Single Cause of Autism, Cancer, and Allergies

CORN

Bear with me, and please, please, add or correct where needed. This is wild...

It's pretty well agreed-upon that exposure to certain cell-damaging substances in-utero contributes to childhood autism. So..could there be a main culprit, a single source with the dubious honor of most autism, cancer, and allergies caused?

(There are thousands of men and women smarter than me working these problems, but I wanted to throw this out there)

The United States has the highest rates of autism, cancer (in the most general sense), and allergies in the world from what I can tell. While other countries may not be up to speed at diagnosing (or maybe we're too quick to call something autism spectrum, too good at catching cancer and diagnosing allergies, etc.), it does look like America has more per capita incidences of these three modern plagues than other countries, and if you adjust for improvements in record keeping and diagnostic capability, I think you'll see we're the clear winner.

The United States has, by far, the highest per capita consumption of corn on the planet. Corn makes up the majority of what we eat and drink, from soft drinks to hamburgers. Just counting fresh/frozen/canned corn, the US eats twice as much as any other country, and that doesn't even account for all the corn byproducts we eat.

www.autisticsociety.org...=378--0-0.html



So, then there's this - use of chemical pesticides on corn is trending downwards but autism rises...

www.ontariocorn.org...

But wait..the use of natural pesticides and modified crops is rising steeply..which brings us to Pyrethrin and GM corn.

Pyrethrin

Now, this stuff is not as widely used on crops as some other pesticides, but it has been used since the 1960's (roundabouts) to preserve corn after harvest and stabilize corn products.

Since the practice began, autism rates have increased ten-fold. There's a chemically synthesized amalgam, called permethrin, which is widely used for pest control on crops, notably corn (particularly corn intended for use as ANIMAL FEED), as well as other pest control applications.

Permethrin has been shown to seriously affect testosterone levels, which is strange, because
testosterone has been positively linked with autism in boys!

Stop me if you've heard this before.

The spike in autism, cancer, and allergies also coincides with increased hormone levels in pigs and cows and, which means us, by proxy. Pigs and cows are..drum roll please..fed primarily on corn! (high fructose corn syrup has been linked with INCREASED ESTROGEN LEVELS)

Just some abstracts and news articles, nothing fancy, nothing official - no real research to speak of, and no experimentation. Just a theory, and a buttload of little dots begging to be connected. There are a lot of really talented people working to figure out why autism rates, cancer rates, and allergy rates are rising in such strange ways.

I wonder if all these talented people ever thought to sit down at a really big table and hash out the connections between their disparate areas of expertise. They might find out they have quite a lot in common.

No idea if there's any merit to these connections, but I think they're at least worth exploring.

Bottom line, chemically-treated, genetically modified corn seriously imbalances hormone levels, and imbalanced hormone levels are positively linked to children with autism, as well as food allergies, and many types of cancer.

Corn (hormones) and Cancer

Hormonal imbalance is often the result of liver damage, and liver damage can readily be caused by..CORN.

Oh, and by the way...

The lowest rates of Autism, Cancer, and allergies occur in..guess where..c'mon..you can guess..communities that eat no corn and very little corn byproduct. The place where this correlation seems to fall apart is native tribes that eat no corn products but smoke lots of cigarettes, suffering much higher incidences of lung cancer. Go figure. Not relevant to this post so I'll pretend I never read it and have another cigarette.

Innuit/Native Americans eat the least corn of the major census groups (white, black, asian/pacific islander, hispanic, innuit, other) and have the fewest incidences of cancer (except lung), allergies, and autism.

Black males have had the highest cancer rates for some time, and they also consume the most pork (and corn).

Also, the rates of testicular cancer have doubled in white men since 1950 or so, but tripled in black men

It's hard to find statistics for overall cancer trends, 1960-2008, but I'd bet anything that there have been pronounced increases, especially in lympathic, reproductive and digestive cancers in that time. The time frame is important, because it creates a window, something happened in the early 1960's, it seems, to really explode the cancer rates - some other contenders are widespread adoption of plastics, atomic testing, and mercury-preservatives in vaccinations.

Maybe there is no one cause, maybe all these factors are working together to make us sick. I'm still very interested in the corn connection...

Okay, that's it. I gotta sleep sometime...

[edit on 6-1-2009 by WyrdeOne]

I think your on to it!
Recently, a neighbor, who is served pork in almost every dish, for years, just had a huge log of cancer removed from his chest cavity; but is otherwise a healthy non smoker from a family of health and longevity.

All sorts of reasons to be suspicious of pork, notably the nerve damage reported in the last link here.
Irish Pork Recalled
Pickton Farm Wiki (human remains in food chain via pork)
Pig Brain Mist disease in Pork Workers


I have to eat (choose to eat) alternate grains to wheat. I avoid all corn syrup solids and common vegetable oils/corn oils. But cornmeal...ah!



[edit on 6-1-2009 by HugmyRek]

Let's not forget Diabetes, I think that's possible as well.

HFCS.

www.sciencedaily.com...

[edit on 6/1/2009 by kosmicjack]

reply to post by WyrdeOne

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heeello

ok, maybe

however can i thrown this spanner in?

How many atomic/nuclear tests have there been? all that radioactive material floating around the atmos must play a part somehow.

the following quote dates from 1996



Source

there has been an estimated 4200kg of plutonium ejected into the earths atmosphere and can have the following effects on human health



Source

David

Don't forget things like soy beans.
Have you looked at ingredient labels lately? More and more food protein is derived from soybeans.
It's touted as healthy, but I avoid it when I can.
It's GM, it has phytoestrogens in it, must be heavily processed.
And we consume it unfermented unlike like the asians consume it, fermentation makes it less estrogenic.

More and more products, along with corn, aspartame and soy products have grown in use exponentially in recent times.

Here, some stuff, I got to go:
www.healingdaily.com...

[edit on 6-1-2009 by Toadmund]

An interesting theory, I will admit. And though it may be an aggravating factor, I am of the opinion that we have such high cancer rates because of the SV-40 virus that was contained in all "immunizations" up until the '70's.

The SV- (for Simian Virus) 40 has been found to be a cancer virus, and the ones most often injected with the "immunization" drugs were Americans.

So corn and othe ingredients may reduce resistance to SV-40, but I am sure that it is not the only factor.

[edit on 1/6/2009 by Amaterasu]

If I understand, it is not corn per se', that is the problem, but what has been done to corn over the years that makes it and other foodstuffs bad today.
I am sure there there are a multitude of things contributing to disease that all relate to the "science" that has been imposed upon us - from chemicals, to plastics to radiation.
What people seem to forget is that we evolved for thousands of years in a world without all of those artificial things. That is the environment our bodies are evolved to live in and depend upon. This totally artificial world created by science is not. Is it any wonder that our bodies are reacting?
I hope that people wake up and realize that for all the "science" that goes into new products there is a lot we don't know, and we need to be much more cautious about their use.
I for one am reverting back (not an easy task) as much as I can to a lifestyle that is more akin to the old traditional way of doing things. I make use of healthy bacteria and other organisms via Kefir grains with which I culture milk products, grow some of my own food and eat organic to the degree I can afford it.

I agree with corn based products being a contributor to ailments. One of the worst ingredients in food is HighFructoseCornSyrup. When it is made the first thing they add to make it is Sulfuric Acid. (Battery Acid)
www.naturalnews.com...
Also consider that many countries have flouride in the drinking water.

Source

And aluminum is in many products.

Source
More about aluminum...www.naturalnews.com...

MSG is another toxic ingredient. It is a known "Excitotoxin" www.naturalnews.com...

There are just too many toxic non food items in the foods that are produced.
Your body was not designed to have so many foreign substances to deal with.

Not everything that you can put in your mouth that ends up going through your digestive system is "FOOD"

[edit on 6-1-2009 by Muundoggie]

Interesting theory WyrdeOne, and definitely worth exploring.

I think it's more likely that if there is both an increase in these diseases in the recent US population and a link to eating corn, that it's something done to the corn rather than the plant maize itself. Whether that's genetic manipulation, pesticides and other chemicals used, monoculture, or how the corn is processed into food.

The reason I say this is that I suspect that the native cultures in much of the Americas got an even higher percent of their nutrition from corn than we do – although mostly in more recognizably corn forms (corn meal, largely).

I know that even now corn is the major nutrient for the Mayan communities in Chiapas and Yucatan, and I suspect that's true for many other indigenous peoples also.

Another possibility is that unlike those cultures, where the second most important contributor to nutrition is beans (whether black or kidney or other), ours is probably either meat, fat, or another flour.

I would look at wheat before I would consider corn.

Recent studies have shown that between 1 in 200 Americans have antibodies for gluten.

www.sciencedaily.com...



That is only one of many known manifestations of illness caused by those sensitive to gluten consuming it unknowingly. It is linked to a wide variety of problems as the immune response the body then launches in response to the "allergen" can cause the body to attack a wide variety of its own tissues, not only the nervous system. It is a known link to bowel cancer, and diabetes, and it is suspected to be linked to MS, many types of skin rashes (eczema, etc) and even hair loss (alopecia areata and universalis). We also know that inflammation in the body such as that which would be caused by a sustained auto immune response is a factor in heart disease and arthritis.

And, corn originates in the Americas. Many Native Americans have a very high level of corn consumption, and in fact have festivals for it.

www.powwows.com...

YouTube Link

[edit on 6-1-2009 by Illusionsaregrander]

[edit on 6-1-2009 by Illusionsaregrander]

Ill take the contrarian position and pose the following;

If everything we eat is bad, why are we living longer and longer?

Canadians, Americans, Western Europeans, Japanese and Australasians live the longest. Why is that? We eat more and more. We are getting fatter and fatter. Yet we are living longer and longer.

People with no modified food are dying before they turn 50.

It was mentioned by the OP that; "Hormonal imbalance is often the result of liver damage..."

Liver damage doesn't cause "hormonal imbalance". Hormones are produced by your thyroid, parathyroid, adrenal glands. Your liver is what converts and processes chemicals, drugs, etc.

Nah, I think all of these major problems are caused by a self-destructive life style.

The water here is cleaner than any highly populated nation.

It's just the food and obesity in my opinion.


Compare Americans to the Chinese, which side has more chemicals in their food and which side has more cancer, allergies, and autism proportionally?




American food products are of the highest quality. It's just that Americans are too picky, if a carrot don't look right they think it has cancer.

[edit on 1/6/2009 by die_another_day]

Personally, I wouldn't go so far as to say that corn is the SINGLE cause of every one of these unnatural human ailments as the title suggests (hmm, isn't it true that domesticated animals, domesticated human animals for that matter, are more susceptible to disease than wild animals?)... but I would totally agree that it's more than likely a contributing factor. Everything trickles down the food chain.

Time to start visiting Planet Organic I guess. It would seem that just about every other product is tainted in one way or another. F-ing gross.

[edit on 6-1-2009 by Coup_Detat_Cam]

reply to post by Electro38

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Liver damage DOES cause hormonal imbalance, as the liver is the organ principally responsible for metabolizing the body's hormones and regulating the concentration of these substances in the blood.

I didn't know this for the longest time, but I noticed the link when reading about HGH and estrogen imbalances.


die_another_day
I beg to differ - American food products are not of the highest quality. High Fructose Corn Syrup is in EVERYTHING we eat, practically. If people eat fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh meat and lightly processed grains, they're better off, but the typical American's diet looks like a shopping list for DOW chemical...


illusionsaregrander
Obviously a diet of natural corn, unprocessed and unpolluted, will probably have few side effects.

Once you enter HFCS into the mix, along with pesticides, herbicides, and genetically modified corn that contains elevated levels of growth hormones, that's when the problem develops.

Well, one way to test that theory quickly and painlessly is to find out if any of those conditions you are attributing to corn existed outside the America's before corn was transported to other continents.

And, if it is not just natural corn but corn meeting the conditions you outline above, did those health conditions exist at all before we began treating corn in that fashion?

If the answer is yes to either of those questions, it would seem that logically corn could NOT be the single cause.

(Although it would not eliminate it as a possible co-conspirator. )

People in US,Canada,Australia and some other country live longer because they have the highest health care system. Take away the doctors and see where people will live longer.

reply to post by WyrdeOne

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Allergies? Well, I think that would have more to do with an imbalance of intracellular super-hormones called Eicosanoids. Insulin directly affects Eicosanoid levels.

Cancer? It's been correllated with high levels of IgF-1(Insulin Like Growth Factor). Keyword=Insulin.

Autism? There have been studies showing low levels of IgF-1 and IgF-2 in infants that develop autism. Once again....Insulin.

Now, corellation does not mean causation, but, it's quite clear that insulin impacts more than just blood sugars.

I would argue that corn, wheat, and most carbs that contribute to elevated insulin levels should be held responsible. These are only a few symptoms of hyperinsulinemia.

Forbidden Endocrinology

-Dev

reply to post by WyrdeOne

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You're right, I forgot about that, liver does metabolize hormones.