Gulf War Syndrome

The article below arises from the continuing research from what is known as “Gulf War Syndrome”, the debilitating condition endured by many troops that were engaged in that conflict.

These troops were involved with high levels of activity in high chemical environment and subject to continuing stress and contamination.

Moreover, as the operations were mounted quickly they were given a number of injections to prevent medical conditions in a short period of time. This would have given quite a build up of substances in the blood stream.

http://www.ei-resource.org/news/gulf-war-syndrome-news/studies-find-gulf-war-illness-involves-chronic-altered-brain-blood-flow-while-causes-differ-by-deployment-region/

For most us now, trying to even avoid a high chemical contact is very difficult and they are becoming more and more powerful. To add to that the medications and other things given routinely to try to mitigate the side effects will have an effect.
Just how close these are to the conditions that these troops experienced is difficult to assess, but it may be becoming much nearer by the year.

Researching Research

Here are a couple of links both to the Dr. Mercola site. This is a very individual site offering a good deal of sensation, plus its own products, but from time to time and looked at with care can some up with matters of interest.

It has recently paid a lot of attention to mercury as a poison in all too common use and the dangers of fluoride and the high levels now encountered in various ways.
This item is amongst the most worrying:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/10/15/mayo-clinic-finds-massive-fraud-in-cancer-research.aspx?e_cid=20111015_DNL_art_1

Here we have what was regarded as an important piece of research, seminal to later research, which is now under serious suspicion. Which raises the question that if this happens at the highest levels in a supposedly dedicated academic institution what might have happened elsewhere?

Another campaign by the Dr. Mercola site is about the sweetening agents that have taken the place of sugar in so many food products to cater for people who want to have low calorie intake but retaining the impact of the sweetness they often crave.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/10/15/this-artificial-sweetener-shown-to-produce-cancer-in-rats.aspx?e_cid=20111015_DNL_art_2

Is this again another case of commercial high power chemical products being used both extensively and indiscriminately without regard for real testing or effects?

Returning to the first matter, it is not long ago that the UK Advertising Standards Authority rejected a complaint about Lynx, an especially strong deodorant, on the basis of research submitted by the makers, Unilever, public relations firm.

Just what can you trust?

Knowing The Nose

It ought to be a commonplace that anything that goes up the nose is going to impact on the brain one way or another. Just as much as we accept that particulates going into the nose can end up in the lungs.

The question is what happens when they get there? For the most part the human set up is able to deal with a huge variety of nasal intake. It is all part of earth and our surroundings. This article indicates that we know more about the effects these days than in the past.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061222092618.htm

One issue that I have found worrying when we go out and about is often the sense of smell is knocked out by one experience or another. Bad traffic fumes are one. Being in a room which is a strong mix of varied substances is another. My memory of military gas training is yet another.

In the last decade or so the personal and household products industry have made an assault on the sense of smell in the inclusion of strong aromatics into very many products and in ventilating systems. Yet there has been little research into this and what it is all doing to our brains.

Brains mean how we function and our behaviour patterns. Also the brain is highly sensitive to changes in blood flow and content and intakes from the atmosphere. So when the aromatics etc. knock out the sense of smell not only is it deforming one of the basic senses it must be having other effects.

Yet our health authorities are evading the issue and frantically try to divert discussion into a debate on Pavlovian reactions when questions of toxicity arise.

Something must he happening, but what?

Fishy Business

The article in the link below relates to something that many people have suspected. It is that if a new technique is discovered and applied to too many things too quickly then what can happen can be unpredictable. This is about nanoparticles and their impact on the brains of fish.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110919074256.htm

This might seem a distance away from humans but we do not know that. We do know that it is possible to take out and examine a large number of fish brains but as we cannot do that easily with humans exact comparisons are difficult.

At the moment it is becoming evident that many humans urged on the makers and those who market them are effectively sandblasting their bodies and to some extent their brains with a wide array of chemicals.

A number of those already give cause for disquiet about their long terms effects. But as more and more are subject to nanotechnology to increase impact from reduced quantities of active substances then the effect is likely greater. The cost advantages are one reason for this.

As my two theses are firstly that anything that goes up the nose can affect the brain and that the blood circulates there are problems. One is that the makers deny that the first can be proven and the second that the blood might circulate but the substances they use by some miracle of science do not to any effect.

We shall see but it will not be a happy business.

Gulf War Syndrome

Gulf War Syndrome, the issue of many former soldiers and others who took part in the various major military engagements in the Gulf in the last twenty years has been a source of serious debate.

The governments involved at first preferred to suggest that it was either a purely temporary mental condition or the difficulties that the troops had was down to later or other causes.

There is a great deal on the web on this issue and the American Veterans have had a lot say. In the UK there has been the usual shifty evasions and lack of interest by politicians in this issue, encouraged by the financial interests that so many have in Defence contractors of one sort or another.

Here are a few links below which indicate that at last there is beginning to be some proof of the major features of the problem. Much of this is due to advances in medical research and techniques.

http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/144420/prevalence

http://www8.utsouthwestern.edu/utsw/cda/dept37389/files/189084.html

http://gawker.com/5840900/study-proves-gulf-war-syndrome-is-nerve-gas+induced-brain-damage

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/ww2.html

Quite simply nearly all the troops had a series of major injections in a very short period. Then in the course of action there was a major battery of chemical effects on the body and brain.

Some were better able to withstand this, but some were not. The reasons for this are complex and to do with the differences in the genes in body biochemistry.

But when one looks today in ordinary life and sees the range of medical interventions, notably in the young and the huge array of strong chemicals now routine in home and the environment people are going to be affected.

If GWS is any guide it will not be predictable as to what effect or the extent or the proportion who are more badly affected.

But it will be there and it is growing.

Followers Of Fashion

Quite when “fashion” began is hard to tell. Perhaps when a female hominid a million years ago decided to put some flowers together and put them in her hair or round her neck. Perhaps it was a male who enjoyed painting his face to frighten the neighbours.

As soon as others began to copy then it all began especially when one adornment or means of covering the anatomy came to be replaced by others. Doubtless there was soon a hierarchy when those who wore the skins of major or ferocious beasts looked down on those clothed by squirrels or rats.

Fashion almost always comes at a cost. To be a beaver when beaver pelts became the must have thing for some river dwellers was not good news. The ladies of the highest classes who used white lead to paint their faces in the 18th Century paid a terrible price for keeping up with the peer group.

The link below is just another step along a well trodden and usually dirty highway. There is nothing new in toxic products used in clothing, the mad hatters of Luton knew all too well what could happen.

http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/other_comments/1053117/stop_making_china_suffer_toxic_pollution_for_western_fashion.html

The trouble now is that the globalization of clothing production and the ratcheting up of the marketing and media campaigns to increase turnover and encourage a throwaway short term fashion centred consumer society is now costing us all a great deal.

And we don’t know the real price we are paying.

Paying Attention

A couple of articles taken together here dealing with pesticides and with attention disorders in children. I suspect that we have little idea of the effect of chemical impact on the brain in developing children and what the effect it might have.

The first link related to the issue of inattention as another issue from hyper activity. The two may be related but this is not necessary.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110829070608.htm

The second link deals specifically with the pesticide issue. This is a useful one because the chemistry and distribution of pesticides are relatively a known and can be more easily identified than other contaminants.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100517132846.htm

Looking back it is clear these days that children are subject to a much greater battery of chemical intervention and content in their environment, the air they breathe, the food they eat and in many other ways.

If these affect other parts of the body one way or another then there must be some sort of effect on the brain.