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Author: Kristina Martin - Organic Lifestyle Magazine Author: Kristina Martin - Organic Lifestyle Magazine

Antibiotic-Resistance Threats Report Says These Bacteria Are Here to Stay

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have released their second Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States report, and antibiotic-resistant (AR) bacteria are here to stay. According to the report, more than 2.8 million AR infections occur and 35,000 people die every year. Those numbers have increased from the first report in 2013, where conservative estimates tallied 2 million cases of AR infections and at least 23,000 deaths. Robert R. Redfield, M.D., Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, emphasized the seriousness of the report’s findings…

Antibiotic resistance has been found in every U.S. state and in every country across the globe. There is no safe place from antibiotic resistance, but everyone can take action against it. Take action where you can, from handwashing to improving antibiotic use.”

Awareness is Key

Though the number of deaths from AR bacteria has risen since 2013, the overall percentage of deaths has gone down by eighteen percent. Yet AR bacteria were the cause of more than 85 percent of total deaths calculated in this report. The CDC listed 18 bacteria to monitor, with five designated as urgent threats: Candida Auris, carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter, carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), Neisseria gonorrhoeae, and Clostridioides difficile.

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A Brand New Day

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are no longer the bad guy in a science fiction film. They are an everyday fact of life.

The Threat Report has strategies for stopping antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but that’s no longer possible. Past experience will show that no amount of scrubbing, regardless of who’s cleaning and what they’re using, will be able to completely eliminate bacteria. Much of the difficulties we are now dealing with come from institutional failures, where the medical and agricultural fields chose antibiotic shortcuts over building a microbially healthy world. That has created bacteria on a scale that we are no longer able to easily contain. The bubble is gone.

Related: How to Detoxify From Antibiotics and Other Chemical Antimicrobials
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Copper Hospital Beds Could Be a Solution to Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

A new study published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology found that copper hospital beds in the ICU housed 95 percent fewer bacteria than standard hospital beds. The copper beds also maintained their low levels of microbial activity for the patient’s entire stay in the hospital. Dr. Michael G. Schmidt is a Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston and one of the co-authors of the study.

The findings indicate that antimicrobial copper beds can assist infection control practitioners in their quest to keep healthcare surfaces hygienic between regular cleanings, thereby reducing the potential risk of transmitting bacteria associated with healthcare associated infections…”

American Society of Microbiology

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Copper is anti-microbial, yet the idea to use the chemical to stop the spread of bacteria is even more timely considering the rise of antibiotic-resistant strains.

Stop the Spread of Bacteria

If the healthcare system changes nothing about the way it treats bacterial and microbial infections, 10 million people a year will die from antibiotic-resistant bacteria by the year 2050. As healthcare professionals prescribe increasing stronger antibiotics (including the “antibiotics of last resort”), bacteria are evolving to withstand those treatments. Some, like the multi-drug resistant Enterococcus faecium, have also developed an alcohol tolerance, rendering traditional hospital cleaning methods ineffective.

Copper can help with that. Copper ions are negatively charged. When those particles interact with microbes, the negative charge of the ions disrupt cell membranes and allow necessary nutrients to leak out, weakening and often destroying the microbe.

A Simple Solution

Copper has the potential to be a valuable tool in the current crises to treat infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Our current system won’t be able to continue as it is, and the more common-sense solutions we can find, the better. Copper’s antimicrobial properties are common knowledge, and we already have the materials. Eighty-six percent of the copper earmarked for consumer products ends up in pennies. How about we use some sense (terrible, I know), and put that resource towards something more meaningful?

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Weight-Loss Surgery is a Viable Option for Treating Obese Children, Says Pediatrics Journal

It’s easier to break something than it is to fix it…and the way we take care of ourselves is broken. It’s broken to the point that a new study published in Pediatrics, the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, states that more obese children and young adults should consider weight-loss surgery as a treatment. After doing a followup with patients up to twelve years after weight loss surgery, study authors found that patients’ Body Mass Index (BMI) decreased an average of 29 percent and instances of diabetes and high blood pressure significantly dropped.

Why Weight Loss Surgery?

According to the Centers for Disease Control, obesity affects 13.7 million children between the ages of 2 and 19 in the U.S. Data shows that almost one in five children in the United States is obese. Obesity is the number one chronic illness in U.S. children, and it can lead to serious health problems later in life like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal disorders, and cancer.

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It’s impossible to attribute the obesity epidemic to one factor, though there are likely culprits. In the United States, portion sizes are out of control. Look no further than fast food, something that more than 1 in 3 Americans eats on a given day. A McDonald’s hamburger in 1955 topped out at 3.7 ounces. Today, a Quarter Pounder Deluxe is 9.2 ounces. Kids are being served more, so they’re eating more.

But at the same time, they’re also eating less. Nearly two-thirds of global calories come from four crops: wheat, corn, soy, and rice. In addition to the lack of diversity, most of those crops end up in highly processed foods. These are the foods that are widely available, from gas stations to grocery stores. Children eating a western diet are eating more highly processed, nutritionally deficient food than they have at any time in the past.

Weight Loss Surgery as an Option

Reducing obesity requires a multi-pronged strategy: get educated, stop eating unhealthy food, and start eating vegetables. But broccoli is not an inherently crave-able food. It’s especially unappealing to a palate used to an endless supply of processed cereals, nuggets, and gummy fruit snacks. Children are not known for their ability to choose long-term benefits over immediate gratification.

From that viewpoint, weight-loss surgery is a viable option for childhood obesity. The most commonly performed weight-loss surgeries performed on children and adolescents are gastric bypass surgery and adjustable gastric band surgery. These surgeries are generally successful, as most estimates find that 80 percent of patients experience an improved quality of life.

Related: Stop Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

Widening the Gap

Bariatric surgery can make a difference in the lives of obese children, but it doesn’t address how the child got to that point in the first place. It also ignores the growing portion of the population that cannot afford to pay for a $20,000 surgery. It is likely that the majority of children who would benefit from this surgery are not going to be able to afford it or the maintenance that follows it, yet lower-income kids are more likely to be overweight or obese. According to the CDC, “the prevalence of obesity decreased with increasing level of education of the household head among children and adolescents aged 2-19 years.” The children that can afford weight-loss surgery are less likely to need it because their parents will likely be better informed, they will have better access to education and healthy food, and they will have healthcare coverage. Surgery is one way to lose weight, but it doesn’t address why losing weight was needed in the first place.

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Bayer See an Increase in Lawsuits After Glyphosate Verdicts

The numbers are in! Lawsuits against the world’s most popular herbicide, Round-up, have increased dramatically from 18,400 cases in July to 42,000 cases in October.

German company Bayer AG purchased agricultural behemoth Monsanto in June of 2018, and since then the pharmaceutical company has suffered three significant losses in rulings against glyphosate. Due to these, Bayer has seen a significant rise in the number of claims filed against the herbicide. The company comments in a statement shared with Reuters…

With the substantial increase in plaintiff advertising this year, we expect to see a significant surge in the number of plaintiff filings over the third quarter.”

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In Order

The first verdict was bit of a shock.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate, the active ingredient in Round-up, as “probably carcinogenic in humans” in March of 2015. The United States federal government, especially the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), doesn’t agree with that status. When the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment declared glyphosate as carcinogenic to humans, the EPA went as far as to issue a news release to notify companies that the agency would not approve product labels stating that glyphosate causes cancer. In light of that opposition, arguing to a jury that the herbicide causes cancer when the federal government disagrees would be a fool’s errand. Yet Dewayne Johnson received a verdict for $289 million dollars in San Francisco County superior court in August 2018 (that award would later be cut down to $78 million). Lawyers estimate that Bayer’s brand new acquisition is facing 4,000 similar cases.

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

Those numbers didn’t seem to bother the company. CEO Werner Baumann went on various news shows in February 2019 to discuss the company’s 2018 stats and reported positive results. During a CNBC interview, Baumann said the company was optimistic looking into 2019. According to the interviewer, Bayer was facing 11,000 lawsuits.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/02/27/bayer-ceo-says-company-is-confident-about-growth-in-2019.html

It seems Baumann’s optimism was misplaced, as Bayer lost another California lawsuit during March of 2019. The plaintiff was awarded $80 million (that amount would later be reduced by the presiding judge to $26 million). This decision had clear consequences. Retail giant Costco stopped selling Round-up, and Bayer stock prices dropped almost $4,000 in less than two weeks.

May 2019 brought another verdict against the company. The amount of money awarded to the two plaintiffs increased significantly, with the jury awarding each person $1 billion in damages (that sum would later be reduced by a different judge to $86.7 million). Bayer’s second-quarter report in July 2019 stated that there were 18,400 lawsuits in regard to glyphosate and cancer.

Now we have over 42,000 people involved in lawsuits against Bayer and glyphosate. The number of glyphosate lawsuits has more than doubled in the past four months. The judge presiding over the second verdict against Bayer, Vince Chhabria has mandated confidential mediation aimed at settling the 900 cases he currently oversees, but it is unlikely that will be enough to slow down the number of lawsuits accumulating.

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Decisions

This doesn’t seem like a big deal. There have only been three verdicts against the company. While juries awarded the plaintiffs substantial amounts, all three judgments have been later reduced. Bayer seems to have accepted this as the cost of doing business.

The increase in lawsuits against glyphosate is a positive thing. It’s a necessary thing. But it isn’t nearly enough. Roundup has been on the market since 1974. The amount of plaintiffs seems small when you consider the damage that had been done by forty-five years of using this product. Even more importantly, Bayer won’t care until they see this affect their bottom line – their stock prices. It remains to be seen if that will entice them to do the right thing for the environment and human health.

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Neonicotinoids are Harming the Birds and the Bees

Neonicotinoids, a class of pesticide linked to the decline of bee populations worldwide, have also been linked to declining bird populations. Researchers from the University of Saskeccthwan exposed a population of migrating white-crowned sparrows to imidacloprid (a neonicotinoid manufactured by Bayer). Birds given the highest dosage lost significant percentages of their body weight and necessary fat storage with hours of exposure. The same group of birds also deviated from usual eating patterns, and many of the sparrows took an extra 3.5 days to continue their migration. This is a big deal for bird populations. According to Christy Morrissey, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Saskatchewan and a co-author of the study,

There is a major systematic population decline in farmland birds, and these commonly-used pesticides are an identifying mechanism.”

What It Means

Migration is a critical and dangerous time in a bird’s life. There are increased numbers of predators, and timing migration correctly is crucial to successful reproduction. Birds that arrive later than the others will arrive to find that many mates and quality nesting spots have already been chosen. Neonicotinoid exposure caused many birds to delay their migration by an extra 3.5 days, more than enough to negatively affect migrating bird populations. How is the insecticide doing that?

This study found that birds exposed to imidacloprid stopped eating and lost up to six percent of their overall body weight and about seventeen percent of their fat reserves. The stored fat is especially important for migration, as it provides the energy necessary for long migrations. The research team in charge of this study previously reported on the detrimental effects of imidacloprid on birds in 2017, where the birds experienced weight loss and disorientation. Four of the birds in that study died within 24 hours of receiving their last dose of the pesticide, with researchers euthanizing two due to breathing difficulties and foaming at the crop (a pocket in the throat where birds temporarily store food).

Unpleasant, Yet Unsurprising

The majority of research and concern surrounding neonicotinoids has dealt with bees. The European Union voted to ban these types of pesticides with the exception of use in covered greenhouses in order to protect bee populations. Major Canadian cities like Montreal and Vancouver have also banned the insecticide. Bees exposed to neonicotinoids are reported to have more difficulties surviving the winter, maintaining their hive and larvae, experienced problems reproducing, and have compromised immune systems, among other issues.

A 2019 study also found that bees exposed to imidaclopridexperienced flight difficulties for bees in a controlled environment. Like this recent study on birds, researchers found that the bees experienced disruptions in the usual flight patterns. Whereas the birds waited until they were more able to complete their migration, the bees in the study from Imperial College London exhibited hyperactive behaviors for the first portion of their flight which then dropped off, resulting in shorter flights. Daniel Kenna is the first author of the study,

Neonicotinoids are similar to nicotine in the way they stimulate neurons, and so a ‘rush’ or hyperactive burst of activity does make sense…However, our results suggest there may be a cost to this initial rapid flight, potentially through increased energy expenditure or a lack of motivation, in the form of reduced flight endurance.”

Regulating these Pesticides

Neonicotinoids are one of the widely used groups of pesticides in the world. In the U.S., they’ve been sprayed on up to 95% of corn and canola, as well as other crops like soybeans, cotton, sorghum, sugar beets, cereal grains, rice, nuts, wine grapes, and assorted fruits and vegetables. These chemicals have been proven to disrupt bee and bird populations, crucial parts of a working ecosystem. In 2017, the rusty patched bumblebee became the first bee on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) endangered species list, but little else has changed in the U.S. In fact, things are likely to get worse.

The previous administration’s FWS announced plans to phase out neonicotinoid usage by January of 2016. The Trump administration reversed that ban in 2018. The Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of sulfoxaflor, another pesticide shown to harm bee populations, confirms that this administration is unconcerned with the damage these insecticides do to our necessary pollinators.

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Harm From Air Pollution Comparable to Smoking

A new study from researchers at several American universities has found that long-term exposure to air pollution, especially ozone, leads to an increase in emphysema that mirrors that of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for 29 years. Chronic lower respiratory illnesses like emphysema are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, but the number of people smoking fell to its lowest recorded point in U.S. history in 2017.

Rates of chronic lung disease in this country are going up and increasingly it is recognized that this disease occurs in nonsmokers…We really need to understand what’s causing chronic lung disease, and it appears that air pollution exposures that are common and hard to avoid might be a major contributor…”

Dr. Joel Kaufman

Nuts and Bolts

Of the air pollution examined in this study, researchers found that ground-level ozone, or O3, pollution had the biggest effect on emphysema. The study took place over a period of 18 years in six different cities in the United States – Chicago, Winston-Salem, N.C., Baltimore, Los Angeles, St. Paul, Minnesota, and New York. It found that cities, where average ozone levels rose by 3 ppb (parts per billion), saw a corresponding rise in emphysema rates.

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We were surprised to see how strong air pollution’s impact was on the progression of emphysema on lung scans, in the same league as the effects of cigarette smoking, which is by far the best-known cause of emphysema…”

According to Dr. Kaufman

The United States and Europe have seen declining levels of ozone in cities over the past 30 years. However, countries like India and China have seen the opposite trend. In 2015, the average ozone levels in 74 major Chinese cities increased by 3.4 percent. India and China accounted for 79 percent of premature respiratory deaths attributed to ozone pollution in a 2010 study. That can have serious effects on public health.

The New Normal

In 2015, air pollution killed 6.5 million people worldwide. It’s likely those numbers will keep rising. In the United States, the Trump Administration has been dismantling EPA policies designed to keep air pollution in check. They have finished or are currently in the process of rolling back 22 regulations that govern air pollution and emissions, including changes to the Clean Air Act. Why are we going backward?

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Juul Liquids Contain Lung Irritants When Heated

A recent study of eight different e-liquids sold by Juul found that some of those products formed chemical irritants called acetals when heated.

Juul is one of the biggest names in the emerging e-cigarette market, but this new study furthers the growing concern that these products may also be incredibly harmful to our health. The lack of knowledge has not been helped by the lack of regulation, as these products don’t require approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). That freedom has allowed them to use compounds like vanillin, which is banned in regular cigarettes.

According to Hanno Erythropel, lead author of the study, this is bad news for consumers.

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“People often assume that these e-liquids are a final product once they are mixed…But the reactions create new molecules in the e-liquids, and it doesn’t just happen in e-liquids from small vape shops, but also in those from the biggest manufacturers in the U.S…”

He goes on to say…

“…you are breathing this in. We didn’t imagine people would be inhaling flavor compounds at the level they are now. We have very little information.”

Acetals and Ingredients

Acetals are formed when you eliminate water from alcohol and aldehydes, chemicals used to artificially flavor or perfume food. Exposing human cells to acetals causes human cells to exhibit an irritation response. Researchers noticed high acetal levels in one particular Juul flavor – creme brulee.

The creme brulee tested positive for high levels of vanillin acetals. Vanillin is a compound used for vanillin flavoring. It’s also been banned for use in regular cigarettes. But e-cigarettes contain them. Sven-Eric Jordt at Duke University is a co-author of this study…

We were surprised that levels in Juul vapor were already close to safety limits for workplaces where vanillin is used, such as in bakeries and the flavor chemical industry…”

As the FDA has yet to implement proper regulations or require companies to list the ingredients in their products, it is likely there could be more unpleasant surprises in store for e-cigarette users.

The FDA Calls for Regulation

The FDA is trying to remedy this oversight. The administration had previously set 2022 as the deadline for e-cigarette companies to submit applications to keep selling their products. That has been changed to May of 2020, after a U.S. District Court judge in Maryland ruled that the FDA had been acting outside of its legal authority in allowing e-cigarette companies to operate without proper regulation.

Although previous FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb expressed doubts that e-cigarette manufacturers would find it difficult to get their products approved, it’s not very comforting to think that the only reason the FDA is enforcing rules strictly and in a timely fashion is that they are legally compelled to.

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