Covid-19 and Glyphosate. How are they connected?

For this week’s article, I am going to take a slight break from providing Covid-19 information.  I say slight because I will be able to circle around and link this week’s topic back to covid-19 risk factors.  One of the major chemical contaminants that has a huge, but silent impact on our health is a chemical called glyphosate.  Glyphosate is the active ingredient in weed killers, like the brand Round-up.  I have written in the past about the health dangers of this chemical and even about the lawsuits against its manufacturer, Monsanto. In 2018, Monsanto was court ordered to pay $250 million in punitive damages and $39.2 million in compensatory damages for failing to warn consumers that exposure to Roundup weed killer causes cancer. And last year, the Bayer corporation which bought Monsanto, agreed to pay a 10 billion dollar settlement from a class action suit for Monsanto failing to put a cancer warning label on their product.

In a soon to be released new book titled, “Toxic Legacy: How the Weedkiller Glyphosate is Destroying Our Health and the Environment,” Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at MIT, reviews the health impacts of glyphosate.  I was able to read her latest interview and I came away with valuable insights.

It is very difficult to know about a topic that most people never even hear about.  Glyphosate is one of those topics.  When I drive my car through town and I see neighbors spraying round-up on their curbs, side walks and gardens it is upsetting to me knowing that they are unknowingly handling a harmful chemical.  When I walk into a hardware store or home store like Home Depot and the aisle endcap is devoted to this dangerous weedkiller (on sale no less), it is a very alarming situation.

The main problem is that glyphosate (even according to Monsanto’s research in the 1980’s) accumulates in the body’s tissues.  Once in the tissues, the glyphosate substitutes itself for the amino acid glycine when constructing proteins in the body, disrupting the protein manufacturing process that depends on the essential amino acid glycine.  This is where the health problems come from.  You have heard about the good bacteria in our digestive systems call probiotics. Probiotics build up our gut microbe levels of helpful, healthy bacteria. Glyphosate prevents this from happening causing our health to suffer in many ways.

Here is where the chemistry gets a little tricky.  We have minerals in our body, like iron that our essential for health.  Too little and we can be unhealthy, but too much is toxic and cause illness.  There is another chemical called deuterium, which is a heavy hydrogen molecule and is essential to the body in small amounts.  We have cells in our body whose job is remove the excess deuterium. Glyphosate damaged cells prevent this important process from occurring and the result is chronic disease.  Recent research papers show that glyphosate is an endocrine (hormonal) system disrupter and is linked to breast cancer, reproductive issues, thyroid problems and obesity.  One of the most important revelations is that glyphosate disrupts your body’s defensive immune system. 

This is where I circle back around to Covid-19.  According to Dr. Seneff, your immune system cells are impaired by glyphosate.  The older you are, the more you have been exposed to glyphosate for decades causing your immune cells to malfunction.  But wait, you are probably saying to yourself, “ I never or hardly ever use weedkilling glyphosate, how can it build-up in my body?”  The scary answer is that you do not ever have to use weedkiller to have glyphosate in your body.  You eat it constantly!! Yes, eat it.  Glyphosate is an environmental toxin, farmers use it on our grains and vegetable plants as a very simple to use, cost effective weedkiller.  Even scarier, is that Monsanto has invented Round-up ready plant seeds for farmers.  The seeds have glyphosate genetically modified into the seeds cell structure.  These seeds are sold to farmers to plant the soy, corn, canola, alfalfa, cotton, and sorghum crops (with wheat under development). Roundup Ready crop seeds have also been called and vilified as  "terminator seeds." This is because the crops produced from Roundup Ready seeds are sterile, meaning the seeds from the crops can never be used again to plant more crops, they would have to be purchased again for replanting.

Now that you have learned how glyphosate accumulates in the body, scientists are coming to conclusions about how glyphosate interacts with the Covid-19 virus or in fact any virus.  When a virus enters our body, due to glyphosate accumulation, the energy producing cells called mitochondria cannot make their main energy ingredient called ATP.  ATP helps clear the virus out of our cells. Glyphosate interferes with our body’s cells ATP energy process.  If the cells cannot make ATP, the immune system has a hard time doing its job of clearing out the virus.  Thus people who have high levels of glyphosate in their body will have a difficult time recovering from viruses like Covid-19.

What do we do to avoid this dangerous problem?  First off, boycott all weed killing products.  If you think you are only killing the weeds around your curb and sidewalk, you are very wrong.  The glyphosate ends up in our ground water supply as it is absorbed into the ground and it ends up in our bay, lakes, rivers and streams from the street and sewer run-off.  Not only does the chemical end up in our drinking water but it also ends up in the fish and animals like crabs, shrimp and lobster that we eat. Secondly, eat only certified organic made foods so that you know the grains and vegetables do not have glyphosate.  Include in your diet foods that have probiotics, like sauerkraut and apple cider vinegar (with mother in it) to help repair the gut microbes.  If you are concerned about glyphosate already in your body, you can take supplemental powdered glycine 5-10 grams a day.  Glycine will push glyphosate out of the cells.  I have heard it has a sweet taste, so you can use it as a sweetener.

Covid-19 Vaccination information:  As part of informed consent for your personal information here is the latest reported events from the CDC vaccine adverse reaction reporting system (via their website) to help you make your own health care decision concerning the vaccination.
 
As of 2/13/21, 52 million people have been given at least one dose of the vaccine.  Adverse reactions total over 12,639 (Of the 12,639 reported events, common reactions such as arm soreness and swelling, fatigue, fever, body aches and headache are included. Also included are the more severe reactions such as anaphylaxis).  The most common reactions are chills (over 1700 cases), headache (2600 cases), shortness of breath (943 cases), nausea (over 1600 cases).  Also, 221 people contracted the covid-19 virus after receiving the vaccine.  In addition, it has also been reported on the CDC web page that over 490 people have died after receiving the vaccine. 

Prenatal Pregnancy Chiropractic care:  One of the most common prenatal questions I receive is “Why does the baby wake me up at night?”  During pregnancy, on average it seems the most uncomfortable time for the mother is at night.  One of the reasons is that during the waking hours, the walking and moving around of the pregnant mother soothes the unborn baby and with all of that motion, the baby sleeps.  At night, during pregnancy, the baby wakes up.  And keeps the mother up!  Prenatal and pregnancy care for the chiropractor is mothercentric.  Meaning, its all about helping the pregnant mother to be comfortable during the 9 months of pregnancy.  Improving nerve flow and balancing spinal / pelvic musculature are important aspects of prenatal chiropractic care.

Author

Dr J. Zimmerman, Chiropractor Dr. Zimmerman is a practicing chiropractor from Galloway, NJ with 30 years of chiropractic practice.