Honest Health
Portuguese water dogs and organic cow manure have been hot items these days as the Obama family settles into their transplanted life in Washington, D.C.
People may not be trading in their yellow labs for those cute curly-coated canines overnight, but that newly-dug organic garden on the White House lawn appears about to become a role model for many Americans who have yet to even taste an organic cucumber or carrot.
Meanwhile, George W. Bush's first family, we now learn, had quietly ordered the White House kitchen to only serve organic food. For eight long years, every staff member remained sworn to secrecy.
Don't tell Joe the Plumber that we have turned our backs on Monsanto's bovine growth hormone, or DuPont's liquid fertilizer, or Astra Zeneca's hormone-enhancing weed killer, George probably whispered to Laura nervously. Who knows what might happen to their political contributions if word of our orgasmic lifestyle ever got into the press!
So what did the sensible Laura Bush see in seaweed, bark mulch, and fish emulsion fertilizer? Or in no-added hormone-free chicken, omega 3 eggs, organic basmati and yukon golds?
Well, remember that old saying, "You are what you eat."
Or how about, "Junk in, Junk out."
Take one example of a cucumber or pickle; If grown in fields treated with atrazine (still the second most popular pesticide in the US) the cuke absorbs this aromatase-enhancing (estrogen- producing) chemical.
When you eventually eat that dilled cuke, you are also eating the atrazine contained in its pulp, seeds and skin. For women and men who are trying to keep their estrogen level low to prevent prostate, ovarian or breast cancer from ever happening, eating atrazine-laced pickles or other pesticide-grown food can sabotage your low estrogen lifestyle. (Think about the wisdom of having a marbled steak and Ben & Jerry's for dinner every night if you are following a low saturated fat diet).
A few years ago, Dr. Tyrone Hayes, a brilliant biologist and tenured professor at the University of California at Berkeley, was hired by atrazine's manufacturer, Syngenta, to see if the popular weed killer might affect the environment. Hayes was flabbergasted to see how his second and third generation frogs were mutating after constant exposure to atrazine.
We hypothesize that atrazine induces aromatase and promotes the conversion of testosterone to estrogen. This disruption in steroidogenesis likely explains the demasculinization of the male larynx and the production of hermaphrodites, Hayes and others wrote in a 2001 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Syngenta (co-owned by the pharmaceutical companies Astra Zeneca and Novartis), disputed Hayes' study, refused to submit this research for publication — and fired him.
Undaunted by these actions, Hayes raised some money for his Berkeley lab, duplicated his earlier research and again showed that water polluted by atrazine was creating hermaphrodites; male animals that have had too much estrogen exposure, causing them to develop into half male and half female organisms.
Hayes now wonders if atrazine might be part of the reason why the average sperm count in American men is dropping lower and lower each year.
Meanwhile, the US already has the highest breast, ovarian and prostate cancer rates in the world, mainly caused by this all-pervasive estrogenic soup that seems to surround us by land, water and ingested as food and prescription drugs everyday. Because of atrazine's known estrogenic and carcinogenic effects, the European Union recently banned the use of the pesticide. These days the determined Hayes has become a popular speaker on college campuses and his Web site www.atrazinelovers.com should not be missed!
So, this spring we can celebrate our new first family and thank them for being ready, willing and able to stand up to the chemical pesticides and fertilizer giants by creating and nourishing their own organic veggie plot for all to see.
Clearly, our first family's new garden symbolizes basic health care, disease prevention and optimal health rolled into one. We will all be healthier people if we too can raise organic food whenever possible, especially if we are lucky enough to have a gentle Pekinese, poodle, Pyrenees, mutt or Portuguese water dog by our side.
Go Bo!
Susan Wadia- Ells, a longtime wellness advocate, with graduate degrees in politics, energy economics and women studies, is founding director of the national nonprofit organization, Know Breast Cancer, www.knowbreastcancer.net. She also writes the blog www.thetruthaboutbreastcancer.com .
