound, specifically a phosphonate, which acts by inhibiting the plant enzyme 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase. It is used to kill weeds, especially annual broadleaf weeds and grasses that compete with crops.
Crop desiccant means that it is used to dry crops for storage after harvest. So while a crop may be grown organically without glyphosate it might be treated after harvest to dry the product. This happens with many organic grains, including rice, wheat, and oats.
Glyphosate: the cancer-causing Roundup chemical found in children’s cereal
Glyphosate is a toxic pesticide widely used on crops. The active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, it is sprayed on oats right before harvest to dry them out, so it ends up in many oat-based products, like cereals and breakfast bars.
Since there is no federal monitoring of glyphosate in oats, we wanted to know how much Roundup could be found in oat-based breakfast foods popular with children. So we commissioned independent labs to conduct three separate rounds of tests.
After an initial set of tests revealed troubling amounts of glyphosate in popular oat-based products marketed to children, we twice expanded our test to include even more products. Once again, almost all of the products had levels of glyphosate above 160 parts per billion, which is our health benchmark for glyphosate in oats.
https://www.ewg.org/areas-focus/toxic-chemicals/glyphosate#:~:text=Glyphosate%3A%20the%20cancer%2Dcausing%20Roundup,like%20cereals%20and%20breakfast%20bars.
Eating organic is even more important when you are chronically ill
When you have a chronic illness like MCAS your body is already struggling to keep up with detoxification.
And glyphosate itself has been found to cause mast cell degranulation. – source
It is noteworthy that antibiotic use in organic meat and dairy products is less in organic production. The prevalent use of antibiotics in conventional animal production is a key driver of antibiotic resistance in society. – source
Breaking down the problems with glyphosate
There are several ways that glyphosate in particular is problematic for human health.
This article discusses how glyphosate is implicated in manganese depletion, which can lead to gut dysbiosis, autism, birth defects, infertility, and neurological diseases.
In addition to posing problems with manganese in humans and animals, glyphosate is also an endocrine disruptor. Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can interfere with endocrine systems by mimicking hormones in the body’s endocrine system. These disruptions can cause cancerous tumors, birth defects, and other developmental disorders. The problem is not just that glyphosate disrupts the endocrine system, but that very low doses of glyphosate affect the body more than higher doses. – source
In addition, for rats exposed to low-dose RoundUp, their fat cells and liver cells had increased inflammatory markers, including prostaglandin D2 synthesis from mast cells. – source
Another study showed an interaction between the negative effects of glyphosate and the CYP1A1 gene variants. Other studies show that glyphosate affects neuronal and oxidative stress pathways. – source
The key to avoiding glyphosate
This makes it critical to search for foods, and especially grains, that are certified free of glyphosate. Because of industry pressure on our regulatory bodies and poorly constructed scientific studies, glyphosate is considered safe at high levels. So the onus is on the consumer to be aware of the risks and take extra care to look for and find products that are free of glyphosate. For instance, this brand of oats is certified to be free of glyphosate.
The bucket theory
The bucket theory offers a helpful analogy for understanding symptom reactions with MCAS.
Think of your body as an empty bucket that you want to keep from overflowing. Different foods and activities fill your histamine bucket at different speeds but they combine to form the total level of histamine in your body (how full your bucket is). A fuller bucket means you have more histamine symptoms. When you manage triggers, reduce exposure to known triggers, and take medications and supplements to reduce histamine, you can manage the level of your bucket.
Know your typical symptom progression
Knowing your symptom progression in a symptom flare is the key to developing your own rescue plan. In this post, I discuss how to determine your own symptom progression. Once you know what typically happens in your symptom progression you can design a rescue plan to address those symptoms.
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