The Avalanche of New Mercury-Autism Studies | Gluten Free Works

58 empirical reports on autism and heavy metal toxins, 43 suggest some link may be present, while 13 reports found no link

Mercury is a ubiquitous source of danger in fish, drugs, fungicides/herbicides, dental fillings, thermometers, and many other products. Elevated Hg concentrations may remain in the brain from several years to decades following exposure. 

Can Eating Wheat Cause Psychiatric Problems?

Wheat contains high amounts of wheat germ agglutinin (WGA); a glycoprotein classified as a lectin, which is largely responsible for many of wheat’s ill effects. Other grains high in lectins include rice, spelt, and rye.

“WGA can pass through the blood brain barrier (BBB) through a process called ‘adsorptive endocytosis’ … WGA may attach to the protective coating on the nerves known as the myelin sheathand is capable of inhibiting nerve growth factor which is important for the growth, maintenance, and survival of certain target neurons. WGA binds to N-Acetylglucosamine which is believed to function as an atypical neurotransmitter functioning in nocioceptive (pain) pathways.”

The traditional ways of addressing many of these anti-nutrients is by sprouting, fermenting and cooking. However, lectins are designed to withstand degradation through a wide range of pH and temperatures. WGA lectin is particularly tough because it’s actually formed by the same disulfide bonds that give strength and resilience to vulcanized rubber and human hair.

Furthermore, because lectins are so small, and hard to digest, they tend to bioaccumulate in your body, where they can interfere with biological processes. WGA is particularly troublesome in this regard. Studies indicate it has a number of health-harming characteristics and activities:

Pro-inflammatory—WGA stimulates the synthesis of pro-inflammatory chemical messengers (cytokines) in intestinal and immune cells, and has been shown to play a causative role in chronic thin gut inflammation.

Immunotoxicity—WGA induces thymus atrophy in rats , and anti-WGA antibodies in human blood have been shown to cross-react with other proteins, indicating that they may contribute to autoimmunity . In fact, WGA appears to play a role in celiac disease (CD) that is entirely distinct from that of gluten, due to significantly higher levels of IgG and IgA antibodies against WGA found in patients with CD, when compared with patients with other intestinal disorders.

Neurotoxicity— WGA can cross your blood brain barrier through a process called “adsorptive endocytosis,” pulling other substances with it. WGA may attach to your myelin sheath and is capable of inhibiting nerve growth factor, which is important for the growth, maintenance, and survival of certain target neurons.

Excitotoxicity— Wheat, dairy, and soy contain exceptionally high levels of glutamic and aspartic acid, which makes them all potentially excitotoxic. Excitotoxicity is a pathological process where glutamic and aspartic acid cause an over-activation of your nerve cell receptors, which can lead to calcium-induced nerve and brain injury. These two amino acids may contribute to neurodegenerative conditions such as multiple sclerosis, Alzhemier’s, Huntington’s disease, and other nervous system disorders such as epilepsy, ADD/ADHD and migraines.

Cytotoxicity—WGA has been demonstrated to be cytotoxic to both normal and cancerous cell lines, capable of inducing either cell cycle arrest or programmed cell death (apoptosis).

Disrupts Endocrine Function—WGA may contribute to weight gain, insulin resistance, and leptin resistance by blocking the leptin receptor in your hypothalamus. It also binds to both benign and malignant thyroid nodules , and interferes with the production of secretin from your pancreas, which can lead to digestive problems and pancreatic hypertrophy.

Cardiotoxicity—WGA has a potent, disruptive effect on platelet endothelial cell adhesion molecule-1, which plays a key role in tissue regeneration and safely removing neutrophils from your blood vessels.

Adversely effects gastrointestinal function by causing increased shedding of the intestinal brush border membrane, reducing the surface area, and accelerating cell loss and shortening of villi. It also causes cytoskeleton degradation in intestinal cells, contributing to cell death and increased turnover, and decreases levels of heat shock proteins in gut epithelial cells, leaving them more vulnerable to damage.

Aside from high amounts of WGA, wheat also contains a number of other potentially health-harming components, including:

  • Gliadin (an alcohol soluble protein component)
  • Gliadomorpin (exorphins, or group of opioid peptides that form during digestion of the gluten protein)
  • Enzyme inhibitors

One recent study, published in the Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology last year, found that even those who do not present symptoms of celiac disease may have antigliadin antibodies, which was found to increase the risk of depression in elderly individuals.

“Individuals with recent-onset psychosis and with multi-episode schizophrenia who have increased antibodies to gliadin may share some immunologic features of celiac disease, but their immune response to gliadin differs from that of celiac disease.”

 

A bit more on Gliadorphin
Gliadorphin (also known as gluteomorphin) is an opioid peptide that is formed during digestion of the gliadin component of the gluten protein. It is usually broken down into amino acids by digestion enzymes. It has been hypothesized that children with autism have abnormal leakage from the gut of this compound, which then passes into the brain and disrupts brain function. This is partly the basis for the gluten-free, casein-free diet. Studies of this diet have had important methodological flaws, and the scientific evidence is not adequate to make treatment recommendations.

If a man has a child later in life, health risks abound.

a man over 40 is almost six times as likely as a man under 30 to father an autistic child. Since then, research has shown that a man’s chances of fathering offspring with schizophrenia double when he hits 40 and triple at age 50. The incidence of bipolarity, epilepsy, prostate cancer and breast cancer also increases in children born to men approaching 40. Both dwarfism and Marfan syndrome (a disorder of the connective tissue) have been linked to older fathers, and according to research published in 1996 in the journal Nature Genetics, Apert syndrome (a disorder characterized by malformations of the skull, face, hands and feet) is a mutation caused exclusively by advanced paternal age. A 2009 study at the University of Queensland, Australia, found a correlation between advanced paternal age and poorer performance by children on intelligence tests (the children of older mothers actually performed better). And when researchers at King’s College, London, bred mice from fathers of differing ages, the offspring of older fathers exhibited significant deficits in social and exploratory behavior.

Milk - not doing a body good. Exploring the connection with stress, histamine, heart disease, diabetes, autism/asd, schizophrenia, more…

Milk is a sedative:

For generations, mothers have given their children a warm glass of milk before bed as a way to help them fall asleep. As far back as 1934, this home remedy gained scientific validation when it was observed that people who ate milk and cornflakes were more likely to enjoy a full night of uninterrupted sleep.

In 1997, pediatric researchers added to the evidence by demonstrating that newborns given an infant formula containing milk fell asleep not solely due to nursing and being held, but owing specifically to something in milk itself.

In 2000, researchers identified what that “something” was. It turns out that nutrients found in cow’s milk called bioactive peptides (chains of amino acids) exert a sedative effect on the brain and induce sustained sleep patterns.

These bioactive milk peptides have since been shown to act on the brain’s GABA-A receptors, the same mechanism of action that makes the class of sedatives known as benzodiazepines so effective. The advantage of milk peptides, of course, is that they induce relaxation and sleep without the side effects associated with long-term benzodiazepine use.

In pre-clinical models, milk peptides markedly reduce anxiety and improve sleep in animals subjected to chronic stress.

In human studies, a proprietary bioactive milk peptide compound used widely in Europe has been shown to effectively induce relaxation, leading not only to deeper, more restorative sleep, but also to substantial improvements across a wide range of stress markers.

The article cited above goes on to talk about how their milk extract is marvelous, and how it succeeds in reducing stress in additional clinical trials.

Milk contains casein…

Casein has been documented to break down in the stomach to produce the peptide casomorphin, an opioid that acts as a histamine releaser. 

What are the effects of this histamine release?. It’s complicated because there are multiple receptors for it:H1,H2,H3,H4, each of which do something different when histamine is released and stimulates them:

  • [H1] Histamine heightens allergic reactions and those you experience during colds and allergies. It makes you more likely to cough and sneeze. On your skin it makes you more likely to have eczema and get hives and it makes insect bites more itchy. For your stomach, it heightens nausea and motion sickness. It also wakes the body up, perhaps to deal with these perceived problems.
  • [H2] Histamine dilates your blood vessels, and is involved in erections. It also inhibits part of your immune system (antibody synthesis, T-cell proliferation and cytokine production).
  • [H3] Makes you sleepy and lessens pain perception. So H1 makes you awake, but H3 makes you sleep, so for whatever reason milk’s action on the H3 histamine receptors appear to override its effects on H1 receptors. 
  • [H4] Active in bone marrow and the immune system.

So how to make sense of these different ways in which Histamine acts? As this site says,

Histamine is an immune system mediator or, more simply, a chemical messenger that helps direct your body’s response to a foreign invader. 

It essentially tells your body, get overly active in fighting off a perceived acute disease or threat of some sort - and get a little bit stressed out about it - and lower general immunity, relax with respect anything other than this acute problem, and go to sleep.

So histamine takes a small issue - whether it’s bee pollen or some other allergen, and makes your body perceive it to be a huge problem and totally focuses your body on defending itself from said problem. My guess is it does the same thing in your brain personality-wise. It makes you more likely to recognize something small as a major acute problem which must be dealt with immediately. In the absence of a perceived stress - which would probably be amplified by the histamine - it is likely sedative.

Milk is bad in other ways….

Milk contains a small amount of actual morphine - which in itself is interesting.

Casein breaks down down into a few things in your gut, one of which is BCM-7.

BCM-7 has been implicated in the development of both ischaemic heart disease (IHD)  and diabetes mellitus type I (DM-I) (Elliott et al. 1999; Thorsdottir et al. 2000; McLachlan 2001; Laugesen and Elliott 2003; Tailford et al. 2003)

For IHD, BCM-7 could act on LDL through peroxidation of the lipids within LDL  through a tyrosyl radical mechanism of action (Elliott at al. 1999; Heinecke et al. 1999).

For DM-I…BCM-7 suppresses immune defense mechanisms by inhibiting the incorporation of thymidine into lymphocyte DNA replication thereby inhibiting lymphocyte proliferation (Elitsur and Luk 1991). This generates an immune vulnerability (in the case of DMI) to a certain class of enteroviruses that are still being researched as they may have potential key roles in the damage done to pancreatic beta cells (Graves et al. 1997). Through BCM-7 compromising the immune system, the system is more vulnerable to all kinds of pathogenic infections. 

 BCM-7 acts on the mu-opioid receptor which in turn causes the release of histamine (Kostyra et al. 2004)

The suspected heart disease and diabetes mechanism has everything to do with the protein in milk (Casein which breaks down into BCM-7) and little to do with the saturated fat in the milk. More on that correlation.

Milk causes a release of intestinal mucous.

Like heroin or codeine, casomorphins slow intestinal movements and have a decided antidiarrheal effect. The opiate effect may be why adults often find that cheese can be constipating, just as opiate painkillers are.

More on that release of intestinal mucous.

There is some evidence that casein and gluten (a milk protein) worsen autism, and move you along the autistic scale.

More on autism and heart disease/diabetes:

Studies involving large samples of  patients with autism, schizophrenia, or mania found that over 90 % of those tested had high levels of the milk protein beta-casomorphine-7 in their blood and urine and defective enzymatic processes for digesting milk protein(24,25,27), and similarly for the corresponding enzyme needed to digest wheat gluten(24,26). Like casein, gluten breaks down into molecules with opioid traits, called gluteomorphine or gliadin. As with caseomorphin, it too can retain biological activity if the enzymes needed to digest it are not functioning properly..

In hydrolysed milk with variant A1 of beta-casein, BCM-7 level is 4-fold higher than in A2 milk.  Variants A1 and A2 of beta-casein are common among many dairy cattle breeds. A1 is the most frequent in Holstein-Friesian (0.310–0.660), Ayrshire (0.432–0.720) and Red (0.710) cattle. In contrast, a high frequency of A2 is observed in Guernsey (0.880–0.970) and Jersey (0.490–0.721) cattle(92). In children with autism, most of whom have been found to have been exposed to high levels of toxic metals through vaccines, mother’s dental amalgams, or other sources;   higher levels ofBCM-7 is found in the blood(24-26). 

Epidemiological evidence from New Zealand claims that consumption of beta-casein A1 is associated with higher national mortality rates from ischaemic heart disease. It appears that the populations that consume milk containing high levels of beta-casein A2 have a lower incidence of cardiovascular disease and type 1 diabetes. 

A double blind study using a potent opiate antagonist, naltrexone (NAL), produced significant reduction in autistic symptomology among the 56% most responsive to opioid effects(28). 

Of course you’ll get less heart disease in a population that drinks a form of milk with less beta-casein, but of course one might postulate that heart disease would be further reduced with casein and milk elimination.