Page 69 - Special Issue: Healthy Baby

They are so vital to life that if somebody tried Apart from protecting us from infections, Digestive
to sterilize our digestive systems, we probably healthy gut flora protect us from carcinogenic
wouldn’t survive. So let’s have a look at their and toxic substances by neutralizing them or health cannot
functions. “grabbing them” and holding tight. Our stools are happen
Digestive health cannot happen without largely—over 90 percent—comprised of bacteria, without
healthy well-functioning gut flora, which have and as they are eliminated they take these toxins
to be dominated by specific species of bacteria, out. One recent study I’ve seen looked at two healthy well-
yeasts and viruses—what we call the beneficial or groups of animals, one treated with antibiotics, functioning
probiotic microbes. We have a lot of research on another served as a control. They were given gut flora.
probiotic bacteria. We know less about yeasts but organic mercury in their food and water, huge
are learning. We have even less on viruses but I amounts of mercury. In animals not treated by
do believe there are beneficial viruses because the antibiotics, who had healthy, robust gut flora,
most severe damage to the gut flora comes after only one percent of that mercury managed to get
antiviral medication that people use for herpes into the body from the digestive tract. In animals
and other viral infections. treated by antibiotics which wiped out the bene-
The surface of the digestive tract would cover ficial flora in these animals, about 95 percent of
a tennis court if it were stretched out flat. It is a the mercury got into their bodies and their blood
perfect gate for anything harmful to get inside stream and bones and muscles and everywhere
your temple. So nature covered every little square else.
millimeter of this tennis court with bacteria, a So the number one barrier for anything toxic
thick bacterial band covering every little bit of in this world—and we do live in a polluted world,
it. These beneficial microbes produce every an- eating polluted food, drinking polluted water,
tibiotic under the sun and every anti-fungal and breathing polluted air and taking all sorts of
antiviral substance we know of, thus protecting toxins willingly into our systems—the first and
us from pathogenic microbes coming with food most important barrier are your own gut flora.
and drink. If you have solid, healthy gut flora you can eat

THE BACKLASH
Until recently, doctors generally didn’t look at the digestive system in autism and related conditions. However, now
and then we would see case studies published in peer-reviewed journals where the patient went to a gastroenterologist
and the doctor performed an inexpensive test involving a barium enema with an X-ray of the bowel. In most cases in
these patients they would find a condition called fecal compaction with an overspill syndrome. This is what happens
when the old compacted feces are literally glued to the gut wall, in some places almost obstructing the lumen (the space
inside) of the digestive tract. Whatever new food would come along would have to slip through a narrow channel, through
these compacted feces. In one case, the doctor described the mass of the compacted feces in the child’s rectum as the
size of a cantaloupe melon.
Then in 1998 Dr Andrew Wakefield, a consultant gastroenterologist at the Royal Free Hospital in London, and
his team published their research, suggesting a connection between chronic inflammatory bowel disease and autism.
They performed endoscopy and biopsy on a group of autistic children who were referred to them with gastrointestinal
symptoms. Dr. Wakefield called the condition autistic enterocolitis. In addition to inflammation, abscesses filled with
pus, ulcers, erosions and lots of fecal compaction, Dr. Wakefield found that the lymph nodes which are present in the
wall of the bowel and lower part of the intestines, normally the size of a bean, were swollen, large and painful. In some
cases they were so large they almost obstructed the lumen of the digestive tract.
So Dr. Wakefield took samples of these lymph nodes and found measles virus there. He looked further and found
that the specific strain was coming from the vaccine. And the whole affair became very political. A huge campaign was
launched by the British government to promote the measles vaccination and the medical profession in Britain turned its
back on Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his work. Today he is working in this country privately, carrying on with his research.
The problem now is that many gastroenterologists in Britain do not dare examine an autistic child. They are scared the
same thing will happen to them. So I see family after family that has to fly to the U.S. or another country and pay huge
amounts of money just to have their child examined by a gastroenterologist. This is how politically charged the whole
situation is.

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